“Nature’s fury” was again felt by residents of Neosho and the surrounding area in 2008.
The year marked a tornado of unprecedented proportions, as a tornadic system roared through Newton County, killing 14 people, including a firefighter, as it left a wide path of destruction in its wake.
The tornado, later classified as an EF3, touched down near Iris Road and the Missouri / Oklahoma border in Newton County shortly after 6 p.m. May 10, leaving a path of destruction a half mile wide and eight miles in length before moving on to Barry County. The storm destroyed hundreds of homes, numerous businesses, and killed 14 people, many of whom were traveling by car on Missouri Highway 43 near Iris Road. Those killed in the storm outright were Rockie Peterson, Neosho; Lynda Hasty, Seneca; Paul Gallemore, Racine area; Daniel, Barbara, Jeff and Terrance Monroe, rural Newton County; Teri Cook, Racine area, Ruby Bilke, Joplin; Christine Petree, Morrisville; and Richard, Kathy and Clayton Rountree, all of Joplin. Peterson died when a tree fell on him near his home on Falcon Road, the Monroe family were killed in a mobile home near the Missouri / Oklahoma state line; the three members of the Rountree family died while driving to Seneca on 43, as did Bilke. Gallemore passed away at his home on W. Highway 86 near Racine, while Petrie died while driving near Highway 43 and Iris Road. Hasty died while being transported to a local hospital.
“The first few hours, we were doing search and rescue,” said Newton County Sheriff Ken Copeland in an interview late that night. “We were extremely hampered by sightseers, people who wanted to come out and see the damage. We couldn’t get emergency vehicles through: Ambulances, police cars, fire trucks, they all had a terrible time getting cars out of the road so they could rescue people.
“We have been using every ambulance we could get ahold of. We had Newton County Ambulance District, METS, Cox, McDonald County. Every ambulance we could get has been extremely busy.”
A 14th person, Tyler Casey, died May 12 of injuries sustained while storm spotting Saturday on 43 and Iris Road. Casey was a firefighter with the Seneca Fire Protection District, and was credited with saving the lives of three people before he was injured.
Four canoeists were caught on Shoal Creek near Lime Kiln during the May 10 storm, and rode the storm out on the bank, escaping with minor injuries.
The storm destroyed Lant’s Feed and Bridal Garden, located near the intersection of 43 and Iris Road. Part of the business was used as a makeshift morgue and triage staging area, Jane Lant revealed when the feed store reopened in early September.
The storm also heavily damaged a number of other businesses, including Willis and Associates Printing. The day after the event, friends, neighbors, fellow church-goers and even strangers were coming by the business and helping in cleaning up the debris. Even the business’ UPS driver stopped by to lend a hand.
Michael Chertoff, secretary of Homeland Security, along with Gov. Blunt, Seventh District Congressman Roy Blunt and FEMA administrator David Paulison, toured Southwest Missouri both by air and on the ground to see the tornado damage. While the federal govern-ment swiftly made a disaster declaration for damage to private property, no such declaration for public damages and reimbursing departments which provided mutual aid was forthcoming, despite repeated pleas from county officials as well as Gov. Blunt, his father, Rep. Roy Blunt, and U.S. Sens. Kit Bond and Claire McCaskill. Bond and McCaskill also toured the area, stopping to speak with a local family whose farm and home were heavily damaged in the twister.
Decision 2008
While Barack Obama garnered a landslide victory in the electoral college for his presidency bid, he didn’t win the local popular vote.
Obama received 7,450 votes to Republican challenger John McCain’s 17,637, while McDonald County voters favored McCain 5,499 to 2,454.
In Newton County, Democrats fielded more candidates than in recent memory, with five on the general election ballot, including Lonny Steele, candidate for sheriff; Estella Osborn, assessor candidate; Robert Brumback, a former Noel postmaster who ran for county treasurer; Bill Horton, the Democratic candidate for public administrator; and David Baker, who sought the District 2 County Commission seat.
However, none of the candidates were successful in being elected to office. Winning the races were incumbents Ken Copeland, sheriff; Gloria Gourley, assessor; Gina Rodriguez, treasurer; Diane Dodson, public administrator; and Jack Sanders, District 2 county commissioner.
