JOPLIN, Mo. — As this rebuilding city races to finish clearing the rubble from the deadly tornado last spring [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/us/23tornado.html ], one irreparably broken structure has been allowed, for now at least, to remain.
The building, a modest red brick house, has no roof. All but one of its exterior walls are missing, splintered and scattered by the storm, leaving an impression of a giant dollhouse. A Christmas tree, dressed in ornaments, has been placed in a tidy living room arrangement of two couches and a coffee table.
The reason this house has so far survived the wrecking ball can be found scribbled on its walls, on its floorboards, in its closets and along virtually every other remaining surface. They are personal messages, thousands of them, handwritten by the volunteers who flooded the community to help sift through and cart out the debris. Every day visitors and locals alike stop to add a note to the collection.
Every disaster has its memorials, from the organic to the carefully orchestrated. Several monuments have emerged here as the city labors to clear the remaining rubble of the tornado that cut through the heart of the community on May 22, killing 161 people. But as that effort nears completion, the community is questioning what to do with a memorial that is itself rubble.
City leaders have been discussing whether to move the whole structure or perhaps simply take parts of the building for public display. “We think there is some value to preserving it,” said Mark Rohr, the city manager. “But we can’t let it sit there forever.”
In the meantime, the walls of the building, known here as the volunteer house, are peeling under the assault of sun and rain and wind. Like a love letter slowly torn to pieces, the peeling paint is littering the floorboards with snippets of messages, often just a few letters, a name or a word, like “home,” “rebuild” and “alone.” In the newly barren patches, more messages are being scrawled.
The serendipity of the monument stands in sharp contrast with the deliberate stone and steel structures put up in nearby Cunningham Park. The first structure is a three-tiered fountain with 5, 22 and 11 streams of water on the different levels to symbolize the date of the storm. The second is an enormous metal replica of the rubber wristbands handed out to volunteers, emblazoned with the message “The Miracle of the Human Spirit.” A third one honoring relief workers is planned.
These are the official memorials, the ones visited this month by a collection of men in suits who had gathered for the announcement that a company had donated $25,000 to the park. At the end of that ceremony, a man dressed as Santa emerged to present the assembled politicians, including the governor, with a giant check and to pose for photos. “Ho, ho, ho, merry Christmas, everyone,” he said, “And thank you, Coca-Cola.”
Throughout Joplin, it is hard to miss the signs and sounds of progress. New houses and businesses have emerged on the flattened landscape [ http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/05/27/us/joplin-panoramas.html ]. Plans to replace the destroyed high school and hospital are moving forward. And though many are still struggling, the feared exodus has not begun.
That progress, city leaders have said repeatedly, could not have happened without the assistance of volunteers. Nearly 115,000 volunteers, from every state, have registered with the city since the storm, and perhaps as many simply showed up and started helping.
This was what Tim Bartow, the owner of the house, was responding to when he wrote a message of thanks to the volunteers who lent their hands and backs to the hard, messy work of clearing the rubble. Mr. Bartow, who rode out the storm with his family in the basement, spray painted it in large letters on the side of the home: “You are our heroes.”
Then he cleared space in the house for the storm-damaged furniture, which had been strewn over several blocks, so that volunteers would have a place to rest. After a while, the volunteers started writing messages of their own, offering love from Georgia and prayers from Texas. Now many make a point of stopping here before they leave the community.
Some just signed their names, but the more expansive recited Scripture or offered words of support. The sentiments expressed are hardly unusual, reminding that in moments of tragedy, people seek comfort in the worn truths underlying clichés.
“The human heart, even after this,” reads one message written on the kitchen floor, each letter on a different tile, “remains stronger than this very ground.”
The foundation of the house, in truth, is crumbling, Mr. Bartow said. But he has decided to leave the house up until city leaders decide on the question of preservation.
Patrick Tuttle, director of the Joplin Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the decision would be made soon because cleanup deadlines were looming. “Whether we take part of it or all of it is the question,” he said.
Then, whatever remains will be torn down so the property can be sold as an empty lot.
For now, though, the house stands, oddly resilient to the deconstructive power of the storm and the constructive power of the rebuilding city, speaking to a moment in between that will be harder to explain when it is gone.
