Story and photos by Deer Roberts
This week I read an online piece at the CNN website written by a high school senior in Joplin, Missouri. It brought back to mind some, literally, unwritten business I need to take a stab at now.
My oldest daughter, Gen, and I journeyed to my second daughter’s doctoral graduation in Cincinnati, Ohio in early June. Joplin was on the way. We decided to stop in, just to see for ourselves what we had been hearing on the radio and through discussion. Despite all the coverage, neither of us owns a TV, so we weren’t at all prepared for what we surveyed. Perhaps nothing could have prepared us.
Joplin, Missouri following the May 22 tornado.
Not knowing Joplin, after we got off the freeway, we didn’t see much damage at all. Perhaps it had all been hype. But then, by instinct, I turned off onto one street and floored the brake. Holy Malolly! Mile after mile of devastated neighborhoods, as far as the eye could see. Anything that might have been standing was leveled. The skyline was as clear as ours here in the high desert.
Stunned, neither Gen nor I could speak. The city and FEMA had done a good job clearing the streets so folks could access home sites, but the sites themselves were way beyond any angry statement by Mother Nature. In her mighty ramp she had been downright apathetic, crushing everything, indiscriminant of value. Only the angels could have saved as many as had been within the dereliction.
We saw two women, one standing in a yard looking overwhelmed and indecisive while an older one sat in a truck out front. The highest point left standing on the property was the bathroom commode flushing the sky. Gen cautioned me to stay back (as grown kids will do) and respect the privacy of the two. But the more I watched the more I realized something was terribly wrong. The younger woman kept calling out a name . . . and no one was answering. I went to see if I could help. As it turned out, her husband had gone down into the basement of the trashed home 15 minutes earlier, and hadn’t emerged. She was worried, as should be. I started down to find him in his foolishness, meeting him on the way up.
Turned out this was his childhood home. His mom was the woman in the truck. He was grieving. Mom was counting her blessings. Seems the couple had taken her out of a nursing care facility not two days before the storm hit. She was home with them when the institution got leveled . . . and most of her old friends with it.
They told me stories of heroism. One man had been out running errands with his two small children. When he saw what was coming he pulled into the local Home Depot and took cover, his children nestled, one in each arm. Home Depot got razed. All three were unearthed, still nestled together, gone.
There was the young manager of the local Pizza Hut who corralled his patrons and employees into the walk-in fridge. There was no room left for him, so he secured them inside and tied himself to the handle. Everyone in the unit lived. They never found him, just his hands that were left dangling from the fridge door. He is remembered with sadness and enormous pride . . . he gave the biggest gift anyone can . . . a hard decision to make, but he had.
Back to the woman’s grieving husband. He had been traumatized, having been assigned to triage that night at the local hospital. He knew a lot of the folks coming in. He was the one who had to wheel the ones that didn’t or weren’t going make it down to the morgue. He re-suffers the nightmare nightly.
When the woman found that I write, she told me folks had to know what was REALLY going on in Joplin. I asked her what THAT might be. Her job position wouldn’t permit her to say.
After we left the scene, both Gen and I were badly shaken. “I’ve GOT to dance this off,” I told her. An old kid from Motown, it’s my way of really praying hard and shaking things off. Gen remembered a place up off the interstate, so off we went. Ran into a FEMA guy there. I asked him the unanswered question. He apparently knew to what I was referring but he wouldn’t answer either; not allowed. When he introduced us to a construction fellow, the response was the same. NO ONE was talking. Katrina smack. I danced hard, by myself, in the middle of that dance floor for hours that evening. Good thing the DJ was good.
The next morning an insurance guy in a parking lot by the grocery store was taking claims. I inquired. He seemed to acknowledge with his eyes there was SOMETHING not right, but wouldn’t say a word. HIS job. WHO was the threat here? Why so many good people doing everything and doing nothing?
We took one last look in the morning light, driving by what was left of the high school and its surrounding neighborhood, including the Home Depot. I took pictures, including the signage identifying the buildings. “OP High School” was all that was showing of the original lettering on the school. Someone had added “H” and “E” to make it read, “Hope High School.” I wondered how much hope there was when nobody would talk about the subsequent threat, whatever it was.
On the way back from the graduation, we planned to stop and find the proverbial man on the street and find out what the story on the ground might be. However, some folks who love us called to inform us about the black fungus virus of some sort going around Joplin that was leaving folks dehydrated and vacuum packed, from the inside out, black ash sifting from opened lacerations. Morbid death; à la science fiction. We decided to bypass, for the moment, until we could find out more. Maybe that move assigned me to the ranks of the chicken hearted. Sure feels like it. The situation really needs someone like me to have the guts and get the word out. Praying for Joplin feels cowardly, empty by comparison; makes me feel guilty. Still do it though.
More later…
