by Mark Tabb
And Ed encouraged Jan to pursue her own interests. When their sons were in grade school, she decided she wanted to go through EMT training and become a paramedic. “You will be great at it,” Ed said. He responded the same way when she decided to take a job outside the home. They had the kind of relationship where they could each pursue their interests without the other feeling threatened by it. All the while, both of them worked hard at their jobs during the day and made time for long walks with each other in the evenings. Somehow, Ed usually found a way to make sure those walks ended up at the local ice cream place.
Neither gave a lot of thought to the way in which they had arranged their household responsibilities. It was what it was. Jan took care of things at home, while Ed took care of things at school. Shortly after the tornado, that arrangement unraveled. When their house blew away, Jan naturally took charge of making sure it was rebuilt. She found an apartment for them to stay in while the work was being done and picked out their new cars, including a little red truck for Ed. At the same time, she put their finances back in order, chased down all the missing bills, and settled with the insurance adjusters. She hired the contractor that Todd recommended, without competing bids, and watched over the rebuilding of their house on a daily basis. In addition, as assistant city clerk, she did the same things for the town of Parkersburg, only on a larger scale.
Ed, meanwhile, juggled meetings with insurance adjusters and contractors at the school along with overseeing the rebuilding of the athletic fields. He sat in on meetings with the superintendent and principal in which they planned the design for the new school, as well as plotting the logistics of the upcoming new school year. They had to figure out a way to move 225 high school students into the middle school without moving the middle school students. He also taught summer driver’s education classes, which started two days after the tornado. Neither Ed nor Jan had a moment to call their own, and both found themselves so tired at the end of the day that they barely had enough strength to eat a quick meal and head to bed.
After church one Sunday, Jan overheard a friend ask Ed, “Have things settled down for you yet? Has it gotten any easier now that you have a place to stay and your house is going back up?”
Ed said something he did not realize he would soon regret. “I think it has somewhat for Jan,” he said.
When she heard those words come out of his mouth, Jan nearly exploded. What are you smoking? she wanted to say. Before that moment, she didn’t realize how much she resented the fact that Ed had thrown all of their home responsibilities on her after the tornado. She also did not appreciate his lack of acknowledgment of the heavy responsibilities she carried with the city, especially now. Again, she had never really formulated these feelings into concrete thoughts; instead they sat below the surface. As soon as she heard Ed’s words to their friend, her anger came rushing to the surface. She nearly jumped on him right then. Throughout their marriage she had never been shy about expressing her feelings. However, she knew she needed to take a moment to cool off to keep from saying anything she might want to take back later.
Ed noticed the smoke coming out of Jan’s ears. He started to say something but thought better of it. Later that afternoon, he pulled her aside and said, “We need to talk.” He, too, had felt the distance growing between them, and he did not like it.
Over the next couple of hours in their small apartment above True Value Hardware in downtown Parkersburg, the two of them got brutally honest with one another. They realized they had allowed their work lives to become so all-consuming that they were nothing more than ships passing in the night. The two slept in the same apartment but were so exhausted that they never interacted. “That’s not the kind of relationship I want,” Jan said.
“Neither do I,” Ed said. “So what do we need to do to fix it?”
Ed and Jan’s relationship changed after that Sunday afternoon conversation. The two worked at becoming more sensitive to what the other was going through in their jobs. They worked at helping and supporting one another. Both realized that they were in danger of letting the aftermath of the storm pull them apart. Yet, in truth, they now understood that over the years they had let their work lives encroach far too much into their life together. Ed did not all of a sudden turn into a handyman after that discussion, and the only part of their house he actually picked out was the 46-inch Sony flat screen television, but he did spend much more time at the house working on the cleanup and doing whatever he could around the house. Jan went to the school more often to check on the progress being made there.
More than anything, the two of them took the time to remember why they had fallen in love with each other in the first place. For months after the tornado, Ed and Jan found themselves living in the kind of apartment that newlyweds without a penny to their name usually rent. Looking back, they found it oddly appropriate, for this was a fresh start for more than the football team and the town; it was a fresh start for the Thomases as well.
CHAPTER 6
UNPARALLELED OPPORTUNITY
If all I have taught you is how to block and tackle, then I have failed you as a coach.
ED THOMAS
THE A-P FOOTBALL TEAM DRIFTED INTO THE ELEMENTARY school cafeteria for a team meeting two days after the tornado struck. The Parkersburg half of the team flashed back to sitting in this room, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while talking about their flag football teams and dreaming of the day they would get to be real A-P Falcons. To those from Aplington, it was just another school cafeteria.
Several of the Parkersburg players were in the same boat as assistant coach Jon Wiegmann and his son, defensive back Coy. Jon had been out of town on the day of the tornado, but Coy and two other starters from the A-P football team, Jimmy Clark and Alex Hornbuckle, were hanging out in the Wiegmanns’ backyard. When the sirens went off, they ran to Coy’s bedroom, which also happened to be in the basement of the family home. His mother and sister were already there. Once the storm passed, the five were surprised to find that the house was relatively intact, although it was in a different place than it had been when they went down into the basement. The tornado had picked up the house and dropped it back down askew on its foundation in one heavily damaged piece. The house on their right appeared to be directly in the storm’s path, yet it was unharmed. The house on the left, which should have been safe, was completely destroyed.
