You can go home (even if it’s not there)

This week’s main North Coast News story (also picked up by the Daily World):

Just about everyone in Ocean Shores came from elsewhere, a “home” that might be 30 miles away, or 3,000. It’s always there, a place to get away, see old friends, visit the old neighborhood.

But what happens when your old neighborhood disappears? When the force of nature wipes it away?

One woman found the answer through a combination of faith and support from family, friends and even strangers. With her former world forever changed, Amanda Reed decided to take a leap of faith and go to her home, or whatever was left of it, and help in any way she could.

On Sunday, May 22, a tornado with winds now estimated at nearly 200 mph ravaged Joplin, Mo.

According to a news report, “Nearly 30 percent of Joplin was damaged. The tornado ripped a six-mile long and half-mile wide swath through the middle of town. Fire Chief John Randles says the city of 50,500 people has been ‘cut in half.’”

The next day, pastor Jim Shiner of Faith Community Church in Ocean Shores, said to assistant pastor Dennis Reed: “Go.”

This wasn’t just a church helping a community in need halfway across the country; this was very personal.

Amanda Reed, Dennis’ wife, was “born and raised in Joplin.” She was class president of Joplin High, in 1994, and has many friends and family living there.

She had been anxiously following the post-tornado news after returning from church that Sunday night. “When I got home I was glued to the computer,” she said. “My husband had to make me go to bed that night. The next day, which was Monday, Dennis went to work. Our pastor Jim gave us two weeks off to do what we needed to do. I feel like it was a gift to me . . .”

Once the word got out that Amanda and Dennis were headed to tornado ground zero, friends started bringing items to be donated to Joplin.

“The next thing I know, the town had accrued a U-haul trailer full of car seats, food, clothing, water, toiletries, dog and cat food.”

Some just gave the Reeds money, telling them to put it to good use.

The Reeds, with son Aaron (fifth grade at Ocean Shores Elementary School) and daughter Milly (third grade), headed east on Tuesday morning, stopping in Idaho where another church added more items to be donated. After staying over Tuesday night in Boise, they left Wednesday morning, arriving on Thursday in Amanda’s home town, now so changed, so ripped apart.

Was she prepared for what she would see?

“We’ve been a lot of places, we’ve been in real poor places and poverty stricken places, but I’ve never seen such disaster. Houses and buildings and yards and schools, I’ve never seen . . .” Amanda had to pause here, choking with emotion.

She was talking by phone from her grandparents’ house, just across the street (literally) from the destruction zone. “Somehow, the storm missed them. Right across 32nd Street, really and truly, if I could ever imagine what a war zone looks like, that’s it. Emergency vehicles going around constantly, helicopters flying by, houses in rubble, tree stumps poking up out of the ground,” Amanda Reed said.

“Miraculously . . . my friends and family are all safe and unharmed with the exception of home damage.”

How is Amanda’s old neighborhood?

“It’s gone,” she says. “The elementary school I went to 4th grade in is one of two elementary schools destroyed. The high school is half gone . . .

“The neighborhood I grew up in, it’s just unlivable. They’ll come in with bulldozers and flatten everything down – an area six miles long and one mile wide. It’s just never going to be the same.

“And some of these things are historic places. Like one of my favorite places, Dude’s Doughnuts, that’s been there forever, it’s just gone.”

Sizing up the destruction, she thinks back to what it must have been like, when that monster tornado touched down. “You just can’t imagine what these people must have been thinking,” she says, her voice cracking with tears.

Though she left Joplin after graduating from high school in 1994, moving first to Kansas City for college and then out even farther away, after meeting and falling in love with Dennis (then living in Aberdeen), Amanda has been back to her Missouri hometown often, for family visits. She and Dennis and the kids even lived in Joplin for six months, when a family member fell ill.

Joplin was altered forever in a few minutes, but Amanda Reed proudly says her home town’s spirit has not been crushed. “Something you keep hearing here is how much people are helping each other out. Going to neighborhoods and helping with people’s houses, and getting stuff out of the street . . . I’m amazed at how people aren’t sitting around waiting for people to come, they’re taking care of things.”

Her heart aches for those people, trying to regroup and make sense of their suddenly new lives. “It’ll never be the same. Even moreso for people like my grandma. She’s been here her whole life. It’s just been really hard for her,” Amanda Reed says, again having to pause as emotion shakes her.

“I’ve been getting so much sympathy from my friends in Ocean Shores, but I feel guilty. I wasn’t here, I didn’t experience the horror these people did.”

The mission to deliver help is now accomplished, as the Reeds dropped off the donated goods from Ocean Shores. They were helping with the clean up, and still deciding how to distribute the money that was given to them.

The way people in her current home jumped to help those in need at her former home has become a sparkling light, in Amanda Reed’s mind.

“I’m really grateful and touched, and I’m challenged to be more generous because of the love Ocean Shores has sent us. It’s almost as overwhelming,” she says, looking out at the destruction, “as seeing this.”

You can’t go home again, wrote Thomas Wolfe, in his 1940 book.

Yes you can, counters the Amanda Reed journey of faith. Even if it’s not there, it’s still there.

For information on how to help the Reeds help Joplin, see facebook.com/dennismreed.

The Reeds encourage donations to Christ’s Church of Joplin, 5200 E 32nd ST, Joplin, MO 64804