JOPLIN, Mo. — When the tornado roared through Joplin, the focus was on saving lives not memories. And while lives lost can’t be brought back, the memories can. That’s the mission of a small town church and its volunteers with a big heart!
Jim and Anita Leypa don’t need the photos of Joplin to remember the night of the tornado. Those memories are seared into their brains. They have painful memories.
It was uh,…reminds me of Vietnam guys,” said Jim Leypa.
Like the war he served in, it was a war of survival. They raced to the basement storage room, hunkered down and Anita covered Jim’s head with her purse.
“I think it would have sucked me out if she hadn’t kept it down And then, it was over. What was it? I looked up and said hey, I see I see sky,” he said.
When they crawled out of the debris, they saw those awful photos of destruction, despair and death. Eight died where they were.
“I pray for them every time we go by here,” he said.
They survived and while they tried to wrap their arms around the Photos of Joplin, they were building in their minds, Jim and Anita lost everything. That includes the photos of their lives. Their memories were scattered.
Donna Turner felt a calling after the tornado.
“I just wanted to do something to get involved. I’m not physically able to go over there and move rubble and stuff,” Turner said.
So, Donna and Pastor of Worship and the First Baptist Church of Carthage started talking and an idea came into focus.
“So many people that we know live in Joplin. And because we’re close enough yet far enough away we couldn’t help with emergency disaster services other than to just go over and volunteer. We didn’t have a building close. So the question would be, what are we supposed to do.”
The church decided to reunite tornado victims with the photos of their lives, one picture at a time. Volunteers organized and cataloged and posted thousands of pictures. There were more than 32,000 pictures with photos still coming in.
Volunteers underwent grief counseling knowing that reuniting victims with their memories wouldn’t be easy. Joyful moments too, as tornado victims were reunited with pictures they never dreamed they’d see again. So far, 8,000 pictures are back in their rightful albums.
Jim and Anita were also reunited with pictures. They found their way from farm fields near Springfield to a church in Carthage. They were so excited they drove to Carthage to retrieve a picture of their grandson.
“To be able to bring shredded documents of photographs back to people and to see the look on their face when they see the picture of their baby child that my be grown today, there is nothing that replaces that,” said Pastor Thad Beeler. “Because you have brought something back to life they thought was lost.”
About 30 church volunteers are helping with the project. Pastor Beeler says he hopes to create a non-profit that would take the Joplin model national. It will be called The National Disaster Photo Rescue and attempt to help other communities hit by natural disasters rescue and return lost memories.