Compared to several of his teammates, Coy was lucky. Many players lost their homes and everything they called their own. Their lives were scattered across town, but they still came to the team meeting.
Coach Thomas may have called the meeting, but the seniors on the team made it happen. As soon as Coach said he wanted to talk to the team, they phoned or sent text messages to all the other players. That spring, not long before the tornado, Coach held a draft, where every senior selected five underclassmen for whom they were responsible during summer lifting and workouts, as well as during the season. The system worked, because every player who hoped to suit up for the 2008 A-P football team was in the elementary school cafeteria, sitting quietly when Coach Ed Thomas walked in the room.
“Fellas, I really appreciate you making the effort to come over here this morning,” Coach began. “I know some of you lost your homes on Sunday, and I want to tell you how sorry I am that this has happened. You young people whose homes were hit have a lot of work ahead of you, so I won’t take up too much time. But I wanted to meet with you face-to-face and tell you myself that …,” Ed paused and cleared his throat, trying to keep his composure. “I wanted to tell you myself that, God willing, we will play our first home game against West Marshall on our own field on September 5.”
The moment he spoke those words, players jumped up and started high-fiving one another. A smile broke out on every face.
“Now, you need to understand that we’re not doing this for us; we’re doing this for our entire town, for the community. And I’m so proud of you fellas for the way that you’ve already been out
there, working, helping people. Every time I turn around, I see you out there, digging people out, manning chain saws, dragging rubble and furniture out and helping people get to their belongings. I can’t tell you how proud that makes me to see you like that.
“I don’t know if you realize it or not, but you’ve got a tremendous experience ahead of you here. Because of this tornado, you now have the opportunity to show the kind of character we’re made of. You know, adversity is a test of character. It shows what’s already inside you. But it also shapes character, and I believe that is already happening with you fellas. I’ve watched you working side by side, helping people with no hidden agendas, doing it because it is the right thing to do. When you do the right thing, good things happen. You are going to see that this is even more true right now with what we’re going through as a team as a result of this tornado.
“We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, but as the juniors and seniors will tell the rest of ya, this team is built on hard work. When we work hard, and we work together, we will be successful. And the most important work we can do is helping others. Real success is measured not by how much money you have or how many games we win, but by the impact you make on others during your lifetimes. You have an opportunity to impact a lot of lives and help a lot of people in this town. It’s right in front of you. You just have to take hold of it.
“Well, fellas, that’s all I have. Thanks for coming, and let’s get to work.” With that, Ed walked out.
Senior Alec Thompson stood up. Two days earlier, Alec and his father, superintendent Jon Thompson, had stood outside their Aplington home, watching the sky for the storms the weathermen warned were on their way. They watched a mass of clouds begin swirling together, forming the funnel cloud that became the EF5 tornado. The funnel cloud passed directly over their home. As it moved toward the east, the cloud transformed into a massive wall of black, headed straight for Parkersburg. Alec was the first player to arrive at the school after the tornado. He had spent the past two days cutting up trees, dragging debris, and digging people out of their homes all across the south side of Parkersburg. Almost every player in the room had done the same thing.
“Hey, guys,” Alec said, “we’re going to move all the equipment out of the weight room over to the middle school in Aplington. Coach said he wanted to get it someplace dry. We also need some guys to get our helmets and pads and jerseys out of the locker room and bring them over here. The locker room is the only room in the whole school that didn’t collapse, so we should be able to salvage about everything.”
With that, the players took off. Those who didn’t move equipment fanned out across the football, baseball, and softball fields, picking up shredded hunks of plywood, pulling two-by-fours out of the turf, and clearing the fields of all the large pieces of debris. Other students joined them as they rescued most of the books from the school library, along with all the athletic trophies and everything else they could save from inside the school. Periodically, one of the assistant coaches came by and sent a group of students to a house where people needed help. This same scene played out every day for weeks.
On the Wednesday after the tornado, Ed made a strange request to a group of players helping him take down a mangled chain-link fence at the far side of the field. “Hey, guys, my wife asked me if any of you would be willing to help out the town. The city workers usually dig the graves over at the cemetery, but they are all tied up trying to get power poles back up and things like that. We may need about six of you to go over and dig a couple of graves for some of the people who died on Sunday.”
Coy Wiegmann was one of the six players working with the coach right then. To Coy, Coach didn’t even need to ask. All he had to do was point in the right direction, and he was there. Coy had never dug a grave before, but that didn’t matter. The next day Al Kerns, one of the assistant coaches, walked over and told Coy, “Yep, they need you guys.” Several hours later, Coy, Alex Hornbuckle, Curry Hoff, and Spencer Cooper crawled out of a double-sized grave.* The next day they were back at the school with the same question: “What do you need us to do next?”
