The Rocking Chair Restaurant in Conway, Missouri, recently was honored for helping travelers affected by a horrific chain-reaction crash on Interstate 44 during a winter storm.
The Conway Betterment League bestowed the Route 66 established its first Business of the Month award.
KSPR-TV filed this story. Included is footage of a woman who barely escaped injury or death when an 18-wheeler hit her car:
Restaurant workers kept bringing survivors coffee and food as they filled out accident reports and tried to process what had happened on the interstate.
The massive tie-up eventually involved 50 vehicles. At least five people died during snow-related crashes in Missouri that day.
An excerpt from the KSPR story:
Jacobsen believes that everyone being together inside the Rocking Chair Restaurant may have been just what they needed to heal.
“Everybody was able to talk about it and talk through it and get through it. It was a great coming together for a common bond,” he said.
(Hat tip to Tonya Pike)
“Jacobsen believes that everyone being together inside the Rocking Chair Restaurant may have been just what they needed to heal. Everybody was able to talk about it and talk through it and get through it. It was a great coming together for a common bond,” he said.”
Despite this being a serious road traffic accident – what is this talk about “what they needed to heal” and “a great coming together for a common bond”? Yes, two people were killed and others injured while the remainder escaped injury – and there was a need for food, drink and warmth for those unable to contiunue their journeys. Well done the restaurant for providing what was needed. But I have seen some nasty fatal road accidents in over 50 years of driving, and some very unpleasant sights. Yet I never felt the need to be “healed”. Perhaps having been born during WWII and having served in the army have given me a tougher attitude towards death and accidents in general.
Or is it just my British attitude to how something that happened in the USA is reported by a USA TV station? One more example of how the UK and the USA are “two countries divided by a common (?) language”.
Again, well done the people at the Rocking Chair Restaurant for showing basis common sense.
I think any group of people, who just went through the drama of a 50 car pile up, where some died, and all were left stranded in the middle of the highway, probably have a lot to vent about with a group of fellow drivers who just went through the same thing. Wound up by adrenaline, the chance to unwind a little over something warm to drink, or a bite to eat, with fellow victims is probably very helpful.
Is the use of the word healing a little over the top for some of us? Perhaps. But you could say it’s the first steps of dealing with a stressful situation for those who needed it.
Understand, the man who used the word healing – it was his granddaughter who wrecked with a semi, got out of her car and started filming the accident, just to film her car a few seconds later get flattened by another semi. I don’t think healing is at all out of place in his comment. I too have been thru some things that were horrific, that I almost never talk about. I don’t care how much you’ve been thru in your life, to go thru something like the largest multi-vehicle crash ever on I-44 in Missouri, a mass shooting, a bombing, a terrorist attack – you may think you are stalwart until it happens to you. Then I think you may find out different. And often talking with others who have been thru the same thing, particularly when it first happens, is key to putting it in perspective and moving forward. Kudos to the Rocking Chair for providing these travelers a safe place to do this in.