Obama To Deliver Joplin HS Commencement Address

JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) — This week, the President returns to Joplin to deliver the commencement address at Joplin High School.

A year after the deadliest tornado in decades hit southwest Missouri, the images remain indelible.

A smashed hospital, its top floors reduced to grotesquely twisted metal.

The smiling face of a newly minted high school graduate, a YouTube sensation in both life and death.

Thousands of flattened homes and businesses, 161 dead and hordes of volunteers from across the country who arrived to help within hours of the May 22nd, 2011 twister that packed winds of more than 200 miles per hour.

The rebuilding effort is readily apparent in Joplin, where new homes dot the pocked landscape and big-box businesses quickly rebuilt along the city’s main commercial strip.

But recovery is far slower for community members putting back the pieces of their lives, homes, jobs and families.

President Obama will address Joplin High School’s graduating seniors in southwest Missouri late Monday, marking the one-year anniversary of the devastating tornado that destroyed an enormous path through the city and claimed 160 lives.

It was graduation night on May 22, 2011, too, when Joplin High School and more than 7,500 other buildings were destroyed by what has proven to be among the deadliest and costliest tornadoes in United States history. The EF5-rated storm was more than a mile wide and packed winds of more than 200 miles per hour. In Joplin and nearby Duquesne, the storm reduced schools, hospitals, businesses and homes to giant swaths of torn lumber and rubble.

Obama is expected to commemorate the losses as well as celebrate the success of the recovery effort so far in Joplin, where a temporary high school was set up at a local mall in time for the start of the 2011-12 school year. Temporary housing has been provided to more than 500 families; more than $60 million in federal loans and grants has been made available to individuals and businesses to rebuild; and nearly $150 million will be spent to help rebuild public infrastructure.