Anniversary – Popula
Ten years after one of the deadliest tornadoes in history ripped through his town, an ex-newspaper reporter remembers all that was lost and all that was left.
My concern is, if I begin with the dildos, it’s gonna ruin the rest of it. So at the risk of being accused of burying the lede, I’m not going to start off with how the Joplin Tornado made it rain dildos on Duquesne, Missouri.
Will Norton was probably one of the first casualties of the deadly EF5 tornado that struck Joplin on May 22, 2011. He was in a car with his father on the southwest side of town, near where the funnel must’ve dropped. He’d just received his high school diploma, and he was a “YouTuber” in the days when that was still a fun and innocent thing for teens to do. His body was sucked out of the sunroof of an SUV. They found him three days later in a pond not far from 26th and Schifferdecker Road. My wife’s dad went to high school with Will’s dad. My wife grew up playing at the Norton house.
The next one would be Dorothy Bell, an elderly woman who lived with her son, my friend David, at 27th and Jackson Avenue. Their home is four blocks due west of St. John’s Hospital. The same hospital that the Weather Channel’s Mike Bettes would break down and cry in front of on live TV later. The same hospital where my wife’s mother, my mother, and my wife would all work, separately.
