"Alabama the Beautiful" is a slogan adopted by the Alabama Tourism Department at some point in the last 100 years (I couldn't find the exact date, I'll edit if I do). It is used in advertising, I assume, Alabama's virtues to non-Alabamians as a tourist destination. For Alabamians, the phrase is most visible on the big green signs welcoming us home after sojourns or exile in foreign lands (or welcoming foreigners to our exotic shores, whichever way you prefer to spin it). It also makes guest appearances on those old-fashioned GPS's called road-maps that you can find at some rest areas and the occasional truck stop and a modified version urges all and sundry to "Keep Alabama Beautiful" as part of an anti-littering campaign, but that version seems to have fallen out of popularity a bit lately.
There are those outside and inside our borders who scoff at the idea of Alabama being beautiful. They are those who have looked beyond the tourism brochures and seen the poverty that still exists here, the petty bickering over whose sports team is the best, the racial tensions that still flare at inopportune moments, the political squabbles that have kept good people from doing better for themselves. And I don't deny that like any other place on Earth, there are problems here that might or might not be solved more easily than we know.
But in April 2011, I saw once again how beautiful my home state really is. It had nothing to do with the sparkling white sands that edge the Gulf of Mexico, or the gently rolling mountains that rise to the sky in the North. I wasn't feasting my eyes on a pristine stand of evergreen trees in the Pine Belt or visiting any of our beautiful historical homes and gardens.
Just the opposite.
I saw trees that had been snapped like toothpicks, houses that looked like a giant had stepped on them, and cars that had been tossed about like toys. I saw entire towns leveled in the time in takes you to read this blog entry. I saw entire families torn apart, lives shattered, homes destroyed, memories scattered.
And then I saw the people of Alabama reach out, pick each other up, dust each other off, and start putting the pieces of each others' lives together again.
No, it hasn't been easy. As others have said, this is a marathon, not a sprint. There is still a long road ahead, in terms of grief, and anger, and simply getting enough food and shelter for all those who were affected. But in the aftermath of such devastation, such horror and pain, the shear speed of response, and the numbers involved, was and is beautiful to behold.
I've seen that response before, of course. I've seen it in my own community when disaster strikes. I saw it personally on November 15, 2006, when a tornado hit my own home. I couldn't even count the number of people who came and helped that day. By the time the news people made it here from Mobile, the main evidence of the disaster had been cleared away. The camera man was amazed, declaring he had never seen anything like it. I see it every time there is a hurricane and we jump in to help each other before any governmental agency has time to reach us. I saw it on April 15, 2011, when tornadoes first hit Alabama, killing 7 statewide and 3 in Washington County.
My point is, for once, an ad agency got it right, though they also got it wrong. Alabama IS beautiful, but not just because of its beaches and trees and mountains and rivers. I love all of those things. But, in spite of the dumb and crazy stuff that we usually make the national headlines for, Alabama is beautiful because of her people.
