JOPLIN, Mo. — Maxine Bayliff said she had good reason to enjoy a piece of celebratory sheet cake on Tuesday.

She was home for the first time in nine months.

Bayliff, 84, is one of 60 low-income senior residents of Joplin who survived the May 22 tornado but were displaced by it when their home, Mercy Village, was left uninhabitable.

Almost nine months later to the day, many of those residents gathered for a homecoming celebration that included remarks by federal, state and local dignitaries.

Although those nine months have been difficult, Bayliff said, she considers herself lucky.

She had been released on Friday, May 20, from St. John’s Regional Medical Center, just to the west of Mercy Village, after treatment for heart issues. The hospital took a direct hit in the tornado, and six people lost their lives there.

“My apartment was one that didn’t get the windows broken out,” said Bayliff, who also survived the May 3, 1999, tornado in Wichita, Kan.

She moved in with nephews for the first month after the Joplin storm, then lived with her sister until September. Since then, she’s been living in a Federal Emergency Management Agency mobile home at Officer Jeff Taylor Memorial Acres near the airport.



‘I’M HOME’

On Feb. 9, Bayliff spent the first night in her new apartment unit at Mercy Village. “It felt wonderful,” she said. “I’m back where I’d made a home. It’s mine. I can do what I want. I can socialize. I’m home.”

That home is part of a 66-unit housing property that is the first HUD-assisted multifamily property to reopen its doors and welcome back residents since the storm. It was rebuilt on its former site on West 28th Street, a half-block east of the destroyed St. John’s, where it opened in 2005.

During the ceremony Tuesday, Jennifer Erixon, a senior vice president with Mercy Housing Inc., gave accolades to Joplin’s strength of human spirit, and called the reopening of Mercy Village “a milestone on Joplin’s path to recovery.”

Sister Lillian Murphy, CEO of Mercy Housing, described the history of the 30-year-old organization as one that began with $500,000 and an idea to meet an unmet need, and became a $2 billion organization that has developed 41,000 homes across the nation and serves 140,000 people.

Murphy called the buildings “a means to an end,” because they allow residents to live independently, achieve dreams and retire in a safe environment.

Mayor Mike Woolston read a proclamation from the city that Tuesday, Feb. 21, be known as Welcome Home Mercy Village Day.

He called the reopening “a true testament to the power of people partnering in the community.”

U.S. Rep. Billy Long, of Springfield, commended Mercy Housing for its hard work and dedication. “Because of this, Joplin seniors can remain in a community they call home,” he said.

Ben Metcalf, a senior adviser with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, acknowledged the challenges faced by the residents and staff of Mercy Village, as well as those of Joplin residents, and said they showed “amazing resilience.”

He described the new housing as “a gem” among all he has seen from coast to coast, primarily because of the partnership among agencies and the access residents have to services to allow them to have a quality, independent life.



‘NATIONAL STAGE’

“This kind of work is important on a national stage,” Metcalf said. “It’s a story we need to be telling in Washington, D.C., about this building that will help make the case for us nationally.”

Mercy Housing and Joplin as a whole could provide powerful lessons for the rest of the country, he said.

“I wish more of my colleagues could have been here today,” Metcalf said.

Bishop James Johnston, of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, offered a closing reflection and later blessed the building.

“This event today is one of a series that really marks the re-emergence of Joplin,” he said.

Johnston cited St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, in which he talks about the three things that last: faith, hope and love.

“We can see in this event today, in the reopening of this facility, this home,” he said, “it really is a symbol of those three things, of faith, hope and love. We can see that those three precious things that come from God often emerge strongest in situations of hardship and indeed in situations of suffering. May this building here always be a symbol of those three things, of faith, hope and love.”





Mercy Housing



OF THE 140,000 PEOPLE served by Mercy Housing on any given day, 20 percent are seniors. They have a median annual income of $12,120.