If only by default, I’ve become a “Wizard of Oz” historian during my last 30 years of journalism.

My inauguration for this Yellow Brick Road destiny happened in September 1993 when I was a 23-year-old cub reporter transported by a luxury coach bus to O’Hare Airport in Chicago to cover the arrival of 14 “little people” (many of them chain-smoking en route), 10 of whom had appeared in the original 1939 MGM film classic starring opposite a 16-year-old Judy Garland.

The Munchkins were the annual honored guests at The Wizard of Oz Festival in Chesterton, a popular Midwest event that lasted from 1981 until the final year in 2013. During the past two decades, I’ve been tasked in the newsroom with also writing the Land of Oz obituary tributes as the Munchkins passed away throughout the years, cr

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