Gone are so many homes and lives of our cherished neighbors. Every house on Oak Heights, the street the Jennings family grew up on, has been wiped away. Largely destroyed is the city park where we both spent so many nights on Little League and softball fields.
The damage cannot be understood unless you see it in person. Walking around town in the aftermath, it did not even feel like a weather event occurred. It felt like a bomb went off. Houses, trees — everything had seemingly just exploded.
Tornadoes rip open windows into peoples’ lives, laying them bare for the world to see. You see clothes, dishes, toys and medicine bottles, and you wonder if the people who lost them have the resources to replace them. Intellectually, you know you are standing in what used to be someone’s driveway or front yard, but the landscape looks so different that your mind questions whether you are really in the same place.
You look at swaths of land that are now covered in debris, and your mind drifts to green grass, tall trees and the kids who once played ball there. Dogs running around. Neighbors mowing yards. Flowers blooming. You open and close your eyes hoping that perhaps this isn’t real — and that a blink can restore the past.
But it doesn’t. And you ask yourself — will this landscape ever look the same again? Will it ever again provide the sort of life we once enjoyed?
Dawson Springs’ very existence is in question as people who have lost everything now must decide where to go from here.
We wanted to share some of our thoughts about Dawson Springs, and to express the town’s gratitude for the attention and outpouring of support it has received. The politicians who represent it — from the President down to the governor and local officials — have been working in great cooperation. Major media outlets have portrayed the plight of the town lovingly and accurately, helping raise money and supplies to ease suffering.
We’ve both heard from people around the world who want to help, and on behalf of proud Dawsonians everywhere, we offer our sincerest appreciation for the outreach.
The next steps for Dawson Springs, Mayfield and several other small communities in the affected areas will revolve around housing. What kind of life can be put together in the short-, mid- and long-term for people who lost everything? For Dawson Springs, a town with a small tax base to begin with, what are the long term prospects if many residents drift away, choosing to restart their lives elsewhere? What of the people who lived hand-to-mouth to begin with? Who lacked insurance? Whose small business or job was wiped away?
Some of these answers aren’t immediately obvious. But for those of us whose character and values were shaped by this middle American town and her people, we hope that interest in what happens here continues beyond just the days and weeks’ worth of coverage that often accompany such disasters.
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