Tornado Devasta
Ann Arbor volunteer
joins the Red Cross
to assist in Missouri.
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Lonnie Sussman
Special to the Jewish News
Ann Arbor
T
he Red Cross responds to many
national disasters every year. Of
course, people know about the
"big" ones — Katrina, Haiti and now
Joplin. There are also other disasters; in
fact, the Joplin tornado was No. 47 of this
fiscal year, and 29 states have declared
national disasters. The American Red
Cross is always there.
I left on May 27 as a Red Cross disaster
mental health worker, one of about 50
to 60 volunteers from Washtenaw and
Lenawee counties who responded to the
floods on the Mississippi River and else-
where as well as Joplin.
The first thing that struck me was
the amount of destruction in the city.
Everyone has seen the pictures and heard
about it, but seeing it firsthand was shock-
ing. We all know what a major street with
strip malls and neighborhoods border-
ing it looks like, and that was the area
destroyed by this tornado from hell.
Over the next 11 days, I met citizens
of Joplin and Neosho and Carthage, Mo.,
and heard dozens of stories of survival.
That was the second strong impression I
took from this experience — the stories of
survival.
So many people shared how they man-
aged the moments of terror. Some were
in basements, some in closets and some
in bathtubs. One family told me how
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they were headed to the bathtub when
the house fell in on them, causing some
broken bones and many bruises and cuts.
They never found the bathtub. Two teen-
age brothers told me they were in a pickup
truck and trees and debris and metal were
flying all around them. They were cut and
bruised, but somehow survived. Another
woman told me she was in her closet try-
ing to close the door. When it was over,
everything was blown apart but her cane
was standing outside the closet door.
The miracle of Joplin was that so many
people survived. When one sees the flat-
tened landscape, it seems impossible that
anyone survived.
I really want to express my gratitude
to the good people of Joplin who dem-
onstrated how a community can come
together in a disaster to help one another
and help each other. There are hundreds
of churches in the area and they fed and
sheltered people, collected clothes and
goods and provided spiritual support
to one another. While the citizens were
thanking the Red Cross volunteers for
coming to help, we were thanking them for
their inspiration and determination.
Jewish Joplin
There is a small Jewish community in
Joplin and, on Friday night, I attended ser-
vices at the United Hebrew Congregation,
along with two other Jewish volunteers.
One was a mental health counselor from
Seattle; the other was a rabbi serving on
this deployment as a chaplain. We thanked
the congregation for welcoming us at a
American
Red Cross
Volunteer mental health worker Lonnie Sussman of Ann Arbor helped in Joplin.
small oneg Shabbat, and listened to their
stories of the storm.
We all felt the need for spiritual suste-
nance in the midst of so much religious
expression of other religions. The three
of us also studied for a while for a Tikkun
Leil Shavuot (late-night study session).
The irony was we were staying in a staff
shelter housed at the Calvary Baptist
Church of Neosho. Three Jews studying
Torah in a church. I brought a small siddur
with me to daven Shacharit and Maariv
and Tehillim (Psalms) when I could. There
were quotes from Tehillim on the walls of
the church, and I would read them and
then go back to my cot to re-read them in
Hebrew. It seemed that we were all hoping
and praying for a similar world of peace
where no one would be afraid.
My last night of this deployment
was spent in the Vietnamese Catholic
Monastery of Carthage. There I davened
Minchah in the yard of the monastery and
continued to reflect on the universality of
peoples' desire to understand tragedy and
cope with uncertainty, while still working
hard to help one another. I 1
Lonnie Sussman is a retired school social work-
er who lives in Ann Arbor. Contributions can
be sent to the American Red Cross by visiting
www.redcross.org or calling 1-800-RED-CROSS.
June 30 2011
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