'These folks, in ways large and small, were all heroes. They won’t get medals; they certainly won’t feel like heroes. But to one who was witness to, but distant from, their direct troubles, their determination and courage was unquestionable.'
The tornado approaching Springfield on the afternoon of June 1. By GIL SALK
On June 6, I met heroes.
Five days after the tornado hit, I drove to Springfield from Connecticut to offer my services helping with the cleanup.
I ended up in a neighborhood of middle-class, single-family homes adjacent to Watershops Pond and between Springfield College and Cathedral High School.
My first stop was along Arcadia Boulevard, across the road from the pond. The people there said they had just finished loading a rental truck with furniture and said they didn’t need help at the moment, but we chatted for awhile.
What stands out in my mind was the woman’s comment: “We could never see the pond from the house before.”
I looked behind me. Trees, many too large for three of me to get arms around, lay scattered like a game of pick-up sticks, some with roots torn from the ground, and most of the others snapped off. I could see the pond, and on the far side, incongruously, a kayaker enjoying the cloudless sky and calm waters.
Around the corner, on Mary Street, the first house I encountered simply wasn’t there any more. All that was left was its basement. The car in the driveway was partway onto its roof and had a gaping hole in the windshield.
The owner, a young man, said he was in the house, beneath a sink in the cellar, when the tornado hit. He remembered starting down the stairs, but not reaching the basement, not curling beneath the sink, not hearing the inevitable freight-train roar (which he said all his neighbors heard), not the destruction of the house.
“But, hey, I’m alive,” he said.
He was standing and talking with a friend about how he retrieved his trash barrel from the splintered, 10-foot stump of a tree between his house and his back neighbor’s. He knew it was his because he had drilled two holes in the bottom so water could leak out.
I noticed a 2-foot statue of a bird placed in the center of the top of the concrete steps that had led to the house, a good perch for it to survey the surrounding flattened landscape.
The owner didn’t know what he was going to do, except that he had tickets to that night’s Boston Bruins game, and he was going. I commented that it seemed like a good idea to take an emotional break, and that I had some sense of what he was dealing with from having spent a week in Biloxi helping clean up after Hurricane Katrina – but that experience of mine was nowhere near actually having gone through such a disaster.
He leaned forward and shared, “And, I hope you never do! I hope you never do.”
At the next house where I stopped, I spoke with a woman. After I offered my help, she pointed to a red “X” painted on her door.
“That means I can’t let anybody in -- no volunteers, no contractors, nobody who didn’t live here,” she said.
Her house was one of many still standing, but condemned as unlivable.
I walked up and down the streets of the neighborhood in the hot sun. No trees were left standing to provide shade. Instead, they had crashed through houses, or were leaning against them, or blocking driveways, or already chainsawed and stacked at the curb – rows and rows and stacks and stacks of logs lined the streets.
There were few sounds. No barking dogs. No children’s voices. The air seemed to absorb the sounds of people talking to each other.
It wasn’t silent, but there was a palpable muffling of the noise of human activity.
Everywhere I looked, there were electric company linemen working to restore power to the neighborhood, cable companies getting TV service back to the area. Many of the cars along the roads belonged to insurance adjusters, working, I hope, to start the process of compensating people for their property losses. Many people who were there were waiting for adjusters to arrive.
Tree removal services, trash haulers and contractors were there in numbers. The city (or somebody) had already been through to clear the streets.
But, the houses – the homes. Many were nothing but piles of wood and siding, with nothing vertical remaining where the house had stood. Others were partially collapsed, or had gaping holes in roofs and walls, or blown-off roof shingles or blown-in windows.
Some showed no structural damage I could see from the street, but had the red “X”s on their front doors. Many had doors and windows boarded, and blue tarps had begun to appear on rooftops.
This one small neighborhood – probably fewer than 200 homes – was a tiny blip along the 39-mile path of destruction the tornado carved across Western Massachusetts. The inner city is much worse, as is the town of Monson. But, the violence that occurred here rips at the heart. As I walked and talked, I repeatedly had to swallow a lump in my throat.
But nearly unanimously, the residents with whom I spoke were optimistic about the future, seemingly more concerned about neighbors than about themselves, grateful for help already received and offering me thanks and blessings for my offer to help.
This is not to say that they weren’t in pain, suffering losses, feeling overwhelmed, worried about relocation.
They had used the weekend to move what they needed to move and to begin cleaning up. And, they saw themselves as being able to overcome.
These folks, in ways large and small, were all heroes. They won’t get medals; they certainly won’t feel like heroes. But to one who was witness to, but distant from, their direct troubles, their determination and courage was unquestionable.
Of course, I didn’t get to talk with those who weren’t on the scene. Elderly people had moved somewhere, to family, or to shelters. Those who couldn’t get time off from work were at their jobs. Some simply didn’t have a home to come back to. I can’t speak about any of them, and I can’t stop thinking about them.
I didn’t get to do any physical help on this trip. They were done for the time being, or not yet ready for help. All of them expressed gratitude for my being there, and I hope that my presence gave them a little emotional support.
I’m a photographer. I had my camera, and there were breathtaking pictures to be taken. But, I decided very early to leave my camera in the car – to take photos would have seemed too intrusive to me, a slap in the face of those who were still absorbing the instantaneous change in their lives.
Gil Salk, of Hebron, Conn., grew up on Mayfair Avenue and East Alvord Street in Springfield in the 1950s and ‘60s. He returned to his hometown on June 6 to offer help with the cleanup to victims of the June 1 tornado.