Tornado Strikes Moore Oklahoma

This week’s tornadoes in Moore brought back some extremely vivid and troubling memories from two days short of two years ago when tornados decimated one third of the Joplin community. At the time I was running a business in the Joplin area and several of our team members were impacted personally with the loss of almost everything they owned. Fortunately, none of our team members had any family killed or seriously injured.

Once again in Moore, we witness the worst that Mother Nature can deliver. Within minutes of the tragedy, reports of the heroism began filling the airwaves. The worst of Mother Nature begets the best of human nature.

I have watched over the past two years as my friends in Joplin have mourned their losses, restored their lives and rebuilt their community. It has been an amazingly inspirational sojourn for me.

Our factory suffered a glancing blow from the Joplin tornado, but the amazing men and women who work there had secured the building within three hours of the tornado strike and had transformed the plant back to its original state and were again operating within 48 hours of power being restored. It was an amazing feat flawlessly executed by a dedicated team using flashlights, in many cases, as their source of power.

Even during tragedies such as these I remain confident that Lou Holtz’s advice remains relevant. “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% what you do about it”. In Joplin, I personally witnessed an amazing coming together of talent, passion, and purpose to create a stronger and more resilient future for the community and her citizens. I have no doubt we will experience a similar metamorphosis in Moore. Our prayers go out the community. Please consider supporting efforts to help Moore recover from this tragedy. Pictures are ones I took the week after the Joplin tornado struck. Two years later they still haunt me.