CARTHAGE – First Baptist Church here is providing a valuable service to victims of the May 22 tornado that devastated Joplin that could bring some joy to those who have experienced deep sorrow.
A few days every week a group of about 20 volunteers gather at the church to examine and clean lost photos belonging to Joplin residents following the May 22 tornado that tore through Joplin. Some photographs have reportedly been found in yards more than 200 miles from Joplin and taken to Southwest Missouri Bank branches, the Associated Press (AP) reported. A courier picks them up at the banks and delivers them weekly to First Carthage, which the city of Joplin approved as a repository. Word of the church’s effort has spread by word-of-mouth, the media and the Internet. The number of found photos has topped the 8,000 mark.
“There are some here that are ripped, some that are smudged, but I just keep telling myself that if I can get them back to the families – even part of a picture – well, I would want one back if it had been mine, no matter what the condition,” Brittany Bridges, a Carthage teacher supervising the cleaning and documentation effort, told the AP. “In some cases that might be all they have left.”
More than 200 of the photographs have been returned to their owners.
Thad Beeler, church music director at First Carthage and the photo project director, said the partnership is a natural.
“These pictures, they’re a timeline of the human experience, birth through death,” Beeler told the AP while pointing to photos on a nearby table showing children in Halloween costumes and a man and a woman holding their wedding certificate. “That’s what brings the church so much into this. We can make connection with our community during a disaster, and this is really what God has put the church here for.”
Area businesses have donated boxes and envelopes. The Red Cross helped the church secure scanners so photos can be electronically archived, the AP reported.
“This is a huge responsibility to us and we claim it as such,” Beeler told the AP. “For the folks in the church world, I don’t care what denomination it is, we connect with people because of these type of life experiences.
“We are always there during those times that are the most difficult, the biggest crisis. That’s why we chose to get involved, because we understand that time in people’s lives.”
BY STAFF