Rolling Fork tries to rebuild after the tornado and confronts a new crisis.

We can't afford to lose 30 percent of our population.

For some, the disaster brings with it a dream, a home of their own.

There's something I've been wanting all my life, my own, something my own.

Rolling Fork celebrates its history and from tragedy a remarkable friendship.

[Music] Thanks for joining us for part two of our series that looks at Rolling Fork in the South Delta as the people there try to rebuild in the wake of the devastating tornado of March 24, 2023.

We begin with a sign of hope after a season of disaster.

[Music] On a warm Saturday in October, seven months after the tornado, Rolling Fork looked like a town trying to return to normal.

Meg Cooper is the coordinator of the Lower Delta Partnership, which put the event together.

We do need the Great Delta Bear Affair.

Since March 24, there has been just so much tragedy, so much drama, so much everything going on in the community and none of it's been exceptionally positive and we need something positive, something uplifting, something to celebrate.

We are seeing progress.

Tracy Hardin, who owns Chuck's Dairy Bar along with her husband, was out with her family.

She had just watched the Chuck's burger eating contest.

The winner ate four Chuck burgers in five minutes.

I don't think we could have asked for a better turnout, uh, being that we just had the tornado.

Um, I'm just excited for it all.

Normally by now I would have bought home and taken a break, but I'm enjoying seeing just other people in town.

There was live music that Saturday.

I had played the Bear Affair with my band many times.

It brought back some great memories.

My friend Eden Brent brought her band down from Greenville.

-Coming back, they've done so much work already.

I mean, I knew they would build back.

-Right.

-But still, you can tell that something terrible has happened.

You know, the whole part of downtown is missing.

The top of the courthouse is gone.

You know, just all of the familiar landmarks, if I hadn't seen the tents, I might not have known exactly where to go because all of the landmarks are still missing.

I was so delighted that the community came together to do this festival because I think they needed it.

-The problems still facing the community were on everyone's mind, including Jane Windham-Lamberson.

Jane's biggest concern is the Sharkey- Issaquena Community Hospital.

She worked there for nearly 50 years and was director of the lab and radiology departments.

-Without our hospital here, you lose probably 75 jobs between the hospital and the nursing home.

People just will not move here at all.

It's already hard to get people to move here.

But, yeah, if without our hospital, then Rolling Fork's really gone.

-Karebya Christmas was selling beauty products at her booth that Saturday and wondering what to do next.

She and her three children are living with their parents.

She had rented the home she lost on March 24th.

Not a lot of options for people that were renters.

I would love to buy, but there's nothing here to buy.

If you don't know people that sold their land, or if you didn't hop on it fast enough, you're kind of out of luck.

A lot of us are being forced to move out of town because there's nowhere here to live.

What are you gonna do?

I think I'm gonna pack up and leave.

We help with the kids and why she works from home and having to go to a new city, having to find somebody to help assist with the kids and everything, it's a struggle.

The bear is a symbol of the community of Rolling Fork because it's part of our shared history.

Like so much of the town, the symbol took a beating on March 24th.

In Jackson in October, Dayton Scoggins built a new bear from a big piece of Mississippi Cypress.

Over the years, Dayton has carved 18 Rolling Fork bears.

Many of them were damaged on March 24th.

Art is secondary to the people and all the property over there.

We were concerned about all that, but looking at the devastation, that's the least of their worries.

Meg Cooper of the Lower Delta Partnership collected and stored broken pieces of the bears after the tornado, hoping they could be put back together.

Now you'll notice that every bear bears a striking resemblance to Teddy Roosevelt.

There's a story in all this and a good one.

Way back in 2009, my cinematographer friend, Jim Raines, and I went into the deep woods near the community of Onward, Mississippi, looking for the spot where the story originated.

In November of 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt came here to Sharkey County to the banks of the Little Sunflower River to hunt bear with one of the most famous hunters in the Delta, Holt Collier.

Holt Collier was a black man, born a slave.

But despite his skill, Collier at first was not able to track a bear for the president to shoot.

Then Collier captured a bear and tied it to a tree.

This political cartoon that appeared in the Washington Post tells what happened next.

The president refused to shoot the captive bear.

Today, visitors to the Theodore Roosevelt birthplace national site in New York hear the story.

Alyssa Parker Geisman is with the National Park Service.

- Not every visitor knows this, but the Teddy bear originated from the 1902 presidential hunt in Mississippi.

This drawing the line in the Mississippi cartoon makes its way to a candy maker in Brooklyn.

Now, this candy maker has an idea.

