Two years ago, Bonnie Grimes Elementary fifth grade teacher, Sarah Cassady was in her hometown of Joplin. She wasn’t there visiting family however, she was helping in the recovery efforts during the aftermath of an EF-5 tornado.
As she picked up the pieces and helped salvage what was left, she received a sack lunch. The sack had obviously been decorated by a small child. She found a note inside from a third grader and a meal to sustain her while she worked. What she didn’t know when the sacks were passed out was where they came from: the very school she taught at. Third graders at Bonnie Grimes Elementary had sent the lunches to first responders, Cassady being one of them.
Two years later she is on the other end.
Now as fifth graders, these students–some of them, now her students–are again sending a little love, encouragement, and a reminder people are thinking about them as they pack lunches, though this time it is for first responders serving in Moore, Oklahoma, hit by an EF-5 tornado on Monday.
Cassady tells the school’s principal how encouraging and wonderful it was to get a lunch from what are now some of her students.
Cassady has been teaching at Bonnie Grimes Elementary for the past six years. She teaches fifth grade Social Studies and Language Arts.
Wednesday, the Oklahoma Medical Examiner’s Office identified 23 of the 24 killed in Moore’s tornado. Ten of the dead were children, including two infants.
