Dean: Admiring Greensburg's superintendent
The sump pump is working almost continuously, but even it can’t keep up. Water seeps into the basement faster than I can vacuum it up. A guy down the block has what looks like a firehose coming from his cellar. It’s attached to a pump that, from the awesome sound of it, might have bailed out the Titanic.
And they’re forecasting even more rain later this week?
But I’m not complaining, really, as I write a paragraph between frequent trips to the basement.
After all, I’ve got a house, water-logged or not. I’ve got no problem.
The people of Greensburg, God bless ’em, now they’ve got real problems. People in Bennington, too. Ditto with folks living in the vicinity of Shunganunga Creek in Topeka, Cross Creek in Rossville, in the floodplains of The Kaw or the Wakarusa, or along any number of Kansas waterways swollen to overflow by the crawling weather front that dealt our state such a knee-buckling blow.
It seems pointless to write about sports today. The draft status of Brandon Rush or wondering whether the Royals will ever win again seems meaningless at a time when a Kansas community was virtually wiped out by as violent a storm as the Fujita scale can record.
And yet I started thinking about sports again while watching an interview with a determined Greensburg resident, one of many who will lead that small town’s effort to rebuild.
His name is Darin Headrick and he’s the school superintendent for the 300-student Greensburg district. Speaking to reporters Sunday, Headrick talked about conducting graduation — somewhere, some place — and somehow finding a way to get the school’s golf team to the state tournament where it had hopes of bringing back a trophy.
It probably struck some people as strange hearing an official talk about the high school golf team while standing amid a devastated community. But I knew instantly what Headrick was trying to do.
The school’s hope, he explained, was to restore some element of normalcy in the lives of students whose lives had been turned upside down. Getting the golf team to state is a small step, but the road to recovery is a series of small steps.
The residents of Greensburg and flood-ravaged areas must know, as I suspect they do, that neighbors throughout the state will be with them on the road back. Every high school regional or state meet in the next weeks should begin with a moment of silent reflection for the people who recently lost their lives or had lives forever changed.
I’ll be saying my own prayer on the next trip to the basement.
Read more at the http://blogs.cjonline.com