What if we do a stuffed animal and it's gonna be a bear?

And let me ask the president if we can use his name in association with this bear and call it the Teddy's bear.

And as the story goes, the president is like, yeah, right, like, sure, you can do it, good luck to you.

And thus we have the Teddy bear.

- Teddy's memory is still very much alive in the South Delta.

One day, a group of school kids heard the story while visiting the Theodore Roosevelt National Wildlife Reserve near Rolling Fork.

President Theodore Roosevelt came to Mississippi because he was going to go on a bear hunt.

Tourists and not just school tours are now coming to see what the Delta offers.

Twenty-five years ago, tourism in the Delta was rare.

Today, with places like the Gateway to the Blues Museum in Tunica, the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, the Grammy Museum in Cleveland, and the B.B.

King Museum in Indianola, the Delta has become a destination.

Rolling Fork's visitor center, which was wrecked on March 24th, told the stories of my hometown, including the one about Teddy and the bear, of course.

Hopefully, it will rise again.

By the way, on the weekend of the Great Delta Bear Affair, Dayton Scoggins added a brand new bear.

We call it rebuilding Rolling Fork one board at a time.

You know, he's gonna have a hand saw in one hand, the hammer in the other, and a little tool belt, you know, so we start putting it back together.

Among the many concerns about the future of Rolling Fork, housing is one of the biggest.

The sounds of construction, the smell of fresh lumber, that's Rolling Fork recovering and facing critical issues exposed by the tornado.

Rolling Fork, before the storm, was somewhere between 1800 and 2000 people.

We can't afford to lose 30 percent of our population, but without housing that could happen.

Fred Miller is president of the local bank and a former Rolling Fork mayor.

In order to continue to have any kind of quality of life, we have to have people here.

After March 24th, Miller and other local leaders started an organization called Rolling Fork Rising.

The goal was not to simply build new houses, but to put former renters in those houses as homeowners.

A lot of the people just are going to leave us.

We know that.

But if we can bring others in, give them the opportunity to live in a house newly painted with drywall, all the things that people should have in today's America, we're going to be able to do that.

And we think that there could be generational changes, not just for the adults, but certainly for their children.

Shirley Stamps is one of those who will be moving into a house built by Rolling Fork Rising.

She was among hundreds of Rolling Fork residents displaced by the tornado to towns across the Delta.

We first talked with Shirley in December at the house she was renting in Greenville.

And I liked to take my grandkids and my child to a good safe place and Rolling Fork was a safe place.

What happened to Shirley is an example of how the tornado turned lives upside down.

After that, yeah, I came to my son's house.

I got an older son stay up in Greenville.

Shirley's daughter, Correanier, came from Texas to help her mom.

She's still here trying to make sure that me and her and her kids are straight.

Trying to make sure I get right first before she leaves.

For Shirley, the Rolling Fork Rising program is a godsend.

Until now, she's been a renter.

It helped me to learn to manage my money, be a first time home owner.

I'd be owning my own house.

I won't have to rent no more.

And thank God, I won't have to worry about renting from nobody else.

It would be my own.

And I thank God for that.

There's something I've been wanting all my life, my own, something my own.

After the tornado, most financial support from government agencies and insurance went to property owners.

But 68% of the residents of Rolling Fork at the time were renters, like Shirley Stamps.

There should have been a more urgent action to get housing here as quickly as possible for those that are renters.

Alexis Hamilton is an agent with the Mississippi State University Extension Service.

He is also a part of the Rolling Fork Rising team.

He understands the frustration felt in much of the community.

Sometimes you just have to do what's best for the community and get them a place to live, get them back home so you can keep those residents, keep the tax base up and keep the schools blooming and things such as that nature.

So you just have to put your own ideals and own things aside and just do what works for now.

Get people in homes now.

- Britt Williamson is the pastor of the First Baptist Church.

He's also the CEO of Rolling Fork Rising.

Even before the tornado, he was aware that the housing issue is the result of deeper economic problems.

- I knew when I moved to Rolling Fork in 2012 that this was a poverty-stricken area.

I knew that 38% of the people in Sharkey County lived below the federal poverty line, which is a little over $23,000 a year.

What I didn't know until after the tornado was that a majority of people here lived in rental housing.

Homeowners have a lot of different ways that they can receive funds to repair or rebuild their house.

There is almost nothing to help a renter family.

- This is Brad Craddock, working with the crew hired by Rolling Fork Rising.

They hope to have as many as six homes like this one built by the end of 2023.

The plan is for a lot more.

Financing is coming from donations and a lot of the construction labor is being done by volunteers.

