Neal took an early flight in from Washington, D.C., on June 3, and, from his vantage point in a car en route from Bradley International Airport that morning, saw the first hints of destruction from the northbound lanes of Interstate 91 as he approached his hometown.
Congressman Richard E. Neal (L) talks with Tim Fitch who runs the shelter at the MassMutual Center for the American Red Cross Pioneer Valley Chapter during a tour fo the shelter. SPRINGFIELD – After sending four sons to Cathedral High School, he felt he knew the curve of Island Pond Road like the back of his hand: the tree line, the bends in the streets and the homes where each resident had raised children and planned for retirement.
“I know every obscure street. I knew every alleyway in the city. And, I couldn’t orient myself in the neighborhood. There were no trees left,” said U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal as he reflected this week on the first hours he spent after the June 1 tornado in the devastated city where he was raised, and where he persistently has pushed for a resurgence since his service as mayor in the 1980s.
“I knew people who lived in those houses. I knew who lived in those homes. I’ve always prided myself on that.”
Neal took an early flight in from Washington, D.C., on June 3, and, from his vantage point in a car en route from Bradley International Airport that morning, saw the first hints of destruction from the northbound lanes of Interstate 91 as he approached his hometown.
“I was looking at the unimaginable,” he said, sitting in his new district office in the federal courthouse on State Street that overlooks several painful pockets of the city struggling toward a renaissance.
And undeniably, in the wake of the tornado, now there are more such places.
The city’s South End neighborhood has been largely decimated, displacing many of the city’s poor and threatening to topple several valuable, stable businesses which cater to Greater Springfield’s fiercely loyal Italian-immigrant population.
The pretty, tree-lined streets that were among Springfield’s last bastions of proud single-homeownership are all but ruined.
The will to rebuild is still uncertain. But, Neal points out that he’s known the strength of the neighborhood for the life of his public service tenure as the ward with the highest voter turnout in the city and a place where people believe you’re supposed to show up on Election Day.
The Democratic congressman, who began his career in public service as a high-school teacher, rightly notes that the word “twister” in anyone’s lexicon strikes fear and disbelief – particularly in New England. Particularly in Western Massachusetts.
“Tornado is a scientific word. It’s a meteorological term. Twister is just frightening,” he said.
The last serious tornado warning that Neal recalls occurred when he was mayor. It put everyone in municipal and state government on high alert. The result was a few downed trees and some power glitches.
But, in the wake of the June 1 cluster of twisters that barreled through a sizable swath of his congressional district, he’s spent the past 10 days appealing to the highest reaches of the federal government to secure aid for not only Springfield but for the entire region.
President Barack Obama must declare a federal state of emergency for the tornado-damaged area before much-needed funds flood in. (Joplin, Mo., devastated by deadly tornadoes on May 22 that killed more than 130 people, is still awaiting its federal emergency designation.)
Neal is painfully aware of this, noting the federal government is between assessment and cutting the check for recovery efforts in his district. He is eager to return to the neighborhoods once he has answers.
So far, every stop is a vignette featuring his time as a kid, as a history teacher at Cathedral High School, which saw its current home on Surrey Road devastated.
As he left the headquarters of the Pioneer Valley Chapter of the American Red Cross on Cottage Street on Tuesday, Neal was stopped by a medical resident there to volunteer.
“Hi, congressman, I went to Cathedral with your sons. I was a year ahead of Rory. I can’t believe it,” Dr. Joseph Strebel, 33, an internal medicine resident at UMass Memorial Medical Center, said to Neal late in the day.
The two talked about the blown-out windows, the once-stringent dress code and how Cathedral High had shaped them as men, and about Room 229.
“I taught in that room,” Neal told Strebel, of Longmeadow.
“That was my homeroom,” Strebel responded, before they segued into old sports rivalries, certain notorious nuns who kept the kids in line and the declining enrollment at the Roman Catholic school which also served as an anchor to East Forest Park residents.
The following day, Neal trudged through the near-wasteland of the South End, which still has many of its landmark businesses standing and back in operation, including the Red Rose pizzeria and restaurant, La Fiorentina bakery and Mom & Rico’s, all on Main Street.
With an entourage of media and officials with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in tow, Neal took time to talk with old friends and business owners. Many credited him as having been a financial savior during Neal’s mayoralty.
“I thought of you after this happened,” said Madeline Zorzi, a resident and business owner in the South End. “You worked so hard to get us the money to build this up.”
It was really a lifetime of work, her son Gregory Zorzi told Neal. Gone in 17 seconds.
The Zorzis had an architectural firm, condominiums and retail space in a stretch on Main Street, which remained a mountain of debris as the cleanup effort persisted.
Neal pointed out the nearby Furcolo Building, named after a doctor who served the city’s Italian and Italian-American population, and whose father held Neal’s seat for two terms and was the state’s governor from 1957 to 1961. Neal eulogized the governor and congressman, Foster Furcolo, on the House floor in the 1990s.
As the group trekked farther down Main Street, the loyal clientele of La Fiorentina sat on the front patio sipping cappuccino. Rico Daniele, owner of Mom & Rico’s, an Italian specialty store, told Neal of the annual stickball tournament he still plans to hold on Sunday, despite the destruction.
Earlier at his office, Neal raised noted sociologist James Q. Wilson’s work he often admired and has read about over the years in Atlantic Monthly and elsewhere.
The theory centers around urban centers with “broken windows” in the form of a flagging housing market, middle-class exodus or burgeoning subsidized school lunch numbers.
“If a window is broken, you’d better fix it fast or the next one will break quickly,” Neal said.
Was the cluster of twisters to hit the city yet another break in the future of Springfield?
“I think it may have been,” the congressman says reluctantly.