Moving back to Lebanon
Lebanon, Missouri…
I grew up in Lebanon, went to school at the high school and I still see many of my peers when I've visited. When I left for college after moving into a house with my roommates in Columbia, Mo., I wasn't expecting to come back anytime soon.
This last year has been a rollercoaster for me. After graduating from Mizzou and accepting an internship at the Quad-City Times in Davenport, Ia., I was excited to get out of Missouri for a few months at least. However, that excitement would be very short lived after my apartment building collapsed only after having moved in roughly 12 hours prior.
The Davenport Hotel, the name of the building I moved into in Davenport, was only about a 10-minute walk from the newsroom with a variety of restaurants, bars, businesses, and coffee shops within walking distance as well. My mom, dad, and grandma came with me to move me out of the house in Columbia and into the new apartment. As we got on the road, my mom's car broke down and she and my dad stayed back as we continued on the six-hour car ride to Davenport. This was only the start of our problems.
Soon, my grandma and I arrived around 5 p.m., where I called and texted my contacts I had for the building with no answer. They knew I would be moving in that day, but I wasn't able to get in touch with anyone for about an hour [This was my first red flag of many].
Thank fully, someone came and gave me my keys and gave me a tour of my apartment and the building, which would be the first I had seen it in person. The first thing I noticed walking into the building was how dirty everything was. The lobby, an old hotel/bank/turned-apartment building, had an old fountain built in the middle, which didn't work. Dirt and grime seemed to cover every square-inch of the lobby. Walking into the little room they have from the elevator, it wasn’t any better.
It was worse in the apartment itself. The floors were disgusting, to the point that, later that night, when we were settling down, it made my mom’s feet black. The floors were clearly slanted and built terribly and the windows, which you couldn’t physically open, were also covered in grime, inside and out. And my cat, when we got her into the apartment, hide in any corner she could find.
My mom and dad eventually make it to the apartment in the U-Haul with all of my stuff. So, we spent the next five hours unpacking the truck.
The next day, we go out to eat breakfast. Then to Target and some other stores to get some extras I didn’t have before I moved. And around 3 p.m., my family leave me on my own in my first day in a new city in a different state. That same day, about thirty minutes after they leave, I take my purse and leave to get groceries.
Then, when I got back around 7 p.m., tragedy struck.
I was driving down the street towards my apartment building downtown and noticed some police lights. I didn’t think it was anything serious, just that maybe someone got into a wreck. I pull onto my street and a policeman directs me to a parking lot behind the buildings adjacent to my building and I get out.
I walk around and, intitially, it takes me a second to realize what had happened and to recognize that the back of my building had collapsed.
As soon as I realized what was happening, I started to panic. My parents had just left me and I was all alone. I tried asking a police officer at the scene what was going on, how I was going to get my stuff out, especially my cat, but he told me they weren’t letting anyone inside.
I started to call my mom on FaceTime to show her what was happening, but I was just crying and crying and I counldn’t get any words out. Finally, they realized what was happening and decided to turn back, but they were already to St. Louis at that point.
A woman nearby recognized that I was panicing and helped me calm down and get me under control. She stayed with me until the Red Cross announced they were setting up a resource point for the tenants of the building in a church across the street and I went there to wait.
Some of my new coworkers at the Quad-City Times who were called in to cover the collapse heard from my editor that it was my building I just moved into and came to comfort me after they were done with their stuff. By that time, my mom had arranged a hotel for all of us for the time being, but I wasn’t going to be able to check in until 11 p.m. Gretchen Teske took me to her apartment where I waited for the check in time and for my parents.
Monday, the city announced demolition on the building would being Tuesday morning, meaning no one was going to be able to go back inside to recover anything in the apartments. Meaning my cat wasn’t coming out either.
We went by, I cried again, and pretty much mourned the loss of my cat, who I got in 2020 right after campus shut down for the Covid-19 pandemic. Then, Monday night, a woman appeared in one of the windows and was rescued by emergency personelle. Because of her, they decided to do one more sweep of the building, which the Scott County Humane Society made sure they also searched for pets they knew were in the building.
On Tuesday, we waited and waited for any news about Lulu (my cat). The first to call me was Gretchen again, who was watching as they pulled her out. Then, as soon as we hung up, I got a call from the humane society who confirmed it was Lulu.
So, the next day, on Wednesday, I started my internship with the Quad-City Times, which I enjoyed immensely. I learned many valuable things about a newsroom, being on assignment, and working with others. I was also able to develop my skills in photography a lot more as I worked with better equipement than I had access to previously.
However, when my internship was up in August, they did not decide to keep me. So began my spiral into trying to find a new job and failing. I applied to several newsrooms and media publications across the country and got no reply.
My mom eventually recommended I find a job at a school in Davenport for the time being, as I had to sign a year-long lease with a different apartment in order to stay at the newspaper. I was hired as a paraprofessional at Central High School and started liking working with the other staff and the students in the library. And as I was having no luck with finding a new career job, I decided to switch paths and go back to school.
In October 2023, I enrolled in the graduate school at Missouri State University in Springfield, Mo. where I would work towards earning my masters in their Masters of Arts in Teaching program. I started my first classes in January 2024 and getting ready for my second semester in the summer now. I’ll be able to graduate in the spring of 2025 after I finish my student teaching and get a job as a high school English teacher, or for journalism if the school has it.
So, that’s where my story ends. I moved back to Lebanon on May 30, and have started settling back into my childhood home for the time being. My mom has arranged for me to start working with her at her place of work, but I still miss photography.
I’ve been doing it for so long now and I don’t want to give it up. I’ve worked with others I know to give them senior photos and I have plenty of experience in a documentary style of photography. I love meeting people and collaborating with them to create their perfect moment.