Commercial builders are also at work in Rolling Fork.

Daniel Jennings is a developer from Vicksburg.

His company is putting up energy-efficient homes.

I think that what we're doing right now with the homes gives an indication as to how the town can come back because now you see new life, you know, and with new life, it's new possibilities.

So I hear people say, well, you know, Rolling Fork probably gonna be the same, maybe it'll be better.

- After the tornado, faith-based organizations came from all over to help.

A team from God's Pit Crew arrived in red trucks, loaded with everything it took to build and furnish two houses in 12 days.

Warren Johnson leads the team.

- We've had people that, in areas that has helped us when they needed help, their own self, but they're willing to help their neighbors.

- Andrea Larry's mobile home had to be demolished.

Now Andrea and her husband and their grandson, Kobe, are back in Rolling Fork in a mobile home gifted to them by the North Carolina-based organization, Samaritan's Purse.

And it's just been a blessing.

It's been a blessing.

And they came back out and they check on you all the time to make sure everything's going well.

- When we met Andrea's niece, Michelle, all that remained of her home was a concrete slab.

Now Michelle lives close to her aunt in a mobile home fully furnished, also from Samaritan's Purse.

We've been told by many people in Rolling Fork that if there's not enough new housing to go around, and soon, this already difficult situation will get worse.

So the side of new homes going up is a positive thing.

- A homeowner starts rebuilding a house.

When we're building houses, it brings hope to everybody in the community.

And so I firmly believe that God has a plan for this area and that he's gonna see us build back better than we were before.

- Before the tornado, this bare piece of ground was Alexis and Miriam Jackson-Hamilton's front yard.

Alexis is part of the Rolling Fork Rising team.

Miriam is the only licensed professional counselor in the county.

She's helping the people of Rolling Fork with the damage that doesn't show.

Among them are her own children.

- Their senses are very much so heightened right now.

Whereas the rain used to excite them.

Now it's a totally different emotion that they feel.

It's fear.

It's I don't want it to rain.

I have to explain to some of them.

Rain is an all the part of life.

We have to have rain in order for the crops to survive.

But they never thought about that.

Now they associate rain, wind, tornado.

They're afraid.

I see a lot of children who initially had a lot of sleep disturbances.

And some of them still aren't.

School has started back and they still have these horrible sleep schedules because they've been off of their schedule since the tornado.

- Miriam and her husband Alexis have four children, ages four to 14.

- But I was at home with my oldest son and we all fell 16 stairs down into the basement.

He's a teenager.

So he falls in that category of "I don't like to talk about."

But I do see the behavior.

When it thunders, he's gonna come into our room.

He's gonna lay on the floor with us.

He needs to be comforted.

But he's not gonna run up and say, hold me.

But it's obvious that he's very uncomfortable.

- The night of the tornado, a friend took their family in.

She gave Miriam's nine year old son Mason a Spiderman toy.

I didn't realize the impact of getting a Spiderman, a little fluffy Spiderman, what they would do to my son that night.

And my son ran and he was like, "Look, look at my..." And I just started to cry because I didn't even realize how important them having something to play with was for them.

But a lot of adults are just in that robot mode.

I'm just doing what I have to do.

And I'm seeing that a lot right now, especially for the people who are already struggling.

It gets heavy.

But because of my love for the community and my love for the people, I just keep moving.

And it's been difficult for the last week, but I think that I'm called to do something greater.

The day we met Undray Williams, a guy from FEMA was measuring his lot for a mobile home to replace the home he lost to the tornado.

Today, Williams is living in a FEMA trailer.

FEMA wanted to provide housing for all eligible tornado survivors by the end of 2023.

By the end of November, that was 86 units, mostly mobile housing.

Darrell Dragoo is the federal coordinating officer for FEMA in Mississippi.

On March 29th is when I got here, looked at what we had.

There was debris in the streets.

The power lines were down.

Water problems.

People without housing.

People with nowhere to go.

And then we spoke to it in July of where are we today.

There's no debris in the streets.

The streets are open.

Electric's back on.

People have water and we're starting to see the housing piece come into play.

As expected, some residents complained the process was slow.

We have to meet the electrical requirements, the inspection requirements.

Everything is done by a process, by standard, and by law.

So when we put our units in, we want them to be safe, habitable, and secure.

After President Biden declared a federal disaster, FEMA brought a small army of workers to Mississippi.

With a promise of help, expectations were raised.

That's hard some days because we have to explain to them that we can do these things.

We're trying to get you started on the road to recovery.

We're trying to get you that step up so you can move forward, but we can't do everything.

