Today’s post is from Soles4Souls’ CEO, Buddy Teaster:
This past Saturday, Soles4Souls partnered with Academy Sport + Outdoors and Feed The Children to distribute shoes, clothes and household items to about 750 people who are still recovering from the massive F5 tornado that devastated the town of Moore, OK and killed 24 people. As my family and I drove up from Dallas, we saw only a sliver of the destruction where the storm crossed I-35. It was like someone took an eraser for that ¼ mile strip. It’s just bare – the foundations of a few houses, trees that are little more than stumps and some commercial buildings that are barely standing. One person at Saturday’s event said that the wind was so strong, it actually drove boards into the asphalt of the highway, leaving them standing straight up. It’s easy to say, “that’s hard to imagine” and to be honest, the power of that tornado is impossible for me to comprehend.
But I could easily see how this community is pulling itself together. While many people who came through on Saturday had lost everything, I saw more determination than resignation and more hope than hopelessness. And especially more gratitude that, even though it’s only been a month, they had not been forgotten. With shopping carts that held shoes from Havianas, BOBS by Skechers, Bravo Boots, clothes from Academy Sports and household items from Feed The Children, I saw plenty of smiles from the oldest to the youngest. At one point, thanks to the DJ arranged by Feed The Children, there was even an impromptu dance or two! It was telling to me that the cosmetology students who were going to come and do face painting and offer free haircuts canceled because they had a chance to help with a fundraising event for one of the schools destroyed in the tornado. All of Oklahoma City seemed to be involved in helping to rebuild.
However, the real impact of this tornado was revealed in the specific stories, not generalities. Like the woman who, after putting two bags of diapers in her cart, just hugged my wife and started crying. Two mothers connecting at the most basic level. The story of the bride-to-be be who had her wedding shower the Saturday before the storm hit on Monday…she too lost everything. Of course, tornados don’t pay much attention to income brackets and the well-dressed couple, whose lives had been just as flattened, were as grateful to have shoes as anyone else there.
Even as we were driving back to Dallas and stopped by a local Starbucks, we were reminded that it’s hard to know who was affected. The barista saw our Soles4Souls shirts and asked about what we did. She didn’t know about the event just three miles away but she wouldn’t have been able to attend anyway. Though her house had been destroyed and she was starting over, she was at work. Rebuilding her life one day at a time.