[youTubeVideo url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvhuEoWnU0I” width=”638″ height=”338″]
An F5 tornado that, at times, stretched a mile wide hit Joplin, Mo. on May 22, 2011, killing 160 residents and destroying nearly a third of the town. Of the many thousands impacted by the storm, over 100 are Missouri State University students.
Two Missouri State students, sophomore Sam Maher and freshman Parker Maher, brothers who live in Joplin, experienced the disaster first-hand. Home that day celebrating their parents’ upcoming anniversary, they were grilling with family and friends when the sky turned a sickly yellow and a terrible noise enveloped their neighborhood.
“The next thing we knew my dad was screaming at us, ‘Go downstairs!’” Parker said. With barely enough time to make it to their basement, the tornado hit before they could get the door of the closet in which they were seeking shelter closed. It was then, as they watched windows shatter and debris swirl, that they realized their mother had gotten separated from them on the way to the basement.
“Nobody had a clue where she was. . . It was absolutely terrifying,” Sam said. Thankfully, she had found refuge in another closet. When the Maher family exited their hiding place, they found their mother, safe if not rattled, and a new terrible landscape. Their home’s second floor was open to the sky, rain pouring in, and their neighborhood was now a debris field.
That evening was spent checking on households nearby, ensuring all were accounted for and pitching in with immediate assistance in their neighborhood when needed. In the following days the family gathered what they could from their destroyed home and began the long journey of rebuilding their lives.
[flickrSlideshow acct_name=”missouristatefoundation” id=”72157628128795096″]
The family of six initially moved in with their grandmother for two months, but now has a rental home as they rebuild, which could take nine months to a year.
Sam and Parker are two of the five students selected so far to receive assistance from the Emergency Scholarship Fund, which was created by the Missouri State Foundation to ensure that paying for their education is not a problem for students impacted by the disaster as they and their loved ones begin to recover.
Although the emergency fund was inspired by the terrible tornado, it is also intended to assist students facing other unforeseen personal crises including the death of a legal guardian, a natural disaster or a fire. This ensures for many decades to come that Missouri State students in crisis will not have to decide between recovery and their educational future.
“All of the help we got from everybody, including the scholarship…brought tears to my dad’s eyes,” Parker said.
“For complete strangers to donate…to people they don’t even know, that says something about the good in people,” Sam said. He’s optimistic despite what his family has been through. “We lost everything, but in reality we lost nothing at all. We have our family; we have our friends — everything that matters.”
Give to the Emergency Scholarship Fund:
- Click here to contribute to the Emergency Scholarship Fund
Read more about the Maher Brothers and the Emergency Scholarship Find, and find out more ways gifts to the Missouri State University Foundation are helping on campus and in the community:
- Click here to read the Missouri State University Foundation Fiscal Year 2011 Annual Report
Leave a Reply