Voters turned down a $16 million Neosho R-5 bond issue to build a new school for the district’s fifth and sixth graders. Under the plan, the district’s eighth graders would have moved out of the high school campus to Neosho Middle School, making Neosho High School grades 9-12 and lowering the student population from 1,000 to 635. Voters turned down the measure 5,402 to 4,097. The district needed 57.14 percent of the vote for the issue to pass.
But Seneca voters approved a nearly $10 million school bond issue to build a new intermediate school facility with a FEMA safe room, gymnasium, commons area, cafeteria, kitchen, office, media center, computer lab, bathrooms, storage, three special classrooms, 18 regular classrooms, an art room, music room and three science labs.
In neighboring McDonald County, the sheriff’s race was a real nail-biter, as results went back in forth during the night between former sheriff Robert Evenson and then-undersheriff Gregg Sweeten. At the end of the night, Evenson had an 18 vote advantage over Sweeten, for less than a quarter of one percent difference in ballots cast.
During a recount Nov. 20, Evenson picked up eight additional votes for a total of 3,982 while Sweeten gained three for a total of 2,959. Evenson, who served as sheriff from 2001 to 2005, began his duties with the department anew on Jan. 1, 2009. He formerly served as a detective with the Barry County Sheriff’s Department.
La-Z-Boy goes cellular
One of Neosho’s largest employers in the industrial field began a new wave of manufacturing its products.
La-Z-Boy Midwest company officials states that cellular manufacturing is a cutting-edge, team-based production approach that will further improve the quality of La-Z-Boy production and significantly reduce delivery times for both standard and custom orders, while increasing productivity at the plant.
The new concept has two sides, one for the making of the chairs and the other one for the sofas. Breaking it down, that is a total of 31 teams, 19 dedicated to chairs and 12 dedicated to sofas. That is 62 teams altogether, 31 “day” teams and 31 “night” teams. There are also three training cells and six training teams.
In late June, the public and even then-Gov. Matt Blunt had the opportunity to tour the plant.
Rather than cutting costs by moving jobs our of state or overseas, La-Z-Boy Midwest took a careful look at their operations and determined that they could find a better solution. The plant moved to lean cellular manufacturing, which means that each piece of furniture will be built by a team within a cell, instead of separately along on assembly line. This innovative strategy, three years in the making, dramatically cuts down on the amount of time to create a chair from two and a half days to only three hours. This will allow for increased production and ensure an even higher quality of product.
405 code changes
When the Neosho Planning and Zoning Commission first held a public hearing on April 7, 2008, to review proposed changes in the city’s zoning laws, no one showed up.
But the issue soon became controversial as details of the planned changes got out. At the first public hearing eight days later, two people spoke out about the changes, with a half dozen speaking on it in May. One businesswoman called the changes “so intrusive, so infringing upon freedom of speech and the use of your own property.”
That night, City Manager Jan Blase gave his staff 30 days to revise the draft. As presented, the ordinance would rewrite a whole chapter of city code to implement tougher zoning laws, including new regulations and restrictions on zoning districts, signs, fencing, home-based businesses, new construction, parking, certain businesses, animals and much more.
The draft was revised at least 10 times by city staff in response to citizen concerns. There were no less than five public hearings, two open work sessions and several council meetings worth of discussion and debate on the legislation from the time it was presented in April until it passed. In the process, the document underwent many changes.
In early February 2009, after months of discussion, public comment and numerous revisions, the Neosho City Council unanimously approved Chapter 405.
Civic remodeled
In April 2005, Neosho voters approved a quarter-cent sales tax to pay for capital projects and maintenance on the former municipal auditorium and the Neosho / Newton County Senior Center.
In September 2008, renovation work to the structure, originally dedicated in 1938, was complete and the City of Neosho held an open house to officially re-open The Civic in downtown Neosho.
From the outside, The Civic looks unchanged. But looks can often can be deceiving.
While roughly 90 percent of the renovations were internal, some work went into new landscaping, as well as handicapped-accessible ramps, new steps, push-button doors, a 40-foot flagpole, new street lamps and, of course, a new “Civic” sign. The walls were painted and decorated, the floors seeded with lush carpe and the ceiling peppered with new track lighting. The entire bottom floor has been opened for concert viewing, with about 1,047 “roomy” seats total, split between the ground floor and the balcony section, which can hold roughly 650 people in comfortable, red-trimmed seats.
