I used to get secretly excited when the tornado sirens would sound. I would dash through the house searching frantically for my ruby red slippers, my brown wig to stuff my blonde curls into, and of course my stuffed dog Toto, all while my mother was chasing me down demanding I get into the safe room. “Call me Dorky, call me Dorky!” I would scream at my agitated mother. My real desire was to be acknowledged as my fictional idol Dorothy, from the Wizard of Oz, who I mistakenly referred to as “Dorky.” As the warning continued to sound, I would become instilled with excitement thinking it would finally be my turn to visit the wonderful Wizard of Oz. I was five then, and still had underlying hope that magical places, like Oz, were not stories but truly existed. Twelve years later I watched in horror at the news broadcast of the devastation caused by tornados in Moore, Oklahoma. My sympathy went out to the people affected, but after hearing news reporters repeatedly state that the Moore area was an ideal geological place for tornados to form, I could not understand why anyone would want to live there. A lady interviewed in front of her demolished home also had her house hit in the tragic Moore tornado of 1999. When asked if she would rebuild she said, “Well, of course; this is my home.” The comment struck me as a sign of insanity. Why would people willingly choose to live in a town that continually places their families in peril?

In June of 2013, a student-run volunteer organization that I cofounded, “Do Hard Things,” traveled to Moore to aid in the cleanup of their city. I was unprepared for the devastation I saw. The footage aired by the media did not fully encapsulate the damage done to the small town. There were countless miles of rubble and people searching through the debris for remnants of their lives. While working at a church shelter to distribute supplies, we heard countless stories of people who had nothing left but the clothes on their backs. As heart-wrenching as it was, it was equally frustrating to me. I wanted to tell every citizen of Moore to leave their town, to go somewhere where tornados like this are not destined to happen. I never had the misfortune of experiencing natural disasters in my city, and I could not comprehend how seemly sane citizens choose to live in a damned town. Moore was just a town; it had no apparent significance to me. Although the definitive answer eluded me, I was content with assuming the people of Moore were merely irrational and stubborn.

Later that day we traveled to Bethel, a small town that had also been hit by the tornados. We were sent to a house, or what was left of it after the tragedy, that belonged to an elderly man named Daniel. All that remained consisted of a slab of concrete surrounded by parts and pieces of his obliterated home. Our job was to help clean the plot of land, and we began by collecting scattered clothes, books, picture frames, and other meaningful pieces of Daniel’s life. As we were cleaning, Daniel began to speak about the past. He began to tell us about how he was born and raised in Oklahoma, and that he came to Bethel after serving in the Vietnam War. He had built his now demolished house solely with his own hands over thirty-five years ago. The most heart-wrenching detail of Daniel’s story was that his wife had died recently and was buried at a neighboring cemetery. He made an effort to visit her gravesite frequently. One of my friends asked Daniel if he was selling his land. Puzzled, he replied, “No of course not, I’m just going to rebuild. This town is where my children are, where my wife was, and where I’ll always be.” After talking to Daniel, a shift in my perception occurred, and for the first time I suddenly solved a mystery from my childhood, the reason Dorothy so adamantly wanted to return home to Kansas. During my childhood, I struggled with the notion that she would leave Oz, a beautiful city, to go back to “Tornado Alley.” After listening to Daniel, Dorothy’s reasoning was apparent to me. She wanted to leave Oz for home. I finally understood that the citizens of Oklahoma did not lose their homes, they lost their houses. A house is where one finds shelter. Any building can provide that. However, these people’s homes are still there in Moore or Bethel, and no natural disaster can take that away. Home is where family resides, where friends are near, and where people place their roots. Tornados will never change the way these people feel about their cities. Although outsiders may not understand the attachment developed between the citizens of the communities and their towns, the bonds became evident to me through the experiences I had volunteering for such a meaningful cause.