...my 2011 'Mind of Moondog' online sketch blog got put on hold when the May 22nd, 2011, EF-5 Tornado hit my home town of Joplin. I was a week behind posting at the time, but planned to catch up after a MO-TF 1 USAR deployment exercise that weekend...
Well, a year has now passed since the tornado, and I have been pretty overwhelmed dealing with everything that has occurred from that day....
Before attempting to give the whole story, here is a summary: ...1/3 of my childhood home of Joplin, MO was turned into matchsticks...161 people in my hometown were (officially) killed by the tornado, the house I grew up in lost its roof...my parents were displaced....and four weeks after the event, my father experienced an acute respiratory illness of undetermined cause that put him on a ventilator for 7 weeks...which he never came off...until he passed away on August 16th, 2011...
Shortly after the event, I deployed with Missouri Task Force 1 the evening of May 22nd. I got the activation call while in the checkout at Wal-Mart after draining my checking account loading up with jugs of water, flashlights, batteries, work gloves, and whatever I could quickly grab after I got Mom's voicemail: "Son, please call....the house just got hit by a tornado...the roof's gone..." The surreal message seemed particularly odd that same afternoon that I returned from a weekend-long FEMA exercise with a round-trip C-130 flight simulating a national emergency. It was by far the strangest voicemail I have ever received...and I didn't know how bad it would be, but I knew I was going there as fast as I could make it out. I still had cell phone contact with Mom and Dad after the MO-TF1 activation call, and my folks urged me to come down with the USAR team....since they were essentially okay, and I "would be able to help more people" if I came with the team.
Needless to say, after checking in at Boone County Fire Protection District headquarters, I couldn't get down there fast enough.... and the mobilization time seemed like an eternity, despite everybody's best efforts to rapidly get checked in, get equipment loaded, and make the drive down there as rapidly as safely possible.
Much of the time after arrival with boots on the ground at 3am seems like a blur, but I have a lot of images and emotions that come back to me from my experience during that first 36 hours....I'll save those for another blog entry....
After three days of search and rescue of my home town, the Team was going back to Columbia, and I was allowed to demobilize on site to attend to my parents...where I remained by their side until work and family obligations back in Columbia forced me to return and leave my folks....
I returned to Joplin two weeks later upon news that Dad had been admitted to Freeman Hospital, and I spent the most difficult summer of my life by Mom and Dad's side....first in the ICU at Freeman....then at Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis....until the morning he passed away.
I drew a cartoon for Dad every 24 hours that he survived on a ventilator. Originally, I just borrowed a sharpie and a few highlighters from the Freeman ICU nurses station....and drew a quick scribble of Dad as Superman...which to me was never far from the truth. The paper I drew on was a blank sheet of paper on a clipboard I had offered to Dad on what would be his last fully conscious day so that he could write down anything he wanted to communicate to us while he remained awake. His respiratory status was rapidly deteriorating. The various respiratory assistance devices that they used to keep Dad oxygenated made it increasingly difficult for Dad to speak, and I knew that there was a lot that he wanted to say....or would have wanted to say. He didn't have time to get sick, there was too much to do rebuilding the house that he worked his entire life to retire and live in, assisting the town that he loved, and taking care of Mom. His last written words were on the paper you see above...."Ray #57 424-7318".....my phone number...apparently as a way to direct any questions anybody would have to me. As oxygen deprivation and the obviously uncomfortable Bi-Pap Oxygen mask were making it increasingly difficult for him to communicate, it isn't surprising to me that he would have left a number out, but Dad did his best to make it seem like he was fine, and that we didn't have to worry about a thing.
He remained all but cheerful as they wheeled him quickly down the hallway to the ICU on June 27...a room full of us following behind as best we could. At least his last few waking hours before the vent were surrounded by people he loved...several of them children playing in the hospital room around him...Mom, me, Cindy, my two beautiful little girls, our kind neighbors Laremy and Phaedra LaFarge, their three wonderful little girls, and Phaedra's dear mom Gayle.
Unfortunately, we were notified that Dad was being placed on the vent when we were outside of the ICU. Per Freeman ICU policy, we were told we needed to wait outside until Dad got settled in the new intensive care room. Mom and I still regret not being able to say 'goodbye' to him before they knocked him down to be intubated. To Dad's credit, we were told that he was "like a tank", requiring the maximum allowable dose of sedation to knock him out. Mom and I believe this was in large part because there was a lot more that he wanted to say before being rendered unconscious, and because there was just simply so much left that he felt he had to do for us...for the house....and for Joplin his hometown...
