Silver Lining in a Funnel Cloud

by Randy Turner

Description When an EF-5 tornado destroyed one-third of Joplin, Missouri, and killed 161 people on May 22, 2011, the eyes of the nation were focused on the small city of 50,000. Its leaders, including men such as City Manager Mark Rohr and Superintendent of Schools C. J. Huff, received nationwide attention as they sought to return normalcy to a town that had suffered the worst tornado in the United States in six decades. Behind the scenes, however, the story was entirely different, as Rohr and Huff worked with a group of well-connected business interests to hijack the recovery effort and turn it into a way of obtaining everything they had always wanted for Joplin. That path led to the hiring of a master developer from Texas, David Wallace, with a long history of bankruptcies, SEC investigations, and accusations of fraud. Silver Lining in a Funnel Cloud is the story of the rise and downfall of City Manager Mark Rohr, amidst allegations of bullying and domestic abuse, Superintendent C. J. Huff, indulging in out-of-control spending that left the school district in a perilous financial situation, and Wallace, who left town in the dead of night, after never fulfilling any of his lofty promises. Silver Lining also tells the story of ordinary citizens who battled to reclaim their city and school district, battling not only the moneyed special interests, but also a newspaper that fought them every step of the way. Silver Lining in a Funnel Cloud tells the story of the Joplin Tornado heroes who were created by the media and the real heroes, the people of the community who never lost sight of who they were and what it means to be from Joplin, Missouri.