The stage was improved and enlarged by approximately four feet, with a lower, portable stage available for various events. In addition, the kitchen has been significantly upgraded — all commercial grade and sized appliances — and there is a new theater support room, or prepping area. The side rooms can be closed off for civic, public or private gatherings.
There are four main seating configurations — maximum seats for large concerts or theater productions; reduced seating with the second, portable stage installed; circled seating encasing a boxing or sports arena-like ring; and banquet-style tables for large group meetings.
Crowder projects finished
On Aug. 8, Crowder College realized the “impossible dream,” according to one of the college’s pioneers, when it officially dedicated the Arnold Farber Academic Building and Library Center.
About 500 people from the community were present to witness the occasion, as were local state lawmakers, other area college and university officials and the major financial donors.
At 47,000 square foot, the Farber Building features classroom space for 215 students, a 400-seat conference center, a college library that’s almost twice big as the old one, two meeting rooms and a one-stop-shop student services area, which includes the campus bookstore, admissions/enrollment, financial aid and cashier all in one spot.
In immediate view from the large conference center window, the walk-under Tatum Bell Tower stands 42-foot high in the center of campus and boasts two 100-year-old-plus bronze bells and four clock faces that automatically reset every 12 hours. Inscribed on its supports are words of inspiration taken from the Bible, the Torah, and famous persons from history and from the tower’s namesake — Jim Tatum, then-chairman of the college’s board of trustees.
Construction of the combined $7.7 million Farber Building and Tatum Bell Tower projects was partially financed by private donations totaling $2.2 million. Bond sales made up another big chunk of the funding and an additional $2 million for the project came from the state Lewis and Clark Discovery Initiative, which funds capital projects on college campuses around the state through the sale of MOHELA (Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority) assets.
At the time of the building’s dedication, Tatum was — and still is — the longest standing college trustee in the nation, serving on the Crowder board since the institution’s inception in 1963. It was he, along with other concerned citizens, who helped push the drive to establish the community college.
“No one back then could have predicted what we are witnesses to today — no one,” Tatum told a packed room at the August ceremony. “But that dream caused a small group of inspired citizens to come together to overcome the hurdles of those who spoke of the impossibility of this dream happening.”
Four months after delivering those words, Tatum announced he was resigning as chairman of Crowder’s board of trustees.
Tatum stated that he was not stepping down from his duties as board president due to bad health, but said he thought it was just finally time after more than 45 years of service. He said that he had mulled over the decision more than once over the past few years.
Tatum remains on the board of trustees while Andy Wood was named president.
Ground broken on overpass
Fifty years after the idea of making South Street an east-west corridor was mentioned in the city’s comprehensive plan, ground was broken on the project in August 2008.
The overpass not only provides convenience in getting around town, it also improves safety, then-Mayor Howard Birdsong said, as it cuts the required time for emergency vehicles to get from one side of town to the other, and eliminates the need to cross railroad tracks in certain instances. Birdsong added school buses would be rerouted after there is an east-west corridor through the city, allowing buses to get off of some of the more narrow or congested city streets.
Traffic was diverted around the construction zone through a series of detours.
The overpass opened in 2009.
Scholastic stays in Neosho after flooding
On Easter weekend, 2008, Scholastic’s call center on Harmony Street flooded.
The business needed a new home, and fast.
Neosho business and industry leaders came to the rescue, helping company officials set up a temporary call center at the Longwell Museum at Crowder College.
During its peak season, Scholastic has between 350 and 400 workers.
Officials then made a search for a new permanent home, eventually deciding to remain in Neosho, as it moved to a spec building across from K&S Wire in the Neosho Industrial Park.
Representatives from seven local banking institutions came together in August to sign loan documents to finance the $1.4 million the Neosho Area Business and Industrial Foundation spent to construct a 25,000-square-foot building that now houses Scholastic.
Neosho offered several buildings, but Scholastic officials felt the spec building best fit its needs.
But there was a catch, as the building, which was a shell, had to be completed within 90 days so Scholastic could serve its customers as it prepared to enter its busiest time of the year, with school getting ready to start. The building was finished in 58 days and a ribbon cutting was held Sept. 4 for the new center.