We can't duplicate insurance.

At years end, FEMA still had around 300 people working in Mississippi.

Darryl Dragoo says they'll stay as long as the state wants FEMA's help.

We want to see recovery happen.

We want to see things happen faster.

But the truth of the matter is, if we try to rebuild an entire county courthouse, a brand new community center, or a new city hall and fire departments, that's not going to happen in a month.

It literally will take a year, three years, five years.

It's difficult some days.

Not because you aren't making progress, but you realize how hard it is and you realize how much hurt is actually out there or what happened to those residents, those people that called that home.

As we've seen throughout this series, a disaster like the one that struck Rolling Fork has a way of revealing the character of a community.

One of the most remarkable stories we've found is also one of the most unlikely.

It's about the rescuers and the rescued, and the night when a tornado forged a remarkable friendship.

This is Taylor's room.

Taylor is who?

Your daughter?

Your niece.

Okay.

That's Taylor's room.

This is Mackenzie's room.

That's another niece.

These are the Morris sisters in the family home being built to replace the one they lost March 24th.

Around Rolling Fork, Deborah and Brenda are known as Tiny and Batman.

There were 11 family members in the house that Friday night.

Then another sister called with a warning.

I just got up and ran in there and told everybody to take shelter because there's a tornado that's headed toward a road park on the ground and we're going to get hit hard.

I was getting ready to cook and that's when she came and said everybody take, you know, we got to take shelter now.

So by the time I went to turn around, I thought about left the stove on.

I said, oh, I left the stove on.

I went to turn the stove off.

But by the time I turned the stove off and went to, like she said, go in the hallway, it knocked us down.

To nya and Daton Griffin are storm chasers, mother and son, from Talladega, Alabama.

At that moment, they were just south of Rolling Fork.

We rode with them to where they were that night.

Hey, let's go.

Going north on highway 61, the scene was operatic.

I think he took off.

They were in a kind of caravan with at least six other chase teams.

What they saw in their in-car radar was right in front of them a massive tornado, winds of almost 200 miles an hour.

These cars need to stop.

Dude, look?

This is going to be us.

Brenda Morris and her family were right under it.

WIthin minutes, the storm chasers became rescuers.

This video is recorded by Sawyer Delatte.

Go, go, go!

Tanya and Daton ended up in front of 333 Mulberry Street under the rubble that had been the house.

Brenda and the others could hear them searching for survivors.

And they just were coming down the street and they was telling us if y'all got a light or your flashlight or your phone, no flicking your light so we can know where you are or just holler, just keep hollering, help, help.

By the grace of God, he let me get my right hand out through the woods and just got it out and I was waving my hand with my phone or my flasher and that's how they found us.

You have people under the walls that are, that cars on top of the other side, I mean you just had to say it.

I said, "Don't take this the wrong way, I'm not trying to scare you."

But on top of that wall is another wall, on top of that wall is a car.

And this silence just ran over the house.

It was about 15 seconds or so and all I heard was, "A car."

And I said, "Yeah."

Amazingly, Brenda's 8-year-old nephew Jeremy was the only one badly hurt, but now she says he's back to his old self.

Brenda and Tonya stayed in touch by phone after that.

Then on October 28th, Tanya and her son drove back to Rolling Fork.

Well hello, my friend.

How you doing?

I'm doing good.

Yeah, nice.

You a friend, I miss you.

Thank you so much.

Oh yeah.

Always.

This is Josh, he was there tonight.

Hello.

Everybody got introduced, including a group of environmental science students from the University of Louisiana who had also helped with the rescue.

After the tornado, the storm chasers were called "heroes."

The Griffins say they got that wrong.

One thing about that night that will always stand out with me, it don't matter how many we pulled out.

If they were able to walk and help, that night they got out.

They lost everything, but they started helping with the rescue.

We did what was the right thing.

But the real heroes are the people we pulled out of the rubble that didn't care about what they just lost, didn't care what happened.

Give me a flashlight, let's go dig through your house.

It turns out the disaster of March 24th had a way of revealing humanity.

Is this a friendship now?

Yes it is.

Oh yes it is.

I think it's more than a friendship.

It's more than a friendship.

Sisters.

Exactly.

Here you go.

A disaster like this is such a complex thing.

Deciding where to put the money and energy is the toughest decision of all.

Mistakes have been made and people are frustrated.

They want things to move faster.

Ultimately what's going to make it all work is cooperation, hard work, faith, and personal integrity.

In part three we'll see where Rolling Fork is a year after the tornado and what the future holds for this community as they continue their long journey back.

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