Survivors of tornado that leveled Missouri city look back
Will Norton was among 400 graduates of Joplin High School emerging from their commencement ceremony.
Liz Easton was watering plants in her yard, while Mark Lindquist was tending to residents of the group home where he worked.
Will's room remains the way he left it, with an open pack of chewing gum, his trademark mismatched socks, his computer and the green screen that helped earn him a YouTube following for his travel chronicles.
Joplin now has "Will Norton Miracle Field," a baseball park for children with special needs.
Freeman Hospital and its Ozark Center counseling arm has "Will's Place," a treatment site for children with mental health or behavioral issues.
Lindquist and a co-worker at the group home known as Community Group Services scrambled as the twister bore down to place mattresses atop three middle-aged men with Down syndrome.
Even though Rob Chappel figured the early televised reports were exaggerated — the Home Depot was gone, along with the Wal-Mart, and the city's biggest hospital was blown out — he assumed there would be deaths.
More came in, some in the back of pickup trucks, a few in body bags.
[...] he said he was struck by the compassion he witnessed, from restaurants hauling in food for the displaced to embalmers and funeral directors coming in from many miles away.
On Sunday, the fifth anniversary of the storm, Gov. Jay Nixon will address the high school's commencement ceremony and attend a public remembrance at Cunningham Park.
"[...] they're difficult," Mark Norton said of past anniversaries.