Storm-lost photos worth the hunt
In Joplin, pictures blown away in ’11 twister tracked down
JOPLIN, Mo. — Cindy Atteberry could still recognize her son, daughter-in-law and their baby girl in a wrinkled snapshot marred by white scratches.
The photo was one of three Atteberry took home Saturday after they disappeared more than two years ago when a tornado tore through Joplin and killed 161 people.
“They’re not in too good of shape,” Atteberry said. “They’re a memory, and they’re mine.”
One of the last photo-reunification events drew about 10 people to the Joplin Public Library to search for photos lost in the May 22, 2011, storm. The events are organized by the nonprofit National Disaster Photo Rescue Organization’s Lost Photos of Joplin Project. The project is overseen by members of First Baptist Church in nearby Carthage.
Volunteers with the project have a goal to return at least 17,501 of the 35,000 photos displaced during the tornado, said Donna Turner, a church organist and volunteer. Turner on Saturday counted 16,704 photos that have been returned.
The next event is 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Nov. 9 at the Joplin Public Library. Church volunteers will give all the remaining photos, documents and other objects they have collected to the Joplin Museum Complex on Nov. 22.
Atteberry and her husband identified the missing photos during a previous reunification event. She picked them up Saturday. Atteberry thinks many of her photo albums were put in trash bins
when debris was cleared from a neighbor’s property, she said. One album had pictures of her parents, who are dead, and other family members. She had photos of her children as babies.
“I lost millions, but I found three,” she said.
Atteberry survived the tornado in a basement, she said. She and her husband now live north of Joplin. She tries not to think about what she lost, but she treasures the photos and things she has found.
Dana Roof, who now lives in Duenweg near Joplin, has scoured the photo books of the Lost Photos of Joplin at several photo-reunification events, including Saturday’s. Her searches have not turned up anything.
“I lost my whole house, my car, my workplace,” she said. “Pictures would have been nice to have.”
Roof remembers she had scattered pictures of her daughter out on a dining table in her Joplin home. Her daughter, Angelia Morris, died at 41 a few months before the tornado. Roof was still grieving and had planned to fill a photo album before the storm destroyed her house.
“I still keep coming back even though this is frustrating,” Roof said while searching for photos. “I can’t find any.”
The effort to return photos to their owners started with Thad Beeler, a choir director at First Baptist Church of Carthage, and more than 50 volunteers from the church, Turner said.
People dropped off the found photos at collection points at Southwest Missouri Bank locations. Church members set the photos out to dry and discovered they could get most of the debris off with used dryer sheets, Turner said. They created nine-digit ID numbers and organized the photos in file folders and
“I lost my whole house, my car, my workplace. Pictures would have been nice to have.” — Dana Roof
boxes.
Finding the identities of people in the photos and returning photos to their owners has been a bit like detective work, she said. Photos are posted online at joplin. national disaster photo rescue.net, as well as on a related Facebook page. Browsers can post the identities of people they recognize.
When they have an identity, Turner and church volunteers try to find out how to reach the person in the photo or a relative. Turner has worked with funeral homes to return photos to families, and she has made deliveries to schools, businesses and homes.
“There’s nothing to replace photos,” she said. “Sometimes when I drive home, I’m crying. It’s been real emotional. It never fails. Most of the time, they will tell us their story. I’m just happy that we were able to help them.”