Last spring, while I was talking to Donna Sue Smithhisler about how she was doing in the years since a massive tornado obliterated her dream home in rural Harper County, she confessed something to me.
She can’t write “May 12″ on a check without adding “2004″ to it.
That’s the day the tornado struck, moving so slowly over the Smithhisler homestead that it seemed to stop and churn in place on top of the house while Donna Sue and her husband, Dan, cowered in the basement. They were battered and bruised by debris, but managed to crawl out alive.
Ever since then, she said, “May 12 does mean that date,” and nothing else.
Ask any longtime resident of Udall what May 25 means to them, and they’ll instantly flash back to the tornado that wiped out the town on that night in 1955.
I’ve heard Oklahoma City residents refer to the monstrous tornado that struck in 1999 as, simply, “May 3rd.”
Say “April 26″ to any local meteorologist, and chances are pretty good they’ll flash back to the tornado that hit Haysville, Wichita and Andover on that date in 1991. Ironically, if you say that to a resident of Andover, chances are you’ll get a blank look.
So many new people have moved to that Wichita suburb in the last 15 years, city officials have told me, that “April 26″ doesn’t hold special significance for them. The same is true for many of Udall’s current residents.
In some ways, that’s good. It helps a community heal and move forward. But it’s a mistake to discard the past. When that happens, people fail to properly acknowledge the loss, the suffering, the changes such events bring.
Just as importantly, they can lose sight of the spirit, strength and courage it took to recover. After all, those are the qualities that ultimately define a community, moreso than a few historic buildings or the disaster that engraves itself in the collective memory.