Tornadoes in the South

We lived in Alabama for a total of eleven years and I will contend that it’s the place that I became an adult and a place where some of my favorite people in the world still live.  It was amazing watching the coverage of the area last week especially knowing that the folks living there didn’t quite know the extent of the damage because they couldn’t see the coverage.  Friends in other parts of the country who also once lived there, we were all reaching out to each other to see if everyone we knew in common were accounted for.  My friend B who is a library director in a small Alabama town called after the tornadoes and she was describing the scenery to me.  She also told me that she’d gotten a call from someone outside of Alabama who’d called the library to find out about some elderly relatives who lived out in the country.  They were trying to verify that they were okay.  My friend B did what she could to assure them and then drove out to this couple’s place to deliver the message and had obviously chatted with them for a while because she shared some details about the family.  I told that story to someone I work with and they were amazed that someone would do that.  It didn’t surprise me at all that first off that B would do that.  She’s that kind of person and she, like many I know feel strongly about the community mission of a library.  But I’m sure there are hundreds of similar stories from the tornadoes because that’s just how people are in Alabama.