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A promise to rebuildStanding in front of what used to be her home, a woman tells me, "We were so lucky." How can she think she was lucky, I wonder? But I soon know. She and her family lived through the Greensburg tornado. She has a few of her belongings--a couple of chairs, a trunk, some pictures, a golf ball. When the tornado hit, she, her husband and son were in the basement. When it was over, they crawled out and in the darkness they saw destruction. By the time I arrived, two days later, the roads had been cleared to allow people back in to get to their shattered community. That woman feels lucky, I realize, because all of her family has survived. Many of her friends and neighbors cannot say the same. As I drive down the road, a man recognizes the High Plains Journal car and flags me down. He's a farmer from northwest Kansas and knows people who work for the company. I ask if he's helping a family member. "Yes. My mother. She didn't make it." He tells of how neighbors found her in her home, made a make-shift stretcher out of a door and carried her halfway across town to where they could get her medical help. I see a woman in the passenger's seat of a pickup with her hand over her gaping mouth and tears flowing down her cheeks as she rides down a no-longer familiar street. As I step through the destruction, I see a car thrown through the roof of a motel. A splintered two by four pierced a combine tire. Beams from a building somewhere far away driven through the cab of a tractor. Grain carts and combines were up-side-down--thrown about as if they were farm toys. There are dead animals laying among the rubble. Their fur is matted and muddy. A dead horse lies in the middle of town where no large animal lived. The wind had carried her there and lain her down on a pile of branches. And the trees. . . The trees are haunting. They are trunks and a few branches sharpened by the ripping of the wind. There are no leaves. They show no signs of life. I see families and friends gathering on pickup beds for a bologna and cheese sandwich. Someone brought bottled water and a bag of chips. Some take the time to stop for a break. Others eat the sandwich with a dirty gloved hand while they pick through the trash with the other. A woman and her grandson are grinning from ear-to-ear. "Did you hear us?" she asks as I walk by. "I'm so excited! We found something important. It is the only thing we have found." I congratulate her and she tells me she really didn't expect to find anything. Her house is literally gone. A slab of concrete and a couple of steps are as clean as they were the day the house was built. "I really just came back to visit this place. I didn't expect to find anything," she says. As I close my eyes I think about the town of Greensburg as it looked. It is still in my mind. I can see it. But as I open my eyes, that town vanishes. The land I see before me is no town. It is streets and broken wood and crumpled tin. It is piles of bricks and collapsed cars and soggy insulation. Pictures and words are not enough. There is no way to convey that there is nothing but a pile of rubble where a thriving rural town used to be. It is simply no longer there. Pictures and words can not show what remains--the spirit of Greensburg. They will rebuild, they tell me. It isn't a question. It's a fact. Holly Martin can be reached by phone at 1-800-452-7171 ext. 1806 or e-mail at hmartin@hpj.com. B 4 5/14/07 6 Star Midwest Ag Date: 5/9/07
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