I guess you could say that Dad had us all fooled. He had been such a strong man, hard worker, and to me superhuman example of character, will, and pure Joplin Missouri mule stubbornness, that, even as he was being wheeled down the hallway into the I.C.U. it was difficult to imagine that he was truly in danger of life-threatening illness. He was a force of nature. At age 15, Dad started working full-time to support the family when his father died of black lung disease after ten years working as a miner. He really had never stopped working hard since. At age 18, he decided he was going to remain 18 indefinitely...and pretty much succeeded. He worked his way through college at MIZZOU, and got good enough grades to be commissioned as a naval officer despite almost never having time to sleep. At 55 he had a heart mitral valve prolapse, and an acute reaction to anti-coagulate medication which put him in one of the last stages toward death, Dissemiminated Intravascular Coagulation (DIC). On the 49th day, he miraculously jumped out of bed in a half-sedated state and began to stroll out of the St. John's Hospital ICU, with i.v.'s still attached and all....this was no ordinary man.
Twenty years had passed since then, and I have been grateful for every one of them with Dad, who was 75 the day the tornado hit. To me, ever since Dad walked out of St. John's due to an iron will, and apparent Act of God, hospitals have been sacred to me. I treat them like churches, and never wear a hat in them, unless I am working an ambulance shift, and consider my ball cap a part of the uniform. St. John's was to me Holy Ground....so it was particularly jarring to see it on CNN with all the upper windows gone right after having sustained a direct tornado hit. And since I knew my house was exactly one mile West of the hospital, I knew that at LEAST a mile worth of Joplin had been hit....little did I know that the destruction had been far worse than I could have imagined.
In the hours following the tornado, I tried to save what cell phone battery I had after first determining that Mom and Dad believed hey were relatively okay, and after calling several friends to cover fire department and ambulance shifts over the upcoming week or so. The last contact I had with them was before checking in with Missouri Task Force 1. By the following morning, their cell phone batteries were dead, and so was mine, tucked away in a plastic bag in my gear to protect it from the elements during our nearly 36-hour primary and secondary search process on the complete other side of town from my house. Once I got a more complete picture of the devastation, it was maddening that I had no way to contact them. Technology in our modern age is amazing, but not as amazing as the ability of a disaster to tear away communication ability and other things we normally take for granted. I fought to mentally keep focused on my job.
MO-TF 1 settled down at the Missouri Southern college dorms on the evening of Monday May 23rd. Two Joplin residents are members of the Task Force, and we were given permission to depart from the team to visist family in town. Allen and Alicia Brown were going to visit their house in a part of town that was lucky enough not to be hit, and they gladly took me out to try to see my folks. I expected that the side of town I grew up on could not possibly have been hit as hard as the part of town we had been searching....but found that the difference seemed negligible as I got nearer my childhood home. My side of town was decimated too....like the tornado path was seemed to be aimed directly toward my house.
Our FEMA id badges and uniforms got us through several security checkpoints, and we arrived at my address at 2725 Shifferdecker. Two vehicles were in the accessible part of the driveway not buried by trees. Several people in military utility uniforms with flashlights were there, and we questioned one another. They were in a search party that had been looking for a "soldier" reported to have been pulled out of a Hummer vehicle in that area. I would later learn that person was Will Norton, whose family lived across the street and attended my church. They stated that all of the houses there had been cleared, which suggested to me that Mom and Dad must safely be in a shelter of some kind. The military folks took off, and Alicia and Allen left me to go up to the empty house and assess the damage for myself. There was complete silence around me as I climbed over and around several trees to approached the front porch. To my surprise, I saw a little flash light come on, and a stern voice, "May I help you?" rang out. It was Dad! With a boonie hat, and a shotgun on the front porch! "Dad!"...."Ray?!!" I had one of the most welcome reunions of my life with Dad there on that porch. Dad explained to me that a search team from Oklahoma had come by earlier that day, and transported Mom to Freeman Hospital for respiratory distress, but allowed Dad to remain and shelter in place in the house. There my father remained at his post, with no comfortable place to sleep, and a bucket of some type under every lighting fixture in the house that were all leaking down water after the downpour that had occurred earlier that day. Dad reminded me vaguely of Mickey Mouse in the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" as he grabbed a full bucket in each hand to empty outside in an attempt to minimize water damage. He asked if I could give him a hand, and I was amazed at how heavy the buckets were when I thought of Dad carrying them out all day and night. I strongly urged Dad to leave with us, and get some rest, to which he strongly objected, stating he was fine, and urged me to get back to the where I could get rest myself. That was Dad. Never concerned about himself. I figured I had little choice in the matter, and that insisting otherwise would threaten his spirit, which I knew to be formidable. I left him there that night with his light blue lamp and a roofless house full of continually filling buckets...and rested up for another day with the Task Force. Dad remained at his post for night #2.
