I was within a mile of where Obama was speaking once. My grandma lived within a mile of Missouri Southwest where he talked a few days after the Joplin tornado.
Of course we couldn't leave the house because of road blocks and what not... So we sat in the living room and watched his speech like a comedy. That was the day we had gone out and helped people in town.
This is a picture of a house in Joplin that I took that I'll never forget.
I took it with my cell phone camera so the quality isn't that great. Two streets down from this house was where the tornado directly hit. Two streets over it looked like Nagasaki or Hiroshima. There was nothing left at all. Whole houses were gone. The roads were in pieces. It was bad.
Funny story time? You know my history teacher that I hated this year? She tried to tell me that it wasn't that bad.
Her exact quote, "I lived like 30 minutes from there. It was not as bad as you say it was."
Oh...that made me mad. I knew people who had their houses basically vaporized. I stood in the building of SW MO State university when we were registering to go out and help. The National Guard were carrying bodies to the basement under white sheets not two days before. They originally told me that I was too young and I couldn't go...but then the lady took us aside and said "Walk over there, talk to that guy, come back and tell me you're 18."
If phones were allowed at my school, I'd have shown her the picture I have with me holding up a street sign with Nagasaki behind me. I lost that picture a few months ago. I got a postcard from the mayor about 6 months later saying thank you for all I did to help. They sent those out to everybody who helped.