Storm signs: Some icons of tornado remain

May 15—Dave Pettit's office isn't exactly large.

The director of facilities for the Joplin School District keeps his office in a maintenance building a block away from Junge Field. Space inside the office is at a premium.

There are spots underneath and beside a drafting board where Pettit would like to store blueprints. But the things kept in those spots are too important.

And heavy — the large eagle medallion stone from the former Joplin High School's sign weighs more than a few pounds. The letters from that sign (which are considerably lighter) and the medallion still show the scars and stains applied by the May 22, 2011, tornado.

"At some point in time, I knew how important they could be," Pettit said. "So I gathered them from another storage room and moved them in here. They are not going to disappear on my watch."

As for the letters, the district still has the ones the storm didn't take away. The duct tape used to make the word "HOPE" along with the two letters the storm left behind, has long since disappeared.

The "Hope High School" sign is one of several icons of the tornado made famous by victims and volunteers in the recovery effort. Unlike new construction, such as memorials at Cunningham Park and butterfly statues scattered around town, it is one of a few artifacts produced by the storm.

Some of them, such as the cross at St. Mary's Catholic Church and School, plans call for further development. But others, such as a piece of the so-called Volunteer House and the Hope High School sign, remain in storage, waiting for the right situation and time, or for fatigue from tornado commemorations to fade.

Hope High School sign

Evan Ash, a 2010 graduate, and Miranda Keeler, a member of the school's class of 2011, were the ones who placed strips of duct tape on the sign to spell "Hope." Their act transformed the sign into a symbol, drawing attention from people and giving inspiration in return. Images of the sign can be found in several places around town, including a mural at Orange Leaf Frozen Yogurt.

When building the new high school, the idea of naming it Hope High School was floated. But as time went by and the realities of construction set in, plans changed.

A year after the tornado, the Board of Education had the sign moved in order to clear the way for new construction at the site. The process of dismantling it was complex, according to Globe coverage at the time, and involved labeling each brick for exact reassembly.

Kerry Sachetta, now the district's assistant superintendent of operations, said the district wanted to move forward with a new building, and there wasn't a lot of desire to give a new building that name — much less its original sign.

"It is a hard thing to put in a particular place on a property," said Sachetta, who was principal of the high school until 2016. "It symbolized something at a time when we were rebuilding, but there wasn't a lot of appetite to put it back."

The district is in the habit of keeping some materials from former buildings, as well as excess bricks from other building projects. The spares make repair patches easy, Sachetta said, and the materials from former buildings can be historical touchstones.

In the warehouse where the sign's bricks are kept are materials from other schools — an etched stone from Irving Elementary and materials from Emerson Elementary, for instance. Both of those buildings were also lost to the tornado.

A lack of a plan is not the only thing keeping the district from rebuilding the Hope High School sign. While the district has most of the bricks, it does not have all of them.

The bricks were kept in outdoor storage for a period of time, then moved inside, Sachetta said. The larger granite column stones that formed the sides were lost. Most of the tan-colored bricks remain in storage, as well as almost all of the curved concrete capstones that lined the top, but not all of them.

At this point, Sachetta said that the best place in the long term for the medallion, letters and bricks may be in a museum.

"It would be best suited for something like an exhibit exemplifying the town, if the opportunity presents itself," Sachetta said. "The simple fact is that this is part of history, and that's why we've held on to it. Displaying it has always been the question."

Volunteer House

Where the Hope High School sign's components largely resisted damage from weather, such was not the case with the Volunteer House.

Originally located at 2502 S. Joplin Ave., owners Tim and Stacey Bartow gathered up furniture and left it at the house so that volunteers would have a place to rest. On the house's lone remaining wall, Tim left the message: "Thank you volunteers We (heart) U! You are our heroes!"

Volunteers cleaning up damage flocked to the house and left their own messages on the walls, turning the Bartows' former home into a symbol of giving.

