State Rep. Dennis McKinney knelt on the concrete slab where his one-story brick home once stood. It’s gone. So is his pickup truck, part of his wheat crop and a lifetime of family mementos.
“We can rebuild this,” said McKinney, 46, a tall, rangy man whose family has worked the land here for four generations. “This is Kansas. This is home.”
Ten blocks away, Larry Rogers and his sister Wanda Mott take a break from combing through the remains of their cafe and gift shop and wearily glance around the once bucolic downtown.
It looks like someone has taken a giant scythe and cut down the Kiowa County seat. All 1.5 square miles of it.
All but one of the town’s 11 churches has been obliterated. The single-screen movie theater and soda shop? Gone. The police and fire department? Destroyed. The schools? Ripped apart. The county’s sole stoplight? Lost in the rubble.
For Rogers and Mott, whose parents moved here nearly three decades ago, the loss is overwhelming. The siblings’ houses were destroyed, as was the home of Mott’s daughter. Their shop, a two-story building known for its collection of antiques and rooms decorated with Christmas merchandise year-round, is a mountain of crumbling brick. Much of that collection — the candelabras from the 1800s, couches from the 1930s, the animatronic Santa from a Macy’s window display — is crushed.
Rogers plans to leave. Mott is wavering.
“The town is telling us, ‘In two years, Greensburg will be back,’ ” said Rogers, 47. “Two years? We can’t wait two years. If you don’t have a job, and you don’t have a home, it’s over. … All we can do is grieve and move on.”
But a tearful Mott doesn’t know what to do: “I don’t know what to think. I don’t know whether I’m staying or going. I barely know what day it is.”
Since the May 4 tornado, this southwest Kansas community, once united by faith and family, is beginning to splinter. Some such as Rogers feel hopeless and fear something has been lost forever.
For families like the McKinneys, the disaster only strengthens their belief that Kansans are too stubborn and too tough to let a storm — even one this devastating — turn Greensburg into a ghost town.
Greensburg was a quiet village in a deeply religious stretch of Kansas, about two hours west of Wichita. Greensburg’s population is aging. More than a quarter is 65 or older, according to 2000 census data. At the time of the tornado, the town had about 1,400 residents.
Rogers and Mott followed their parents to Greensburg in the 1990s, eager to live in the same town. They soon were charmed by the shady elm and cedar trees, planted when the town was founded in the 1880s, that wrapped around modest farmhouses and elegant Victorians.
Greensburg prided itself on being self-sufficient. It owned and operated a power plant. It had its own hospital. The streets were safe: Children could wander at night, and parents could call them to supper by hollering out a kitchen window.
Despite a sluggish economy, there were jobs: Greensburg was home to several oilfield supply companies, and it was a long-standing hub for wheat and milo farming.
Rogers and Mott embraced the town, named after a flamboyant stagecoach operator, along with its quirky tourist attractions: the world’s largest hand-dug well and a 1,000-pound meteorite.
They took over a building that had been a hotel in the 1900s for stagecoach travelers. Main Street Cafe and Candies was part restaurant, part gift shop. It offered ornate flower arrangements for brides, antique hat stands for collectors and hand-painted barn signs for interior decorators looking for a touch of country chic. Business boomed, particularly during the holidays, when shoppers from around the Midwest would wander through the extravagant Christmas exhibits and stock up on candy canes, ornate wreaths and singing Santas.
Rogers said his decision to move came the morning after the storm, when sunlight showed the magnitude of the destruction. How, he thought, could he rebuild both a house and a business?
Sitting on a pile of bricks that had once been the facade of their shop, Rogers and Mott wondered whether federal aid or insurance money could help them restore their business. Perhaps they could scour eBay to replace some of their antiques, or work with other dealers to restock their supply of holiday decor.
“But is anyone going to be around to buy them?” asked Mott, 56. “There are no businesses here. No jobs.”
Rogers shared those concerns.
“I can’t do it,” he said. “I don’t have the energy to even try to figure out how.”
The pair decided to salvage as much from the shop as they could, and start scouting for a new location elsewhere in Kansas. Rogers thinks he’ll stay close. Perhaps he’ll move near friends in Coldwater, about 25 miles to the south, or Kinsley, about 27 miles to the north.
For Mott, who enjoys living in the same town with her daughter Missy, and her two grandchildren, the decision is less clear. Missy, 36, and her husband, Shawn, want to stay. The children love their school and Missy doesn’t want to uproot them, even though classes next year will likely be held in mobile trailers. Mott’s husband, Jerry, 55, was already back at work as an agronomist with Archer Daniels Midland Co., whose local operation is running.
At first, Mott said, she focused on saving the family business in part to avoid making any decisions about the future. But then Mott turned her attention to her house — a turn-of-the-century, 19-room mansion with a ballroom on the third floor and a wide porch. The storm tore the building from its foundation, turned it sideways and slammed it into a neighbor’s home. Both buildings collapsed.
“It hit me today, the wall of realizing how much is gone,” Mott said. “I don’t know if I can handle staying.”
Dennis McKinney has been combating such sentiments. Some friends and neighbors, particularly the younger ones who were leaning toward rebuilding, were easily convinced to remain.
Deciding to stay brings practical and emotional fallout, even for a family as determined as McKinney’s.
It was one of the largest tornadoes in Kansas history: a 1.7 mile-wide funnel cloud that traveled 22 miles, and was on the ground for 62 minutes. The National Weather Service estimates that it took less than 10 minutes for it to traverse the length of the town and level it.
Dennis said he knows the emotional toll on his neighbors will last far longer.
Now his phone constantly rings. Neighbors. Friends. Co-workers. All asking about his losses, and tapping his Rolodex for help with theirs.
He answers their questions. When given the chance, he lobbies them to stay in Greensburg.
