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| A notebook in a dorm room at the Baptist-based school reflects the kind of faith the college may need to rebuild after its
third tornado in 10 years. Carmen K. Sisson |
After the tornadoes: Rebuilding a campus, piece by piece
Officials at Union University in Tennessee scour buildings for possessions, clean up debris – and plan for providing an education on a campus splintered by a tornado.
from the February 13, 2008 edition
Page 2 of 3
David Dockery perches on the edge of a chair, elbows on knees, a red Union jacket warming his drawn face and tired eyes. He was on campus when the tornado struck around 7 p.m., meeting with two deans to discuss what's always on his mind – Union's future. Since he became president in 1995, Dr. Dockery has pushed an ambitious 25-year master plan. He stares at the floor as he admits the plan was almost halfway complete, with $60 million in renovations over the past decade. This tornado was "15 times" worse than the previous two, he says, made more cruel by its impact on the students' personal lives. Since then, his only thought has been how to give back what was taken – clothing, papers, a place to live, an education.
"I made as many decisions in the first 100 hours as I normally make in 100 days," he says, rubbing his eyes. He's slept only 16 hours in the past week. It's not only the tangibles keeping him awake – how to retrieve student valuables, resume classes, provide textbooks and computers and everything required to run a campus – it's also the intangibles.
The college had to cancel an annual conference for high school and middle school students, along with revenue-generating summer sports camps, a worship symposium, and a Valentine's Day banquet for west Tennessee pastors. The school's 62 clubs, from wrestling to Bible study, must get back up and running, offering small communities where students can feel a natural affinity and the healing balm of the Union spirit.
The basketball team is borrowing another school's gym – their own filled with bags of belongings salvaged from the rubble and neatly tagged. Dockery hopes to have the athletes playing at home by Feb. 21. And then there are things like driver's licenses, bank cards, and passports. Little pieces of plastic so necessary to function in daily life.
For a moment, Dockery seems bowed by the sheer enormity, then he squares his shoulders and a faint smile lights his eyes. There were no deaths, and that's something. A thousand people volunteered to help the very next day, and that's something, too. Union will rebuild what was destroyed and resume the master plan, more slowly perhaps, but always, always moving forward. "I don't think we've lost hope, and I don't think we're Pollyannaish," he says. "Our deep faith will carry us through."
•••
At Duncan Hall, a girls' dorm, social work professor Kristie Holmes is on a mission of her own – salvaging something, anything, from each student's room. She's young, barely older than the students she teaches, and this is her first year as a professor. She doesn't have to be here today, or at least her job doesn't require it, but like the colleagues who dig alongside her, no other task is more important.
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