Middle America was struck by a tornado that damaged 30% of Joplin, Missouri. The media was filled with horrific sounds and images that resonated memories deep within me. Remembered images flooded my mind about a tornado that struck my own Mid-Michigan community years ago. Last week this appeared in a mid-Michigan newspaper The Flint Journal…
“As storm clouds gathered above Beecher on June 8, 1953, on Coldwater Road in Beecher, an F5 tornado leveled nearly 350 homes and killed 116 people. For 58 years, the Beecher tornado held the official record for the country’s single deadliest tornado. Tuesday, the weekend tornado that demolished most of Joplin, Mo., surpassed the Beecher record as the confirmed death toll continued to climb. As of Wednesday, there were 122 dead, with 750 people injured and many still missing after the F5 tornado with winds higher than 200 mph hit the southwest Missouri city of 50,000.”
The Joplin, Missouri disaster pushes me to a heightened sense of the damage caused by a powerful F5 tornado. I turn on CNN and watch the paths of the devastating tornado and hear the testimonials of stunned survivors. I see tear-filled eyes reflect the loss of friends and relatives. I know that sadness and loss from natural disasters are not easily forgotten and the memories are forever.
Even though I was a 4 year old child at the time, I remember the Beecher tornado with vivid clarity. My family lived several miles from the disastrous Beecher tornado that claimed 116 lives. Black and white photographs show the dreadful effects of nature’s fury and as yet are the pictures burned into my mind.
I was in the hospital at the time of the Beecher Tornado. The hospital was short on space so I went to sleep in a large empty sunroom. The sunroom was used only when necessary. I fell asleep to quiet, but I woke in the morning to a room full of unidentifiable sounds and images of people in shock. The physical damage made it difficult to recognize the new arrivals as male or female. Their eyes were either vacant or terror filled. Dirt seemed pitted in their skin, bandages wrapped around arms, legs extended in the air, and heads with only a lock of hair. Are these images a young child’s nightmare or remnants of truth from the tornado’s aftermath?
At the hospital’s request, a short time later my mother came to pick me up . I held my mother’s hand as we walked down the long halls of old St. Joseph Hospital. On each side of the hall were cots and gurneys with whimpering sounds or silent stares. After the long walk down the hall my memories disappear, but the terrible images of the worst tornado in this community have not.
We were a family of 7 who lived in a ranch. We always delighted in the cool basement used on hot, muggy summer days. It was not only a place for relief from the heat but it was also a place of safety. After the Beecher tornado my sleep would be broken by my dad’s commands to go to the basement a tornado was coming. All seven of us would scramble downstairs and the five kids would huddle under the wooden bench for safety. Dad, with his flashlight and radio, would stand guard. When he felt the danger was over he would go upstairs and try to scan the dark skies. We would then go back to bed to sleep in peace.
Even after 58 years, the Beecher tornado continues to be a part of this community’s history. With time people buried the dead, healed from their physical wounds, and rebuilt the devastated buildings. The images are in the back of my mind and, therefore, only surface when stirred by F5 winds, like the disaster in Joplin. Joplin’s buildings will take years to rebuild and repair. Emotional trauma and physical trauma may never completely go away, but with time memories fade and lessen. As several residents have demonstrated with their good neighbor actions, it’s a small town, but they have big hearts and they love their community. Eventually the Joplin residents will, as did the Beecher area, make peace with the tragedy and heal.
The Importance of Mothers and Belly Buttons
We take it for granted that most fictional characters have belly buttons. They are, after all, supposed to be human. Stories are about people and even supernatural heroes exhibit human emotion and characteristics. Personification aside, only cartoon characters act out their scenes with no viewer or reader concern for family origin or influence.
Would you want to read a story, let alone a book-length work, in which you have to assume the main character hopped from under a rock one day and began living a tumultuous life, using multiple coping skills reflected by deeply revealing internal dialogue at the tender age of no way would you believe this? Don’t expect any reader to believe characters have no past. Their past is often the impetus of suspense.
If readers are to suspend disbelief, to enter the world the writer has created so intentionally, the writer must people their fictional world with three dimensional characters. This includes emotional or psychological character profiles that reflect either circumstance of birth or the separation from or defeat of inherited morality or perhaps some revealed dysfunction.
As “real” people, heroes and heroines are not perfect. They sometimes fight with their parents and/or siblings. They sometimes make mistakes. They sometimes feel regret, or anger, or pain, or happiness, or anxiety, or hope, or defeat. Whatever they feel, or think, or choose, they are products of their existential past. If they don’t bring emotional baggage with them, they have unloaded it before they arrived at the here and now. Readers need to know that, too. Readers get to know characters through their actions and interactions with other characters. Internal dialogue can be as important as dialogue. It often helps the reader understand the character’s motivation. Serial killers have reasons for what they do. Their reasons are sometimes crazy and dysfunctional, even diabolical, but they are still reasons. And even serial killers have mothers.
Ask Dexter Morgan. He has a plentitude of separation anxiety associated with his mother. Okay, yes, he had post traumatic stress disorder as a toddler. Thank goodness he had such a guilt-ridden father, who was happy to explain morality to him, and give him the survival skills he needed to succeed and thrive at both his job and “vigilante hobby”. Let’s don’t forget that sibling rivalry with his brother, either—which leads us to his often dysfunctional relationship with his sister.
Your characters, too, have families. They certainly have or had mothers. Perhaps they miss the umbilical cord, or perhaps they feel it’s wrapped around their necks and tightening fast. Either way, when thinking about your character’s description, don’t forget about their belly buttons!
Would you want to read a story, let alone a book-length work, in which you have to assume the main character hopped from under a rock one day and began living a tumultuous life, using multiple coping skills reflected by deeply revealing internal dialogue at the tender age of no way would you believe this? Don’t expect any reader to believe characters have no past. Their past is often the impetus of suspense.
If readers are to suspend disbelief, to enter the world the writer has created so intentionally, the writer must people their fictional world with three dimensional characters. This includes emotional or psychological character profiles that reflect either circumstance of birth or the separation from or defeat of inherited morality or perhaps some revealed dysfunction.
As “real” people, heroes and heroines are not perfect. They sometimes fight with their parents and/or siblings. They sometimes make mistakes. They sometimes feel regret, or anger, or pain, or happiness, or anxiety, or hope, or defeat. Whatever they feel, or think, or choose, they are products of their existential past. If they don’t bring emotional baggage with them, they have unloaded it before they arrived at the here and now. Readers need to know that, too. Readers get to know characters through their actions and interactions with other characters. Internal dialogue can be as important as dialogue. It often helps the reader understand the character’s motivation. Serial killers have reasons for what they do. Their reasons are sometimes crazy and dysfunctional, even diabolical, but they are still reasons. And even serial killers have mothers.
Ask Dexter Morgan. He has a plentitude of separation anxiety associated with his mother. Okay, yes, he had post traumatic stress disorder as a toddler. Thank goodness he had such a guilt-ridden father, who was happy to explain morality to him, and give him the survival skills he needed to succeed and thrive at both his job and “vigilante hobby”. Let’s don’t forget that sibling rivalry with his brother, either—which leads us to his often dysfunctional relationship with his sister.
Your characters, too, have families. They certainly have or had mothers. Perhaps they miss the umbilical cord, or perhaps they feel it’s wrapped around their necks and tightening fast. Either way, when thinking about your character’s description, don’t forget about their belly buttons!
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