Greensburg, Kansas: Storm Stories

 

 

What Happened to Maggie

Greensburg, May 4, 2007. Most of Greensburg was destroyed the night of May 4, similar to the Udall tornado fifty years before. Thanks to an adequate warning system, the death count was limited to 11. The town faced many dilemmas in the last three years, including the option of going “green.” A TV series documented the tornado, its aftermath, and the townspeople’s efforts to create a new Greensburg on the ruins of the old. This tornado was a mile wide as it flattened the town.

 

Maggie Poindexter was one of the unfortunate ones that day.  She wasn’t counted as one of the dead because her body was never found.

 She was a senior at Greensburg High School, while I was still in my freshman year. When the tornado hit, she was driving away from town trying to beat the impending storm, but she took a wrong turn and the tornado ran right into her. The only thing left was a mass of metal from her car and a hubcap.

Now I am a Harvard art student, my assignment in my sculpture I class was to build 2 objects and  present a 2 drawings/paintings of a tragic incident that happened in our hometown.

I chose to build a metal tornado to signify the cold, ruthless power the twister has, and a clay replica of her car when it was found.

The supporting pieces I did was a scratchboard of her parents, who have never given up searching for her missing remains, and a painting of a local basketball goal that Maggie and I had worked on together in art class.


 

 

 

Our old High School after the Tornado hit.

 

 

 

A family friend also captured the tornado on that devastating day.

 

 

 

For more information on what is happening to our town after the tornado, go to:

http://www.greensburggreentown.org/in-the-news/

 

Our whole town is Going Green after the devastation.