Mark Farmer, b. 1955, Rick Fox, b. 1954,Tripp Miller, b. 1961
Some stories, like this one, you hear the general outline and think you pretty much know the story. But when you learn the details, you realize you hadn’t imagined the half of it. Mark Farmer, 56, Rick Fox, 56, and Tripp Miller, 49, lived together in a small group home for the developmentally disabled in Joplin, Mo. Each man had Down syndrome.
Mark Lindquist was one of their caretakers. On Sunday, May 22, he had an evening shift with them. He told the reporter Charles Wilson that he met Mark Farmer while working at a larger group home.
Mark Farmer, he was the reason I actually took the job — to be around him. When he was at the bigger group home, he’d go with me to take Meals on Wheels, and I would take him to like, oh, visit his mother’s grave and things like that. We were just pretty good buddies, and he’s a real good guy.
Ricky was real quiet, but he loved music. He tried to do an Elvis impersonation and a Michael Jackson moonwalk. Tripp was just a sports nut. He loved anything Missouri.
They were good boys. All they wanted to be is normal. And they just wanted to be treated normal and fit into society as normal as they could.
So it was a Sunday. I was at the house. I was cooking supper, actually. It was between 5 and 6, and the tornado siren went off. So I shoved my macaroni and cheese and stuff down on the stove and went back and started herding the guys toward the utility room. We had just had a tornado drill a week before and went over what we had to do. It was protocol to go in the utility room because there were no windows and it was a smaller room.
I actually think I might have fibbed to them a little bit. I didn’t want to scare them and told them it was a tornado drill. Of course, I looked out the window at the sky, and the sky, it looked black, and by the time the second siren went off, you could hear the tornado. I had already dragged one mattress in there, so I went to Ricky’s room and dragged his mattress too, and by the time I got that mattress in, my co-worker, Ryan, had come in. I told Ryan, I said, “Ryan, if you ever prayed, now’s the time.” So I laid across two of the boys, Rick and Mark, and the one mattress pretty much covered them. I stuck my head underneath the mattress where the other two, Ryan and the other boy, were lying. And the sound of the destruction was incredible. I remember the guys kind of yelling. Mark was scared. The others — the others were just kind of in shock, and I don’t think they realized what was going on. And Tripp was calming them down, saying, “You’re all right, Mark Farmer, you’re all right.” I remember the house kind of exploding. I think it must have knocked the roof in and sucked me out of there or something, because I do remember — I mean I don’t remember details — but I do remember flying uncontrollably and being hit by things and thinking I was probably dead.
When they found me, I was two houses south of the group home — impaled on metal and metal sticking clear through me.
They said it looked like “Night of the Living Dead,” because my hair was longer then, and I had bloody limbs sticking up, and I looked like a zombie because I’d lost so much blood. At the hospital they gave me a 2 percent chance to live. You know, 2 out of 100 is not very good.
And that was May 22, and I really did not know anything until the first week of August. I was in a coma pretty much for two and a half months.
The coma was almost like a dream. I haven’t tried to describe it before. I never felt like I was in heaven or hell or anything like that. I was aware of a few things going on around me, but not really. I do remember it was my main thing to get up and know what happened to my boys. I loved them. They were like my family. That’s what I was worried about in the coma the whole time.
When they told me all three of them died, I was devastated, you know? I was devastated that I lived, too. They were such good boys. I’m not a bad boy, but they were such good boys. They went to church, and they always saw the good parts, and I couldn’t understand why I was spared and they weren’t.
My psychiatrist and my head doctor at the hospital thought it might help me to go visit the house. ’Cause I was having a little bit of guilt and trouble dealing with it. I had seen the pictures and the videos on the Internet, but I didn’t realize the total devastation and how helpless I was. The whole neighborhood was just leveled. I kind of realized I did what I could, what I was trained to do. I don’t think I could have prayed any harder. Or covered them up any better. And I don’t want to sound like a Bible thumper, but — I watched over them, and I really feel like they’re watching over me now. I feel like I have three angels watching over me. It’s weird, but I do.
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