Les Anderson is a professor in the Elliott School of Communication at Wichita State University. This is his second year of bringing journalism students to Greensburg to tell the story of its rebirth.
Bill Johnson on the front porch of the house he’s remodeling in Haviland.
Bill Johnson admits he’s pretty much of an anomaly. He’s a loner, but he loves being around people, especially when he can lend a hand. He’s been doing plenty of that in recent months.
We interviewed Bill on Mulberry Street in Haviland, where he is remodeling a rental house. It might be rented to someone displaced by last May’s tornado in nearby Greensburg. The owner has been trying to get Bill to move into the house when it’s done. No doubt he and other people in Haviland would like to keep him around town. He’s truly a handyman.
A retired elementary teacher whose teaching career included a lengthy stint in El Dorado, Bill has been staying at the Haviland United Methodist Church while he’s been helping with construction and remodeling in the Greensburg-Haviland area.
His permanent home, if you can call it that, in is Kimberling City, Mo., not far from Branson. He pays a former fellow teacher $10 a day to stay there – when he’s back that way. If he had to, he adds, he could live in his pickup. He’s slept in it plenty of times.
Bill is volunteering to help refurbish the old white house. He came to Greensburg right after the tornado. And, except for a few other stints with a mission team from Calvary United Methodist Church in Wichita, he’s stayed in Kiowa County to help with rebuilding and remodeling.
My wife Nancy, who accompanied us this week on our class trip to Greensburg, started working with Bill today. She’s stripping wallpaper off the old plaster walls. She joked with one of the students at lunch that she was spending the day working in a strip joint.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Jaq // May 29, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Your blog is nice, but it is interesting to me that a group of journalists in a town of 700 or 800 people (supposedly) can’t find one negative comment about how federal and state authorities are imposing their bureaucratic will to make Greensburg into a place that does not remotely resemble the place that townspeople wanted back.
It looks to me like you journalists mainly want to feel good and aren’t looking for (or perhaps interested in) anything that hasn’t already been said before.
I doubt that the pre-tornado residents of Greensburg wanted the government and the environmental wackos to come to their town and turn it into an incubator for every kind of recycling, windmill and enviro do-gooder experiment ever conceived.
I feel sorry for the townspeople. They had a beautiful town that was reduced to rubble. Now they have the government and a bunch of big-city idea people telling them what to do and selling them elixirs.
2 Jeff // May 29, 2008 at 10:36 pm
I disagree completely with the previous post by Jaq, and think positive journalism is one the best things that can help the people of Greensburg.
Getting the word out that there is an alternative to living in the same old paradigm of an oil dependent society is only going to help others.
Good luck to all of the people of Kiowa County and Les and the crew in all their efforts.
3 George // May 31, 2008 at 5:12 pm
First off, the story about Mr. Johnson is a great story. It helps to remind us that there are truly good people out there. That is one of the big positives from this whole tornado thing. There have been those, both individually and in groups, that have literally shone like a light in the darkness. As far as any negative comments about G’burg, apparently if that is what these folks are looking for they have been talking to the wrong people. I personally know quite a few very unhappy and very disappointed G’burg residents. Both those that have stayed and those who moved on. Unless you have been here and been involved, there is no way that you can imagine the anger and frustration that some folks are feeling now, more than a year after the big wind. A person could go on and on about G’burg, both good and bad, but it still does not detract from the fact that Mr. Johnson is doing good things for folks that need the help.
4 Jaq // Jun 2, 2008 at 11:15 am
My goal wasn’t to detract from the good things that are going on. It’s just that we should expect more from a group of people who call themselves journalists.
My hometown is Pratt. I have been to G’burg many times over the years. I have always made a point to stop in Greensburg on my travels to Western Kansas and beyond. There was not a more beautiful small town in the state — and not just because of the trees and the natural, quiet beauty of the setting, but because of the pe0ple. The people of Greensburg were (and are) as friendly and common-sense-practical as anyone could ever know. These, however, were not people obsessed with liberal green philosophies. I just find it interesting that not a single “journalist” has picked up on that. Of course, that would require digging. (Journalism, anyone?) The people of Greensburg are not natural complainers.
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