In 2012, the house was wrapped and moved to Schifferdecker Park by about 20 volunteers. Tracker Marine in Miami, Oklahoma, donated supplies and workers to wrap the house in the same materials used to wrap new boats.

But that wrap did not survive season after season of repeated wind, said Patrick Tuttle. Parts of it ripped open and exposed the wood and other materials to moisture that led to the house's destruction, said Tuttle, director of the Joplin Convention and Visitors Bureau.

"It's not that we lost the intent to do anything with it," Tuttle said. "It just became too much of a burden for the city."

Tuttle said the iconic front piece, with the "We love you" message drawn by the Bartows, is in storage, awaiting a future display of some sort. and that's not all that's being stored. Tuttle said a number of artifacts are being stored, including beams from the former Walmart and Home Depot buildings and three tornado-bent cars, including a truck that was wrapped around a tree.

All they need is a plan and a place to display them, Tuttle said. Some sort of museum display that documented the damage and recovery, without glorifying the destruction, would go a long way toward telling Joplin's story to visitors. A smaller exhibit is currently on display at the Joplin History and Mineral Museum.

"We still have guests coming to town who want to know the story," Tuttle said. "Visitors may not have tornadoes where they are from, and they can't fathom the damage. ... Tt would give a sense of what the power of a tornado would be."

No such display proposal is currently on the table, Tuttle said.

St. Mary's cross

A church that lost almost everything will celebrate the one part of its campus that remained.

"We lost everything," said St. Mary's Catholic Church member Teri Wachter. "Our school, our church, our parish hall, the pastor's residence, everything was lost. Except for that cross. That cross stood there. It wasn't even fazed."

The still-standing cross, a large, steel structure that stood directly in front of the old church, inspired many looking for a sign of faith in the debris. Images of it spread across the world in the days after the storm. Volunteers of all faiths met at the cross for prayer.

Wachter said the practice of meeting at the cross has not stopped. Though not as frequent, there are enough visitors to warrant church members developing the site further.

On May 22 this year, a ceremony will be held to unveil designs for building a gathering space around the cross. It will feature places for people to gather as well as plaques commemorating the disaster and the victims of it. Work is scheduled to begin sometime this summer, Wachter said.

While the church has been rebuilt in southwestern Joplin, Wachter said the small piece of land owned by the church, where the cross still stands, will be dedicated for community use.

"We decided to dedicate that cross as a place of commemoration of what happened," Wachter said. "For the community to continue using it as a place to gather for prayer."

Spirit Tree

One icon will have to be re-created completely.

The Spirit Tree got its name from a group of artists with TANK: Public Art, who painted a tree on 20th Street near the former Dillon's grocery store. While it wasn't uprooted, it was killed by the tornado. Its defiant grip on the ground inspired others as a symbol of overcoming adversity.

Construction of the 20th Street overpass in 2016 left the tree alone, but the elements did not. Seven years after its painting, it collapsed from weather damage and rot.

A place has been chosen for a new Spirit Tree, however.

Doug Hunt, director of entrepreneurship at the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce, is leading a grassroots effort to create a sculpture in the shape of the Spirit Tree and is ready to launch a fundraising campaign for the project.

"Seeing Joplinites see that tree painted for the first time was a counterbalance of the despair of that night," Hunt said. "I know the image of the tree inspired so many during the One Walk. How nice would it be to have that in sculpture art?"

Hunt said the city has promised a space at the intersection of 20th Street and Murphy Boulevard for such a sculpture. Hunt said he paused fundraising in order to not distract from similar efforts for the Harry M. Cornell Arts & Entertainment Complex, currently under construction. The COVID-19 pandemic also delayed fundraising efforts.

Hunt said his new goal for creating the Spirit Tree sculpture, with the work overseen by artist Jorge Rivera, will be for the 15th anniversary of the storm. He will be seeking private donations in the range of $100,000 to $200,000.