JOPLIN, Mo. —
Billy Staples has some kind of energy.
A former corporate executive with AT&T, former actor, former award-winning teacher, and current author and motivational speaker, Billy likes to talk.
“I write books,” Billy said as we chatted by phone Wednesday morning. “I could go on and on forever.”
As Billy explains it, he was in Dallas, Texas, earlier this month talking to high school students who had been displaced as a result of Hurricane Katrina. One girl spent about 20 minutes telling Billy about the horrors she witnessed in the New Orleans projects in the aftermath of the 2005 hurricane. The girl also wondered why it has taken so long to rebuild her hometown. Billy, of course, didn’t have much of an answer.
At the end of her story, the girl asked Billy if he had heard about the tornadoes in Alabama and in Joplin. He said that he had. And then the girl asked him if he planned to visit Joplin, and if so, she wanted to know if he would reach out to the kids in Joplin like he reached out to her.
“Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out her lunch money. She handed me $3 and 25 cents and said, ‘Then let me be the first to donate,’” Billy wrote in a Facebook posting.
Billy drove to Joplin the next day and, through his contacts, started raising money. And then he started looking for ways to use that money to help people in Joplin. One of the first people he met with in Joplin was police Chief Lane Roberts, who introduced him to Paula Bone, public affairs officer. With help from Lane and Paula, Billy was able to identify people who needed help.
“One thing he was adamant about,” Paula said about Billy, “was that people didn’t know he was going to give them money at first. He wanted to meet with them first, and he wanted to meet with people who were truly victimized by the storm. He wanted to meet with people who suffered family losses or who had a huge burden placed on them.”
When I spoke with Billy on Wednesday, he told me about some of the folks he and his organization were able to help. He told me about a young man named Chuck who has Down syndrome. Chuck lost everything he had in the tornado. In particular, Chuck lost his prized collection of baseball memorabilia.
It just so happens that Billy has written two baseball books for teenagers that were published by the folks who publish the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series, and therefore has a lot of contacts with Major League Baseball. Billy made a few calls and is now replacing the items Chuck lost.
Billy met a woman who lost her home and had literally been sleeping at her husband’s bedside at an area hospital. On the day Billy met her, the woman had just found out that her husband was being moved to another hospital at 8 p.m.
“When we met, it was 6 p.m.,” Billy said. “She had no idea where she was going to live. We were able to pay for a motel room for her for two weeks.”
Keep in mind, Billy didn’t tell these stories to pat himself on the back. He said he has been able to help folks because other people have donated money to make that help possible.
“It’s really just one story at a time,” he said. “Trying to see to it that one family has fewer worries. It’s about paying if forward.”
When the time is right, Billy would like to hold a baseball camp in Joplin for kids affected by the storm. He said he has gotten commitments to help from former St. Louis Cardinals reliever Josh Kinney, who now pitches in the Chicago White Sox organization and lives in the offseason in Springfield, and from former Kansas City Royals players Willie Wilson and Jim Eisenreich.
Before the tornado, Billy had no ties to the community. He had only one reason to drop what he was doing and try to help: a high school girl in Dallas who knew what it was like to live through tragedy and who asked him to help kids who were going through what she went through.
As Billy said: “It’s about paying it forward.”
Tornado: Mike Pound
Mike Pound: Billy Staples helping ‘one story at a time’
- Tornado: Mike Pound
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Mike Pound: Saying nice things about St. John’s folks is easy
Francis Williams called me Wednesday morning and told me she reads my column “most every day.” I then waited for her next sentence, which usually goes something like this: “And I think you are a moron.”
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Mike Pound: Joplin Habitat looking for eligible families
A quick drive on Missouri Highway 171 near the Joplin Regional Airport tells you all you need to know.
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Mike Pound: Woman’s effort snags scrubs for Joplin
It was an idea so simple and so obvious that it makes people slap their head and say “Why didn’t I think of that?”
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Mike Pound: Veterans bearing gifts coming to Joplin
Robert Marrone told me that a planned trip to Joplin by a group of veterans from California University of Pennsylvania is just another way for them to give back to the community.
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Mike Pound: Minot, N.D. needs Joplin’s support, too
I tend to go through life without thinking. Or without thinking too much. I always felt that deep thinking was for folks ... well for folks who were deep thinkers. I tend to be a shallow thinker.
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Mike Pound: Winning teams in place before the tornado struck
We don’t have many big meetings here in the newsroom. I think, in part, that’s because nobody wants to spend much time in a room full of newspaper people. That’s what I think.
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Mike Pound: Group comes together for mother, child
The women all knew each other but they didn’t know each other well. They grew up in the same town, and they graduated from the same high school, but because of their slight age differences none of them were ever close friends.
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Mike Pound: There is no stopping the St. Mary’s backers
For a woman who is raising some serious cash, Tracey Welch doesn’t like to talk much about money. In response to a question this week about how close she and the other folks raising money for St. Mary’s Catholic Elementary School were to Tracey’s $25,000 goal, she sort of dodged the question.
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Mike Pound: Mother of storm victims getting by ‘day by day’
“Are you sleeping at night?” Crystal Whitely pondered the question posed to her for a second. Then, through a tight smile, she said, “No, not really. I don’t know if I will ever sleep like I used to.”
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Mike Pound: How can we thank all those who have helped Joplin?
I sort of got a problem. It’s a nice problem, but a problem nonetheless. The problem is I can’t keep up with all of the nice things folks have been doing for Joplin. I’m not the only one having that problem.
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