What has Joplin meant to me?
I find it difficult to find words that describe what I’ve seen this past week in Joplin, MO. For one, the devastation that this town suffered is absolute and merciless. This tornado has taken an entire section of this mid-sized America city and turned it into a memory. The images seen while driving through town are breathtaking; photos and videos cannot begin to convey the magnitude.
It has been hard, driving through the city, because as I drive I see my own hometown. Rangeline Road is my 53rd St; St. Mary’s Catholic my Our Savior Lutheran; Joplin High School my PV High, and so when I drive it becomes very personal and close to home. I look out and I don’t know how anyone survived–but then I hear the stories, the stories of fathers covering their families in the bathtubs, of children helping dig out their parents. I’m amazed at the power of the human spirit, at the kindness neighbors show one another, and strangers from across the country bestow upon an unknown town.
Joplin has made me appreciate everything in my own life that much more; which is weird to say after two wars, Haiti, Chile, and Tuscaloosa. I can’t really describe why; perhaps its the eerie similarity between towns, or perhaps its the absolutely visceral stories I’ve heard every day. Maybe it’s simpler, maybe it’s just that I’m alive, with a roof over my head, and food in my stomach. Or perhaps, just perhaps, it’s because I got to help these people get through the worst week of their entire lives, and do it alongside men and women who were with me during the worst points of mine.
Jake Wood
President, Team Rubicon
Jake, your parents have to be so darn proud of you! You are one amazing young man, and to think this all started because you felt the need to go to Haiti and sent out a call to friends and acquaintances…..and it grew and grew, until now, you’re an organization with national recognition and a Board of Advisors and a Board of Directors with outstanding credentials…not to mention the volunteers who heed the call to help their fellow man. Yes, indeed…just amazing!!!