June City Council Message
By: Barry Joffe, Contact this Council member
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Tragedy: Building "Community" out of adversity
In the early hours of April 9th 1999, the storm which had originated in the Louisville, KY area produced its worst devastation as it moved northeast across Hamilton County developing into an F4 tornado that wreaked damage and destruction in Montgomery. Homes were destroyed or heavily damaged and four persons lost their lives.
Moving stories were recounted at the recent commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the tornado. St. Barnabas Church — the operations center and volunteer registration site to cover Montgomery, Symmes and Sycamore Townships in 1999 —was a fitting venue for the commemoration ceremony.
I recall an eerie quality to the start of that April day in 1999. My neighborhood was thankfully untouched by the storm – the worst of it was that the power was out. All around was a dark silence, broken only by the flashing warning light of the alarm system which had defaulted to battery back-up. My son, then a high school senior, came to tell us there was no school as a tornado had struck the high school area! He had just heard from one of his friends whose mom was on the school board. I had no idea at that time that the silence I experienced was so markedly contrasted by such devastation in other Montgomery neighborhoods.
We were all reminded at the commemoration ceremony how adversity, acts of caring, heroism, creative problem solving, selfless support and focus on the task at hand became the ingredients for rebuilding and cementing the community. How so many came together – neighbors, high school students, other municipalities, prison workers, FEMA, City Council and the staff and the faith-based institutions – exemplified by cartoonist Jim Borgman’s drawing of a number of hands clasped together and holding up each other with the statement “we’re all in this together.”
I witnessed another aspect of community through interfaith cooperation that came about as a result of the severe damage to the roof of Montgomery Community Baptist Church as it was then. Congregation Ohav Shalom had moved to their new facility on Cornell Road in Sycamore Township in August of the previous year. The synagogue suffered only minor roof damage and the sanctuary was quickly “converted” at the end of each Sabbath to enable the church to continue to hold Sunday services and Sunday school while their roof was being repaired. The two congregations marked their own Anniversary Service on April 9, 2000, in remembrance of the tornado and in celebration of G-d’s gifts of friendship, healing and rebuilding — this time in the sanctuary of the church. The church planted and dedicated trees in the synagogue grounds in recognition of this friendship.
Like the 25th anniversary of the plane crash in Montgomery which took the lives of FBI agents and was commemorated last year as an important reminder of our local history, the commemoration of the tornado, particularly, serves as a reminder of the strength of community – and how an unexpected and disastrous event can help weave unique character. Let us not forget – we need to remind later generations of the fabric of this community!