Read Scars from the Tornado Online
Authors: Randy Turner
Scars from the Tornado
Copyright 2013
© Randy Turner and Drop Cap Publishing Design: David Hoover
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ISBN-13:
978-1482571585
ISBN-10:
1482571587
P
RINTED IN THE
U
NITED
S
TATES OF
A
MERICA
Dedicated to the
students and staff at East Middle School, past and present.
CONTENTS
BY
R
YLEE
H
ARTWELL
It was May 22,
2011, the summer fever had set in, we were ready to get out of school, or I
certainly was, I was ready for high school. Things had been jam-packed that
past week we were tying things up in the majority of our classes and let's just
say things were starting to go haywire.
When I left
East Middle School little did I know this would be the last time I would see it
in the state it always has been. To say
East
was a
good and enjoyable place was an understatement. I loved the teachers, students,
and building.
School was
enjoyable. We had numerous clubs such as Quiz Bowl, Color Guard, Journalism,
Newspaper, Show Choir and quite a few others. These were all very prestigious
things for a prestigious school.
Last evening
was the first time I could visually see the complete damage that wrecked havoc
on East Middle School. It was a sight of complete astonishment to me; East was
gone.
Lessons of
hard work and integrity have always been taught to me at home. All of these
things were also taught at East Middle School throughout our days there. Even
though our building may not be there, our ideas and lessons will last us all
through life, and this is what makes East Middle School great, not our
buildings or possessions, but the lessons that will make the first East Middle School
continue to live on.
Rylee
Hartwell was an eighth grader
at East Middle School during the 2010-2011 school year.
BY
R
ANDY
T
URNER
The Joplin
Tornado was devastating to members of the East Middle School family. It
stripped us of our school, our homes, much of our community, our complacency,
and for a time, it removed the joy from our lives.
The biggest
cost of the events of May 22, 2011, was the death of one of our own, seventh
grader Zach Williams.
As the
2011-2012 school year progressed, many students shared thoughts about Zach.
Some had been his friends; some had never really known him.
All of them
felt his loss.
One young
eighth grader, a former classmate of Zach’s, may have felt that loss more
deeply than the others. “The last time we talked,” she told me, “we got into an
argument.” It was over something silly, she added. “I don’t even remember what
it was and then I heard he was missing after the tornado.”
And soon word
came that Zach was not coming back to East.
“I wish I
could talk to him one more time,” she said. “It was the last thing I ever said
to him and it was something mean. And he was my friend. I wish he knew how I
really felt.”
I tried, with
little success, to reassure her. “I am sure he knows,” I said, and that is
something I truly wanted to believe, and more than that, I wanted her to
believe it.
From the look on her face, I am
not sure the message got through. The scars of the tornado run deep.
***
The
obituary information below is taken from the Bradford Funeral Home website.
Zachary Allen
Williams was born June 19, 1998, at Fort Leonard Wood Memorial Community
Hospital in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, to Franklin Eugene Williams and Tammy
Renee Clark
Niederhelman
. He lost his life in the
tornado at Joplin, Missouri, Sunday evening, May 22, 2011, making his age 12
years 11 months and three days.
Zach was a
student at East Middle School in Joplin where he attended the seventh grade. He
attended the Calvary Baptist Church in Joplin. Zach was a happy person who would
strike up a conversation with anyone. He enjoyed hot wheel cars,
legos
, riding his bike, and spending time with his friends.
He was looking forward to his summer vacation, so he could spend more time with
family and read more of his favorite books.
He
is preceded in death by his great grandpas, Howard Jackson and R.L. Clark,
great-great grandfather Pearl
Jaco
, great-grandmother
Maxine Clark, great-great-grandmother Gladys
Jaco
.
