Scenes From a Recovery
Bill Reiter, sports reporter at The Kansas City Star, visited storm-ravaged Iowa to report on the recovery efforts. The result, "Iowans Are Reclaiming Their Lives and Their Sports," uses scenes from Des Moines, Parkersburg, West Des Moines, Ames, Waterloo and Iowa City to show how "a state trying to put itself together has done so, in small but meaningful ways, through sports." In the following excerpt, the people of Parkersburg and its neighboring communities demonstrate the Iowans' spirit.
….The high school was gone. The football field, the one that had produced NFL players Casey Wiegmann, Aaron Kampman, Jared DeVries and Brad Meester, lay in shambles.
Then something beautiful happened.
Other teams — teams that had been roughed up and beaten by this perennial power, by those men who now make their living in the NFL — they came to what remained of the town.
They went to the high school football field.
They got down on their hands and knees.
Inch by inch, one blade of grass at a time, they crawled across the turf, picking glass and wood and debris from the ground….
In Parkersburg, they say, they'll play football on that field come fall.
http://www.kansascity.com/838/story/674073.html