Joplin remembers victims of tornado

Associated Press

JOPLIN, Mo.

Carrying small American flags and wearing T-shirts bearing the names of friends and loved ones who died when a massive tornado tore through Joplin one year ago, thousands of people made a somber march Tuesday through some of the town’s hardest-hit neighborhoods.

Residents and officials are dedicated to remembering their losses but also are committed to what is certain to be a long, slow recovery from a tornado that killed 161 people and injured hundreds of others. The storm last May wiped away entire neighborhoods in the city of 50,000, destroyed Joplin’s only public high school and left behind a ghastly moonscape of block after block of foundations wiped clean of their structures.

“It’s been a roller-coaster type year. Extremely high highs and lots of low lows,” said Debbie Fort, the principal of Erving Elementary School, which has been operating out of temporary facilities.

“It’s important that we take a moment to reflect and remember,” she said. “But it’s a new chapter in our lives. This really signifies our future, the future of Joplin.”

Signs of the challenges ahead were plentiful on the four-mile “Walk of Unity,” from the glaring absence of century-old trees in the city’s central neighborhoods to the ghostly shell of St. John’s Regional Medical Center, which formed a stark backdrop at a memorial service marked by a moment of silence at 5:41 p.m. — the exact time the tornado hit.