A year ago today Joplin Missouri was literally torn in half by a tornado. Our family had just found out we were to report to Columbia Missouri late June, a state we knew nothing about.
Sierra and I went to the Military ID card office at Ft. Benning to make sure we were up to date since we wouldn't be on an installation in Missouri and in the waiting room on a HUGE screen we saw photos of a ripped apart city. Having no knowledge of the state it could have been the town neighboring where we were on our way to. Watching footage of the devastation was enough to put the whole waiting room in Georgia in a trance. I kept saying 'we just got orders to Missouri' and Sierra was saying 'Oh my gosh' as if we were in conversation but knowing we were both talking to ourselves.
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| Mario Tama, Staff / 2011 Getty Images |
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| Photo: Charlie Riedel, STF / AP May 23, 2011 |
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| Photo: Charlie Riedel, STF / AP Tuesday, May 8, 2012 |
Joplin, a city I have still never been to with name I will probably never forget, is still rebuilding a year later. Prayers to its residents who lost 161 people that day and had a reported 1,300 missing after the EF5 multiple-vortex tornado.
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