đ„ After Monster Storm, The Story Canât Be Told Without Recognizing Faith đ
Weekend Plug-in đ
Editorâs note: Every Friday, âWeekend Plug-inâ meets readers at the intersection of faith and news. Click to join nearly 10,000 subscribers who get this column delivered straight to their inbox. Got feedback or ideas? Email Bobby Ross Jr.
STILLWATER, Okla. â I planned to drive 400 miles to south-central Nebraska last weekend for a story on rural churches.
But about 75 miles up Interstate 35 from my home in Oklahoma City, my engine light came on. Fortunately, I was close to an exit and pulled into a gas station parking lot.
The shaking and loud noise under my hood were not a positive sign. A tow truck came to take my 2013 Kia Sorento with 169,957 miles on it to an auto repair shop. My wife, Tamie, made the 150-mile round trip to pick me up.
Since I canceled the Nebraska trip, I was available Sunday when The Washington Post called and asked me to help with its national coverage of the weekend monster storm system that left a trail of destruction in the Plains and the Deep South. The tornadoes, dust storms and wildfires claimed at least 40 lives in seven states.
The ruins of a Stillwater, Oklahoma, home destroyed by last Fridayâs wildfires. (Photo by Chris Rettman)
For unexplained reasons â I mean, Iâve avoided way more wrecks than Iâve caused â my wife usually frowns on me driving her 2013 Toyota Highlander. But with my Sorento temporarily out of commission, she let me borrow her vehicle.
I headed to Stillwater, Oklahoma, about 65 miles east of Oklahoma City. Chris Rettman, a professional photographer, joined me.
Stillwater â best known as the home of Oklahoma State University â is the seat of Payne County, where fast-moving fires this past Friday destroyed about 200 homes.
A therapy dog named Maverick offers support to fire victims at the Stillwater Armory, transformed into a community resource center. (Photo by Chris Rettman)
Wildfires and winds caused four deaths in Oklahoma â although none in Payne County â and 200 injuries, state officials reported.
My first stop Sunday afternoon: the Stillwater Armory, transformed into a community resource center for fire victims to receive groceries, bottled water, emergency supplies and even pet food.
Dawn Dodson, the City of Stillwaterâs director of communications, greeted me at the armory.
âEverything has been donated,â Dodson told me. âWeâve gotten such an outpouring from the community, and people are also wanting to give monetary donations.â
Men bring bottled water to the community resource center set up to serve fire victims in Stillwater, Okla. (Photo by Chris Rettman)
Dodson introduced me to Stillwater Fire Chief Terry Essary, who looked weary from fighting the fires but voiced his resolve to help the community recover.
âWe went from no fires to about six in minutes, so our resources were depleted immediately,â the 28-year fire department veteran said, describing how quickly the flames spread.
âItâs a beautiful place to live, but the beauty also comes with danger,â Essary said of the hardest-hit neighborhoods, âbecause you have a lot of timber and terrain that makes it really hard to defend against wildfires.
âAnd it just exploded to the north,â he added. âAnd before we knew it, we were just chasing fires all over the place.â
Food and emergency supplies fill tables at the Stillwater Armory after wildfires destroyed numerous homes in the Oklahoma community. (Photo by Chris Rettman)
For Essary and his wife, Amber, a medical imaging supervisor at Stillwater Medical Center, the victims are not just nameless faces. They are neighbors and friends, including some who have moved temporarily into the Essarysâ home.
âWe just felt pretty helpless,â Essary said of the firefighters. âWatching our neighborsâ and our friendsâ homes burn â it was indescribably bad.â
Unlike in, say, Altadena, California, where January wildfires wiped out entire neighborhoods, the Stillwater embers hopscotched through neighborhoods.
The flames were akin to the tornadoes familiar to Oklahoma residents â destroying some homes while leaving others next door with no damages except for scorched lawns.
The Essarys did not make the Post story (such trims happen when providing a feed for a larger national story). But both were so kind and helpful to me.
