Elementary School Teacher Loses BATMAN TOY Collection During May 20th Tornado in Moore, OK.
OK, For everybody out there who has been reading the BAT-BLOG for the last few years you know this site is all about the love of the "Caped Crusader" character and the joys of collecting Batman Stuff. We cover the new Video Games coming out, the new Animated TV Cartoons, Movies, etc... pretty much anything Batman-related and it's usually all fun and games.
But today I'd like to talk about something very very serious and I'm really hoping that many of you can get involved in this in any way you can. I'm going to try to explain this the best way I can and, in advance, I apologize for it's length. I'm just trying to be as clear and concise as I can. But first, please check out this TV News 9 Video:
News9.com - Oklahoma City, OK - News, Weather, Video and Sports |
I live in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and on May 20th we had some extremely serious tornadoes going on here in our state. You might have heard about them, I think they made both national and international news. The US Weather Service listed the event as an Ef-5 Tornado (which is HUGE, like almost a world record). It was a very BIG deal and also pretty damn scary.
Now, this event happened during the day and I was at home glued to the TV. The thing about Tornadoes is that they can predict them in advance really well and while they're going on they can track them and almost pin them down to an exact address. The technology is pretty amazing! But as far as the storm event goes, you just have to sit back and take the ride. There is really not much of anything you can do except get yourself into a storm shelter and wait until it's over.
Most of the major damage of that day happened, not too far from me, in a city called Moore, which is about a 5 or 10 minute drive from my house. So, as you can imagine, I was watching everything on the TV Weather Report extremely close.
One of the big stories of that day was about an Elementary School named "Plaza Towers". It got hit hard and was damaged severely. I mean, like practically destroyed and this was happening during a school day when kids were actually there, all the classes were full. In fact, seven children were tragically killed in the event and that makes it even more difficult to think about. My heart totally goes out to the Parents, Friends, and Facility. I'm sure this is something that will take forever to get over or maybe even never forget. I'm sorry.
Whew, OK, so here's where the story continues and it's the main reason for this post. It's really important to me that you keep reading, it will blow your mind, you'll see.
Now, after the storm there was some major cleaning-up to do, wounds to heal, and other very serious stuff going on like funerals to go to. It was seriously a nightmare for many people while others must have felt extremely lucky. The good news is that most people around here really give a lot of support to each other so hopefully that was a blessing in some way. Now, here's where the reson for this post comes in. I never really heard about these kids getting killed. I just assumed everything was OK.
But a few months later they ran a story on our local TV news (News 9) about the Plaza Towers Elementary School. One of their First-Grade Teachers, a Woman known as Ms. Evans, was an extremely serious Batman Collector.
She has been collecting "Batman stuff" since she was 8 years old and had a huge collection. The cool thing was that she shared a large part of it with her Students. She displayed a lot of it on one wall of her classroom so the kids could see it. The sad news, almost all of it, like 98% of it, was taken away or destroyed by the storm.
You can see some photos here which give you a good idea of the damage. In the "Before and After" photos of her classroom please take a good look at the mural on the wall. Do you see that graphic of a "Lion"? Now, look at the "After" photo... WOW! Some of the walls of the room are completely missing and the roof is gone!!
That day Ms. Evans and all of her Students were in that room when the event occurred. Actually, she took all the kids to a small near-by bathroom to hide and everyone crammed in there to wait it out. They were in there, for what seemed like hours. Then, when they all finally emerged, this is what they all saw. There was even an upside-down car in one of the other rooms. WOW! None of her students were majorly hurt so that's the good news, the most important thing really. But, as a side-note, all of her "Batman stuff" was gone.
Now, Let's move on to the actual reason for this post.
What we here at the BAT-BLOG want to do is start a BATMAN TOY DRIVE to help her renew some of her collection. We want YOU, our readers, to please get involved and HELP IN ANY WAY YOU CAN!
We're asking you to please do one or two of these things:
1. If you can, please donate some Batman Toys or other Memorabilia. Well, just about anything "Batman". If you e-mail me I will give you an address where you can mail them directly to her and her class. Please don'y mail anything directly to the School because they have a lot more important things to do to get their classes ready for opening on August 16th. Here's my e-mail button:
2. If you don't have anything to send and would just like to donate some cash then here's a Pay-Pal Button where you can send what ever amount you want. If you don't have a Pay-Pal account then please e-mail me and I'll give you an address where you can send a Check or Money Order.
3. This goes out to people who are either sending something or NOT:
Please share this story on your favorite social network sites. Yes, we're talking Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc... In other words, if you can't donate anything (or ARE donating, either way), then please help us get the story out to other people who might want to help.
Oh yeah, and in advance, Thank You!!
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