A critical moment in Putnam County history occurred on March 3rd when an EF-4 tornado shocked the region. The tornado killed 19 people, destroyed 100 homes, and damaged countless others in the county. As Middle Tennessee residents inspected their homes in the daylight, many found debris in their yards, some found debris as far away from the tornado as Jefferson City, Celina, and Crawford, Tennessee. People found insulation decorating their trees like a bad Spanish moss and when they looked through their lawns, some found photographs and memories from families miles away.
As Tennessee residents found photographs and personal papers, they wanted to help reunite them with their original owners. Volunteers quickly created Facebook pages like the “Found in the Storm: Putnam County Tornado,” where Facebook users posted their finds and searched for owners. Users tagged potential owners of the materials and shared the posts to their Facebook pages and other groups. Meanwhile, community members were also taking the belongings they found to Soul Craft Coffee, the Cookeville Community Center, and other locations around the county for families to look through and claim as their own.
While many families were able to recover their belongings using the posts in Facebook groups, it was evident that Facebook’s algorithm, the sheer volume of posts and duplication, and not all victims being on Facebook meant that the posts were not reaching everyone they needed to or were causing additional confusion. On March 5th, the staff in the Tennessee Tech Archives began working to build trust and connections with the community to advertise the Archives as a centralized, long-term place that could reunite found photographs and with their owners. The Archives’ goals were to clean and house the personal belongings according to archival best practices, and digitize the photographs and other materials into an easy to browse and search online location to minimize the need for families to look in multiple physical and social media locations until they could be claimed. The Archives’ intent was also to minimize the strain on the affected families, many of whom were already overwhelmed from needing to focus on applying for FEMA aid, working with insurance, and finding new homes rather than tracking down disparate personal belongings. The ideal plan for Tech included working with the numerous drop off locations, picking up the photographs, and bringing them back to Tennessee Tech for cleaning, digitization, storage, and hosting on an online platform. The Archives launched the online platform and got working.
Lots of our early work was volunteering at the Cookeville Community Center. Numerous volunteers, from Tech and not, worked to assist in displaying photographs so their owners could easily browse while the photographs resided at the Center. Volunteers also worked to make sure the photographs were dry, bagged, and ready to be brought to Tennessee Tech in the future. The Archives began working on moving the photographs on March 12 and simultaneously brought in volunteers to assist with photograph processing at Tennessee Tech. What started as something small, maybe 100 photographs, turned into something big. Initially only a few photographs were turned in. As of March 20, there were probably 2500 photographs that need to be reunited with their families. This work has taken a lot of the archives time, but is rewarding and much needed for the community to heal.
As of March 20, the Cookeville Community Center is still reuniting photographs and personal papers on site. Tennessee Tech is picking up the photographs as they are turned in. The current database has over 2000 photographs with materials being reunited with their owners daily. Tech realizes the photographs it holds could possibly be from families as far away as Mount Juliet. Part of the recovery effort will be making connections to the west of Putnam County to notify victims of the photograph database. The website showing the photographs is password protected and given to tornado victims or designated family members. This is because the photographs are personal and private. Those wishing for access can contact Tennessee Tech Archives at archives@tntech.edu.