When I got cut loose, at the end of the operational day on May 24th, I came back to the house with Alicia Brown, determined that I would not be giving Dad a choice. He was going to be leaving the house whether he wanted to or not. When we arrived, he was exhausted enough that he came along willingly, which I was very relieved to hear. The Browns welcomed us to shelter in their home, and we determined that Mom was safely lodged with our family friend Gayle after being released from Freeman. Dad tried to refuse, but the Browns insisted that Dad sleep in their own bed, and he finally got some much-belated rest.
The next several weeks were a blur of returning to the house with Mom and Dad, phone calls and visits from insurance people, restoration folks, contractors, and a myriad of other people. It was a full-time job trying to look after Mom and Dad, both of whom were repeatedly entering the house, trying to gather and salvage valuables, and remain on site despite the summer heat. It also seemed like they were pretty overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information thrown at them, and at it often seemed like my presence was a big help at pivotal times. I stayed as long as I could, and in fact even longer than I could when I was written up as "AWOL"--a cardinal sin for a firefighter, after a miscommunication over a shift that I mistakenly thought I had covered back in Columbia. Dad seemed pretty exhausted, and at times seemed to have difficulty catching his breath, but always insisted that he was fine. Looking back, the pulmonary injury that would take his life must have happened and worsened some time between May 22nd and June 22nd. But in day to day contact, Dad had us all fooled, he seemed to be fine overall. I didn't feel I had much choice but to return to my obligations in Columbia, but I can't help but ask myself if things would have turned out different if I had remained with Mom and Dad. That question will haunt me as long as I draw breath...
There is a lot unresolved for me since the tornado. Seeing my hometown hit was a devastating blow, but my pride in Joplin soared as I saw the spirit and good will of the citizens of Joplin and the entire world come together to rebuild at an amazing pace. Nevertheless, I am still not over losing Dad....and that seven weeks by his bedside with Mom were by far the most difficult experience I have ever had. I continued to draw cartoons for Dad during his 49 and a half days on the vent....and pretty soon they covered the wall in front of his hospital bed. I've been told that they did a lot to help the hospital staff get to know my father, and that the drawings have even positively influenced how Barnes Jewish Hospital interacts with ICU patients and their families. For me, they were a way to connect with Dad, celebrate his life and let him know that we were there by his side for the duration. I didn't think of it at the time, but they served as a unique form of therapy to me during the most difficult time I have ever experienced. In the months following Dad's passing, I found it almost impossible to draw anything. As the tornado anniversary has returned, I've forced myself to pull out a sketchbook again, and I am resolving here and now to continue the sketch blog I started before the tornado hit.
The drawings have been next to my locker at my fire station since I returned to Columbia last August, and I felt like I should do something with them. What I didn't know. For months, I didn't bother to so much as look at them unless somebody asked. A few journalists have inquired about them. A St. Louis Post Dispatch article told the story of the drawings, and an LA Times article told the story of our house in Joplin, and how we are struggling to keep it from being bulldozed, partially as a tribute to Dad and his wishes.
After thinking about it, I would like to invite the world to see these drawings, and bear witness to just a small part of my vast admiration for my father, and all the wonderful things about him that I strive to emulate. I want to share his story with the world, because I believe that his existence made the world a better place, and I want his qualities to live on and be celebrated. But in the end, reliving each of these drawings day by day is a form of my own therapy and "rebuilding."
So here goes....hitting the "publish" button....
Mom and Dad before I came along...
Dad's wall at Barnes...
Dad's Wall at Barnes...
Mom and I Are Attempting to Save the House As a Tribute to Dad....
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