Bobby Ross Jr., left, interviews Stillwater, Oklahoma, Fire Chief Terry Essary and his wife, Amber. (Photo by Chris Rettman)
Amber Essary even drove me to the ravaged neighborhood where I did my reporting that the Post published online and in print:
Drew Boers, a 75-year-old retired beer distributor, and his wife, Julie, sat at a folding table Sunday afternoon in the driveway of their neighborâs home in Stillwater, Oklahoma, which escaped the flames unscathed. The scene might have resembled a neighborhood block party â except for the heavy smell of smoke in the air and the homes burned to the ground across the street, including the Boersâs place.
A group from the nearby Countryside Church made hot meals for fire victims digging through the ashes. As Boers talked about the chicken and dumplings he had enjoyed moments earlier, a white American Red Cross van stopped to offer help and food.
âYou canât beat the food theyâve got here,â Boers said with a chuckle while thanking the Red Cross volunteers for their concern.
Boers, a father of four, was spraying his backyard with a water hose Friday afternoon when he realized the fire was approaching his house. Boers and his wife evacuated with their wallets, phones and cars, but they lost almost everything else. The coupleâs brick mailbox looked untouched Sunday, but the brick entryway and ashes were all that remained of their ruined home.
âYou can replace furniture,â Boers said. âBut what we lost that we canât replace are my high school yearbook and photo albums that are from the predigital age because theyâre printed pictures, and things like that.â
âWe keep thinking of more things,â he added. âSo weâll be sad for a while, but then weâll probably rebuild, and life goes on.â
When covering a tragedy, faith almost always emerges as a part of the story, as Iâve noted previously.
Fire victims enjoy a meal organized by members of Countryside Church in Stillwater, Oklahoma. (Photo by Chris Rettman)
That was the case in 2015 when a woman drove her car into a crowd at Oklahoma Stateâs football homecoming parade, claiming four lives and injuring dozens of others. Back then, I wrote about faithâs role in the âStillwater Strongâ response for the Postâs front page.
Stillwater, a resilient college town of 50,000, renewed that motto of healing and strength after this past weekendâs fires.
And once again, people of faith rushed to help.
Tara Rose, a member of the nondenominational Countryside Church and a retired Navy veteran, organized the hot meal enjoyed by fire victims Drew and Julie Boers.
An American Red Cross disaster relief van offers help in a fire-ravaged neighborhood in Stillwater, Oklahoma. (Photo by Chris Rettman)
âWe have a chat group for the ladies at church, and I said, âIâm going to make chicken stew tomorrow and take it over there if anyone wants to join,ââ said Rose, who leads an ongoing ministry called the Cowboy Soul Soup Ministry to help feed Oklahoma State University students. âAnd within a couple of hours, we had various salads, vegetables, fruits, drinks and paper products.â
As the fire news inevitably fades from the headlines, Rose and her husband, Paul, a fellow retired Navy veteran, said they donât plan to forget about their neighbors.
âWeâre already talking about making hamburgers and hot dogs this next week,â she said, âand just putting them in the cooler â weâd wrap them individually in foil so they stay warm â and just driving around. And when we see people working, weâll stop and offer them.â
There you have it â the âfaith-based FEMAâ in action once again. And thanks to a broken-down engine, I got to witness it.
The ground is scorched near a burned home in Stillwater, Oklahoma. (Photo by Bobby Ross Jr.)
Inside The Godbeat
The Religion News Association has a new president: Dawn Araujo-Hawkins, news editor of the Christian Century.
Araujo-Hawkins succeeds Ken Chitwood, who will keep working with RNAâs Religion Stylebook and its ReligionLink project.
RNAâs annual conference is set for April 3-5 in the Washington, D.C., area. Religion Unpluggedâs executive editor, Clemente Lisi, and I both plan to attend.
The Final Plug
The Tennessean religion writer Liam Adamsâ coverage of the Southern Baptist Convention remains canât-miss journalism.
The latest example: his story on sexual abuse survivors retreating from their advocacy for SBC reform. That news came after the U.S. Justice Department closed its historic federal investigation of sexual abuse in the nationâs largest Protestant denomination.
Happy Friday, everyone! Enjoy the weekend.
Bobby Ross Jr. writes the Weekend Plug-in column for Religion Unplugged and serves as editor-in-chief of The Christian Chronicle. A former religion writer for The Associated Press and The Oklahoman, Ross has reported from all 50 states and 18 nations. He has covered religion since 1999.