It hit me quite hard when I saw a man in his sixties buckle and start to cry. This man, weather worn and muddy had lived on and worked his farm for most of his life. Everything that this gentleman had ever known from raising and providing a safe shelter for his family to working hard to meet the monthly payments…was gone. One bad storm…gone. I thought of my own family and what we would do if I lost my job and home in one night. It scared me to the bone. As parents and adults we are taught to protect our children from the storms of life and here, in a matter of minutes, we are naked and exposed to the fragile whim of Mother Nature. I curse those minutes because they did not show the real picture. They did not show how everyone, weakened with tears still streaming, stood up to the storm. Those few minutes forgot about neighbors hauling logs and gathering animals. They forgot that here in the Midwest, we stand tall, sweat and start over.

The special section “After the Storm” in today’s paper is dedicated to everyone who is banging a board and putting their lives back together brick by brick and not letting only a “few” minutes define who they are.

Scott Schmeltzer

Publisher