Television crews descended on Parkersburg, turning the high school and the south end of town into a media circus. Television news vans from Cedar Falls, Waterloo, and Des Moines covered one part of the school parking lot, their antennas fully extended. Cameramen trailed behind reporters, most of whom, it seemed, chased Coach Thomas. “You know who you ought to be talking to,” Coach said after his umpteenth interview. “You should go talk to these young people. They’re the ones who headed up this whole cleanup operation.”
“Which one should we talk to?” a reporter yelled back.
“All of them,” Coach said.†
Since Ed Thomas first arrived in the town of Parkersburg his teams had always reflected his core values of hard work, sacrifice, and commitment on the field. Yet Ed made it clear that these lessons were about far more than football. He told every team he coached, “If all I have taught you is how to block and tackle, then I have failed you as a coach.” Now, more than ever before, his team showed the full impact of his words and example. Ed didn’t have to ask his players to come to the school to help move books from the library and the weight-lifting equipment from the weight room. They came on their own, and they came to work wherever they were needed. Ed chalked this up to the Iowa work ethic and community spirit. For his players it was something more. Sure, they came because of their concern for their community, but they also came and worked because they knew this is what Coach Thomas wanted and expected from them. And to a man, none of them wanted to let him down.
Ed understood how they felt. He had had the same relationship with his high school football coach. With his father being largely absent during his high school years, Ed found a strong role model in Coach Jerry Dawley. Ed caught the coach’s eye on the first day of practice when he showed up in better condition as a freshman than anyone else on the team. Back in those days, football teams did not have off-season conditioning programs. But Ed did. At least a month before the first two-a-day practices, he started running laps at the local horse track. When other players collapsed after endless rounds of wind sprints, Ed kept going. Coaches notice things like that.
Coach Dawley soon found Ed had an inexhaustible appetite for everything football. Ed’s mother prayed he would become a preacher, but Ed always seemed destined to be a coach, from organizing pickup games in his neighborhood to drawing up football plays like other kids doodled. Once he started playing for Jerry Dawley, he saw the real impact a coach can make. Coach Dawley gave Ed an amazing gift. He made Ed believe that he could accomplish anything he put his mind to if he was willing to work hard enough to make it happen.
By his junior year, Ed was Coach Dawley’s starting quarterback. Dawley even let Ed call his own plays, something Ed never did with his own quarterbacks—not even for his own sons. It was like Dawley had another coach on the field. Perhaps that is why he never let anyone lay a hand on Ed during practices. That didn’t exactly endear Ed to his teammates who played defense, but they got over that frustration once they left the football field. Even in high school, Ed’s peers respected him because he lived with passion what he believed. When his sister Susan ran for FFA sweetheart, he voted for the other girl, lest anyone think he played favorites.
By the time he graduated from high school, Ed knew he wanted to become a high school football coach. He wanted to make the same kind of difference in the lives of young men that Coach Dawley made in his.
And he did make a difference. You could see it all over town, even in the most unlikely places.
One night, Ed and his assistant coaches walked into Tooters Bar and Grill in Parkersburg, which also happened to serve the best pizza in town. Al Kerns, Ed’s longtime defensive coordinator, walked in first. He glanced over at the bar and noticed three former Falcon players sitting at the bar, a beer and a cigarette in front of each. By the time Coach Thomas walked in the door, the beers and cigarettes had disappear
ed. Al laughed and shook his head. More than a dozen years had passed since any of these guys had played for Coach, yet they cared about what he thought of them.
Rusty Eddy was one of those former players in the pizza place that night. Rusty dreamed of playing for Coach Thomas from the time he was in first grade. His dream turned into a nightmare during the first two-a-day practice of his freshman year of high school. About halfway through the second practice of the day, he wanted to go up to Coach and tell him, “Excuse me, but I thought I had signed up to play football, not enlist in the Marine Corps.” But he didn’t. He kept his mouth shut as he ran wind sprints and went through blocking drills and ran something the coach called “gut busters” and ran and ran and ran some more. Even when practice was over, the team had to run off the field and into the locker room.
As soon as practice was over, Rusty walked to the local convenience store and bought a thirty-two ounce bottle of Pepsi and a salted nut roll. Both were gone before he completed the short walk to his house.
Once home, he collapsed on the sofa, looked at his father, and said, “Dad, I want to quit football.”
“No problem. You can quit as soon as the season is over.”
“What? That’s not quitting. That’s just not going out for the team as a sophomore.”
“Well,” his dad said, “that’s quitting to me.”
Rusty didn’t argue. He slumped off to his room, where he soaked his aching feet in Epsom salts before going to bed. The next morning he went back to practice. And the next. And the next. Once school started, the team only practiced once a day. That didn’t make things much better for Rusty. He had study hall at the end of the day, but he couldn’t study. Instead he sat and dreaded practice. Once it started, he didn’t feel any better. Over and over he asked himself, “What’s the point of working this hard to play a game?” He never came up with a good answer, at least not while in high school.
