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It was an area I thought I knew like the back of my hand: the place where I’d grown up, where I’d spent 25 or so years of my life.
But it wasn’t anything like I’d remembered.
I’d seen the destruction caused by tornadoes before. I’d seen leveled buildings, chewed up trees, battered vehicles.
But not mile after mile after mile.
It felt like a kick in the gut. Tears welled up in my eyes as I saw the park where I used to play for the first time in person.
My high school was piles of rubble with an occasional leaning wall. The technical school where I learned about computers and electronics looked like a giant had stomped on it. My junior high was heavily damaged. The swimming pool I learned to swim in was full of debris, the pool house demolished. A beautiful Victorian house near the park was now a pile of lumber and stones with the uppermost floor — marked by rows of tiny windows — intact atop the rubble. The hospital where three siblings started their working lives looked like a bomb had gone off inside it.
My parents’ last home, located on 23rd and Picher, had the roof and attic removed. It resembled a giant box of Cracker Jacks with the top torn off. Twisted metal was strewn about the neighborhood. Not a house in the neighborhood escaped damage, it seemed.
And just up the road, the home of dad’s neighbors, Wilbur and Barbara Roush. I’d come up, in part, to see if I could find the Roushes, as they were on a missing person’s list.
Imagine my joy to see an elderly gentleman, his arms full of photo albums, come out on the porch.
“Mr. Roush?” I enquired, to which he replied in the affirmative. “I’m so glad to see you!”
I introduced myself, and he remembered me from when mom and dad lived down the block. We talked about family, old neighbors and the storm.
“Barbara and me rode it out there in our closet — well, it’s more like Fibber McGee’s closet,” he chuckled, referencing a running gag on the old radio show “Fibber McGee and Molly” in which the sounds of a closet door opening, and bric-a-brac raining down, can be heard. “We just held onto each other and prayed and next thing you know, we were looking at black sky.”
It was an area I thought I knew like the back of my hand: the place where I’d grown up, where I’d spent 25 or so years of my life.
But it wasn’t anything like I’d remembered.
I’d seen the destruction caused by tornadoes before. I’d seen leveled buildings, chewed up trees, battered vehicles.
But not mile after mile after mile.
It felt like a kick in the gut. Tears welled up in my eyes as I saw the park where I used to play for the first time in person.
My high school was piles of rubble with an occasional leaning wall. The technical school where I learned about computers and electronics looked like a giant had stomped on it. My junior high was heavily damaged. The swimming pool I learned to swim in was full of debris, the pool house demolished. A beautiful Victorian house near the park was now a pile of lumber and stones with the uppermost floor — marked by rows of tiny windows — intact atop the rubble. The hospital where three siblings started their working lives looked like a bomb had gone off inside it.
My parents’ last home, located on 23rd and Picher, had the roof and attic removed. It resembled a giant box of Cracker Jacks with the top torn off. Twisted metal was strewn about the neighborhood. Not a house in the neighborhood escaped damage, it seemed.
And just up the road, the home of dad’s neighbors, Wilbur and Barbara Roush. I’d come up, in part, to see if I could find the Roushes, as they were on a missing person’s list.
Imagine my joy to see an elderly gentleman, his arms full of photo albums, come out on the porch.
“Mr. Roush?” I enquired, to which he replied in the affirmative. “I’m so glad to see you!”
I introduced myself, and he remembered me from when mom and dad lived down the block. We talked about family, old neighbors and the storm.
“Barbara and me rode it out there in our closet — well, it’s more like Fibber McGee’s closet,” he chuckled, referencing a running gag on the old radio show “Fibber McGee and Molly” in which the sounds of a closet door opening, and bric-a-brac raining down, can be heard. “We just held onto each other and prayed and next thing you know, we were looking at black sky.”
I never was so glad to see someone as I was Wilbur Roush. He told me he and his wife were staying at their son’s and she wasn’t injured in the storm, but had taken a tumble coming down their back steps in the aftermath and wasn’t up to any more cleanup and salvage work.
Before I left, I asked if he knew he was on a missing person’s list.
“Not anymore,” he said. “The police came by about noon, and I told them to take me off of it, that we were alive and OK.”
I left the Roushes after taking some photos of their home for their insurance company and went two blocks north to the home of my former scoutmaster, Phil VanWinkle.
Phil and his sister, Marilyn, and two members of his scout troop were out in the yard, talking to passers-by. Both were safe and sound and had escaped the storm’s wrath. Their home still stood, minus some windows and quite a few trees.
Phil had been cutting trees with his friend Glen Roark of Neosho and the scoutmaster’s lawn proved their efforts. There were trees everywhere.
That’s when it struck me. The trees had no bark: it had been stripped by debris driven by 200-plus mile an hour winds.
I’m glad I found my neighbors and friends safe and sound. I pray for those who lost loved ones in the horrific storm. I pray we never see another one like it again.
And I offer a prayer of thanks for all of the volunteers.
John Ford is managing editor of the Daily News. Email him at jford@neoshodailynews.com.
