Square One, a Springfield-based education and family services nonprofit organization, recently graduated its preschoolers.
The ceremony was emotional for Kimberly A. Lee, Square One’s vice president of advancement. A year ago, some of those children were being raced by frenzied staff to the basement of one of Square One’s Main Street buildings to spend a very long two minutes in terrifying darkness only to emerge to find the building destroyed and downtown Springfield unrecognizable.
Lee still gets emotional talking about the tornado. Before the tornado, the two buildings where Square One had space, at 947 and 959 Main St. in Springfield, were four stories. Square One was a $10 million nonprofit “in its stride,” Lee told Banker & Tradesman.
The storm reduced the two Main Street buildings to two stories and “took the wind out of us,” Lee said.
Square One – an organization relied upon by low-income families to be the calm, safe presence in their children’s lives – was suddenly desperate, improvising a way to get dozens of frightened children to safety. Lee said the parents of those children were “affected by the trauma of not being able to get to their children,” and that exacts a psychological toll that isn’t easily overcome.
But within hours of the storm, several businesses, including West Springfield-based United Bank, were in contact with Square One offering “anything we needed,” Lee said. “Companies were calling up saying, ‘Do you need pens?’”
Square One received $25,000 from United Bank, which gave about $100,000 in aid in the tornado’s aftermath.
“Even today, you drive down Route 5 and you look at the skyline of Springfield, and it’s changed,” United Bank Senior Vice President and Westfield resident Dena Hall told Banker & Tradesman. “West Springfield is finally starting to see some buildings go up. Springfield has had a much more aggressive rebuilding effort.”
“It’s been a year of reconstructing, literally and figuratively,” Lee said. “We’re rebuilding what was lost. We just graduated all the little preschoolers, and it was very emotional, but it was very symbolic. It’s a significant graduation in their life, it signified the next transition. We’re moving on, and it felt good.”
