It is exactly the kind of town that gives our bi-state area heart. To help keep that heart beating, we at Ingram’s in cooperation with the accounting/consulting firm of Meara King & Co. and the American Red Cross have launched a fund drive named the “KC Greensburg Relief Fund” and we hope that you will be a part of it. For details, please see the opposite page or contact Ingram’s Magazine at 816.842.9994 or Meara King & Co. at 816.561.1400.

Says John Meara, a founder of Meara King, “My son’s wife is from Pratt, Kansas —another small Kansas town about 30 miles from Greensburg.  I cannot imagine Pratt suffering a disaster like Greensburg.  But only Midwesterners could take a disaster like this, come up smiling, and immediately start talking about rebuilding. It makes me proud to be a Kansan, and proud to be part of the effort to help the people of Greensburg.”

Until Friday, May 4, 2007, Greensburg was the center of its own universe. The county seat of Kiowa County, this town of 1,600 everyday souls built its humble economy around producing oil and gas and serving the area’s farmers.

Greensburg has/had a county courthouse, nine churches, three banks, three schools, a hospital, a grain elevator, a few motels on the highway, a bed and breakfast “across the street from the Big Well,” a pharmacy, a hardware store, several convenience stores, a flower shop, a newspaper—“The Kiowa County Signal,” the main branch of the Kiowa County library, multiple antique stores, and seven restaurants, that is if you include the Bar-H tavern and W B's Bulk Food—“Carry-Out Soup, Sandwiches, and all the ‘fixin’s’.”

Greensburg also boasts, of course, the world’s largest hand-dug well, and a 1,000 pound pallasite meteorite, the largest of its kind yet discovered and, until last week, “on view at no charge.” 

The gift store that serviced the meteorite offered abundant tourist information and, yes, “public restrooms.” As that tourist information reminded us, “Friendly neighborhoods and an active Main Street make Greensburg an especially nice stop.”  For a town that aspires merely to be a “nice stop,” public restrooms matter.

In his unhinged best-seller, What’s The Matter With Kansas, Thomas Frank envisions towns like Greensburg as dying embers, hapless victims of the “deregulated capitalism” that has “crushed” local business, driven agriculture to a “state of near collapse,” and in general transform-ed what was once a “worker’s paradise” into a land of “sterility and decay.”

Fortunately, the people of Greensburg have yet to learn how pointless their lives are. They remain of the opinion that their friends, family, and community still matter. On Friday, May 4, as is well enough known, a 1.5-mile-wide Category F-5 enhanced tornado roared across the plains and headed into Greensburg. But the people did not panic or wait for the government to take care of them. These are self-sufficient folks. With just twenty minutes of warning, they headed for their basements and their storm shelters. They made sure their friends and neighbors did likewise. That only 12 people died is a testament to the same. These people took care of themselves. They always have.

Nobody knows more about the historical heart and pioneer spirit of Greensburg than third generation Greensburg citi-

zen, Bob Caplinger, author of Marshall and Anna Caplinger of Greensburg, Kansas. In the book, Caplinger recounts the story of his grandparents, who left family and friends in Trimble County, Kentucky in 1898 and moved to Greensburg. Caplinger sees some parallels in the struggles his grandparents faced to the challenges facing the people of Greensburg today. He recalls a story that appeared in the July 6, 1900 Kiowa County Signal. Following is an excerpt from that story: 

“J. M. Caplinger, our general blacksmith, Marshall, Trustee, etc. came down Monday with a smile that was surprise to all, of course everybody wanted to know what was the matter and “Cap” ordered cigars and told them a fine boy had put in an appearance at his home and was going to stay.  Cap says he needs a first class assistant who will be a stayer and thinks he has one now that he can depend on.”  This “stayer” was his only boy, Jesse L. Caplinger (Bob’s father), who stay-ed in Greensburg until his death in 1991.

Caplinger ends his book with this paragraph: “Marshall and Anna chose to head west to the new frontier. They never looked back. Like so many other Greens-burg pioneers, they were stayers. They were good for Greensburg and, in return, Greensburg was good to them.” Like Marhsall and Anna, today’s Greensburg residents are “Stayers.”

And anyone who thinks those stayers are facing an insurmountable challenge, think again. Just as you will find in countless communities across the heartland, these people have a long history of banding together and getting things done. In the 1880s, for example, when both the Santa Fe and Rock Island railroads were building lines across the state, the city fathers of Greensburg saw the value in providing the rail companies the water for their steam locomotives and for their workers, as well as for their own growing area. And so in 1887, lacking any dependable source of above ground water, the city granted a franchise for a waterworks system. It cost approximately $45,000, a hefty sum back in those days.

To build a well of sufficient depth and width was no small feat. The engineers hired a crew of farmers, cowboys, and other locals on a day-to-day basis. While some men dug, others hauled the native stone used for the well casing from the Medicine River twelve miles distant. They then used the dirt from the well to level the road back to the quarry.

When completed, the well stood 109 feet deep and 32 feet in diameter. For the next 45 years it served as the city’s water supply. After the well outlived its original use, these resourceful folks turned the well into a tourist attraction. Since 1939, more than 3,000,000 people have paid their respects to this “masterpiece of pioneer engineering.”

The well and the story behind it seem reason enough to rebuild Greensburg. The saga of the tornado and the rebuilding will hugely enrich the local lore and make the new Greensburg all the more worth visiting.

And leave it to another Caplinger, fourth-generation Steve, to sum up the attitude of today’s Greensburg stayers. “It is only surprising to people that are unfamiliar with western Kansas people that these folks are going to build back. If you have met and known them, you would expect nothing else. A tornado isn’t going to send them packing. This is just a bump in the road. Come back in ten years and Greens-burg will be better than it ever was.”

It is that brand of can-do optimism that will re-build both the town of Greens-burg and the lives of the people touched by this devastating event. Symbolically, amidst the rubble, the two most enduring symbols of the city’s economy still stand—the county courthouse and the Southern Plains Co-op’s grain elevator.

“I don’t see this mess. I see what it’s going to be,” said Mayor Lonnie McCollum, who has been bunking in a friend’s pickup truck. “Who wouldn’t want to live in a brand new town? Who wouldn’t want to have a business in a whole new town?”