Raise the flags back to full-staff, Mayor Mike Woolston ordered. Beth Peacock, city events manager, declared that Monday’s celebration would be the best ever. There would be no Red Cross booth, no sales people for shelters, no solicitations for victims. Monday night’s fireworks would, she declared, be the most spectacular the city had ever seen. They would light up the sky with praise and hope, she promised.
And they did.
Joplin, as the headline so aptly put it, had issued a Declaration of Endurance. That it was Independence Day made it that much the more fitting.
Much of the devastation of May 22 still must be dealt with. But the focus has shifted to the future.
Last week Mayor Woolston called leaders together and asked them to start thinking about ways to take advantage of the devastation that the EF5 tornado wrought. The 200 mph wind tore away buildings, ripped up trees and left an opportunity for rebuilding on a stretch 11-12 miles long and hundreds of yards wide right in the middle of town.
The death toll was 158. Hundreds more were injured. Property loss ranged into the billions. But a third of the debris has been cleared away and the clean-up process grows more efficient each day. With each train of rumbling trash trucks headed for landfills, the path the tornado’s scythe slashed through the city grows cleaner, more ready for a new Joplin to be planted and grow.
What should go there? Seven thousand buildings were destroyed or badly damaged. Each of those structures was built by individuals, families or groups over the past 150 years or so. Those past generations of builders made their separate decisions without reference to any plan. Joplin, like Topsy, just grew.
But today, that terrible storm has given Joplin a chance to design a new center; to rebuild with all of its people in mind. To create a downtown that will energize a new Joplin.
Troy Bolander, Joplin’s city planner, is excited by the thought. He is asking that Joplin residents forget what the winds destroyed and think about their city’s long-term possibilities.
Joplinites, he said, should ask themselves, “what would I like to see? What would my children like to see?”
Joplin has already endured. It is ready now to issue a Declaration of Inspiration.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