Zach is
survived by his mother Tammy
Niederhelman
and husband
Tony of Joplin, Missouri; his father Frank Williams and wife Valerie of
Mayesville
, North Carolina, brother Andy Williams of
Mayesville
, North Carolina, grandparents Earnest and Kathy
Clark of Summersville, Missouri; grandparents Jim and Kathleen Williams of
Summersville, Missouri, Helen and Frank Jones of Terre Haute, Indiana; great
grandmother Lillie Jackson of Summersville, MO, uncle’s and aunt’s, Chad and
Billie Clark and children, Austin and Brittani and future son-in-law Levi of
Neosho, MO, Jim Williams of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Warren Williams and wife Vicki of
St. Louis, Missouri, Cindy Heller Springfield, Missouri, several great uncles
and aunts, cousins and friends.
Memorial
Services were held Monday, May 30, 2011, at 1 p.m. at Bradford Funeral Home
Chapel with Rev. Gary Jackson officiating. Arrangements were under the care of
Bradford Funeral Home of Summersville.
THIS IS NOT
MY SCHOOL
BY
R
ANDY
T
URNER
“I don’t want
to be here.”
It was the
first time I had said the words aloud, not that it takes much courage to say
the truth when you are the only one in the room.
It was
difficult for me to admit after 13 years of eagerly anticipating the first day
of school, anxiously
awaiting
the nonstop talking of
eighth graders as they return from their summer adventures, but now it was out
in the open.
The sign on the
building said East Middle School, but this was not East Middle School. That
state-of-the-art school, less than two years old, had been a product of careful
planning and had been approved by Joplin R-8 voters. It was spacious,
beautiful, a place that we happily showed off to visitors.
Now it was
just a memory, thanks to the EF-5 tornado that ripped through the heart of my
city Sunday, May 22, 2011.
It was one of
10 district buildings destroyed or severely damaged.
When I first
learned the extent of the damage, I had a glimmer of hope that we would be able
to return to the old South Middle School building, where I had taught for six
years before we moved to East. No such luck. It, too, had been irreparably
damaged.
So here I sat,
in a new and unfamiliar chair, staring at rows of tables and chairs that were
different from any I had seen in my rooms before, staring at bare white walls
in desperate need of a splash of color. I had never been much at bulletin
boards and I rarely hung posters around my classroom. My method of preparing my
room for the coming school year usually consisted of creating my Writers’ Wall
of Fame, a collection of topnotch papers written by students from previous
years. At that moment, those papers were still in a box awaiting the call to
duty that would connect my former students with the new ones who would soon
grace my classroom.
As far as I
was concerned, those papers could remain in the box. I wanted to be anywhere
else except at East Middle School. This was not my school; this was a last
minute, stopgap measure, a building that until a few weeks before had been a
Joplin Chamber of Commerce spec building. I was going to be teaching in a
glorified warehouse.
The surprise
was that I, and my fellow teachers were even preparing to have school at all.
No one could have blamed our superintendent, Dr. C. J. Huff, if he had begged
for some extra time to get things ready for the 2011-2012 school year. After
all, Joplin High School was totally gone, as was Franklin Tech, our building,
and seven others, including the Administration Building.
Delay,
however, had never been an option. Huff, his assistants, and the Board of
Education had decided immediately that delay would not be tolerated.
After moving
the base of operations to North Middle School, the staff immediately began
working on three distinct, but related operations determining the fate of every
member of the Joplin R-8 family, preparing for summer school, and finding
enough buildings to start school on time just 87 days after the tornado.
The high
school was reopened
in two places-
the former Memorial
Middle School building, which had once served as a high school, and in the
former Shopko building at
Northpark
Mall.
Our middle
school was relocated to the Crossroads Industrial Park in a spec building that
had originally been designated for use by the Coca-Cola Company.
In just a few
short weeks, construction crews did a remarkable job of turning the empty
building into a reasonable facsimile of a school.
But as I sat
in my empty room, staring at the blank walls, their work had done nothing to
convince me that this structure was anything but a warehouse.
In two short
hours, a “family picnic” was scheduled at this new “home.” I had never been
comfortable in social situations anyway, and if I had my choice, I would have
preferred to have been anywhere except this pretend East Middle School.
THE
FINAL
BELL