Students in the class of 2027 are studying the History of St. Louis this semester and hearing from a variety of guest speakers. This week, they enjoyed a panel discussion with four St. Louis leaders on investments and developments after the May 16, 2025, tornado that tracked more than 20 miles through urban areas of our city. They learned about recovery and resilience, and that there’s much work yet to be done.
Upper School History Teacher Andy Cox introduced the panelists and moderated the discussion. He said, “It is my great pleasure to welcome you to today’s discussion on Investment and Development in St. Louis Post-Tornado. We are honored to be joined by an extraordinary panel of leaders who bring a wealth of experience in recovery, resilience, and community transformation.” The panel consisted of:
- Dr. LJ Punch, trauma surgeon and founder of 314 Oasis. Dr. Punch has served on the faculty at Washington University and as a Professor of Surgery at BJC. A graduate of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Dr. Punch is nationally recognized for their work supporting survivors of gun violence and advancing community-based healing.
- LaKricia Cox, Executive Director of the American Red Cross. Cox holds a Master’s degree in International Relations from Webster University and brings more than 20 years of nonprofit leadership experience. She has served as Executive Director of Girls in the Know and as Director of Programs at the Little Bit Foundation, among other roles devoted to strengthening communities.
- Cami Thomas ’11, Director, Producer, and Founder of My Friends and I. An alumna of MICDS, Thomas graduated from Loyola University New Orleans with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing. She has worked as a marketing specialist for Red Bull and now leads her own creative production company, which amplifies local voices and stories.
- Julian Nicks, Chief Recovery and Neighborhood Transformation Officer for the City of St. Louis. Nicks is a graduate of Washington University and holds a business degree from Stanford University. Before stepping into his current role, he served on the board of the Recovery Office. Over the course of his career, he has held numerous leadership positions in local government across the Midwest, focusing on workforce development, education, and municipal partnerships. Notably, he served as Director of Transformation for the Missouri Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development.
Mr. Cox then asked the panel a series of questions.
What are you and your organizations doing to help St. Louis recover from the tornado?
Punch: “The tornado directly impacted me in the Central West End. I was really moved by trauma. I’m a trauma surgeon and have practiced over the last two decades. I’ve seen a lot of individual people who were hit by a car or shot. On that day, on May 16, it was like 5,000 people got shot all at once. They experienced trauma to their bodies, lives, and homes. It’s the most overwhelming moment I have seen. Since then, I have created a body of work in solidarity with them. We are working to bring four things to this large cohort: rest, power, care, and connection.
Cox: “Our mission is to prevent and alleviate human suffering in the face of emergencies. The tornado caused complete devastation to communities, specifically in North City where most of the impact occurred. We respond to the immediate needs. Shelter is number one. We provided shelter that night. We also provided food. Then we have a medical team, out in our shelters, also providing spiritual care and mental health care. All this was provided immediately in the face of the tornado.”
Thomas: “I own a production company, and it is not a disaster recovery organization by any stretch of the imagination. I was on the south side where my studio is located, driving and heading north. It didn’t seem like anything that serious. Then I looked up and saw a funnel cloud, hovering over where I knew my grandmother and grandfather’s house was. I turned north on Jefferson, and the complete devastation I saw…it looked like a bomb hit the city. It was completely unreal. From that moment on, my entire priority for my team was not production; we just needed to be helping people in North St. Louis. We helped with getting rubble out of streets so people can get past. Everyone needs to eat, so we provided a warm meal and a hug. We canceled all production for 40 days. I turned off my phone and email. We went out with a pickup truck filled with food, fresh meals, supplies, and heavy-duty trash bags. We went in and out every day, going door to door, back to back, that was our immediate response. I’m now in fellowship with Action St. Louis and we meet weekly to make plans. We now go out to specific families. And we are helping different organizations document the process of helping.”
What do you think is the most important way to help people heal from this devastation?
Cox: “That’s a hard question because right now, we still have people we’re supporting in hotels that don’t have a place to return to. We still have people living in unstable, uninhabitable homes, and people living in tents and their cars. There is a huge need in the community that still exists. It’s hard to talk about healing when the suffering is still present. A lot of hope is in the collaboration. There are so many pockets and so many communities, and I saw neighbors helping neighbors. I saw people who cared about each other, and that was the most impactful. I’ve seen more collaboration of organizations creating solutions, and more support of our communities. We do need spaces for people to heal. I don’t think there are enough spaces for people to heal. There weren’t enough before the tornado. That community impacted the most heavily had been long divested in, and it needs a long-term approach, because it already needed help before the tornado.”
Thomas: “It’s a complex question because mind, body, and soul are all equally important. It’s like Mazlow’s hierarchy of needs: where you live, food, what it means to be a safe human…those things have to be met. I don’t know the stats currently, but that’s not been stabilized in St. Louis. It’s hard to think what comes next with healing, but there is a huge opportunity to heal is this giant divide, which still continues and goes far beyond what my parents and grandparents experienced. We need to heal something less obvious, demystify the North Side, and figure out who deserves help, and who deserves attention in St. Louis.”
Nicks: “For most people, this was a regular day and then their entire lives were upside down. This is a journey. We are still coming to terms with what happened. Some of that is the physical aspect of, ‘Where am I going to sleep?’ Where the city is extremely focused right now is, how do we start thinking about the housing options? There are about 4,200 households in housing that aren’t livable by the standards set by FEMA. People are still living in their damaged houses, which have elements of trauma. Can we meet those needs, especially as winter comes? Beyond that, we need to figure out if they can return or not, food, resources, legal resources, and mental health resources. We need to focus on the housing side and all the direct services to support what people need on this journey. Children, parents, and families were in the middle of the tornado and will experience this impact for decades. We are talking about a multi-decade effort of healing.”
Dr. Punch: “Healing is actually not something you can do for someone. You ride your bike, you fall, you break your neck. The orthopedic surgeon doesn’t heal. He fixes your neck. You have to heal, you eat right, you do therapy, and you don’t ride your bike the same way again. It’s up to you. So yes, it’s up them to heal. The work is only just beginning after you have made the major intervention. People who were staying with family or didn’t have their name on the lease, at baseline, they didn’t even have a home they could call their own. So it’s like they don’t count. ‘They didn’t lose anything, so they don’t get anything.’ How do you fix that? The first thing is the diagnosis: understanding what people lost and how they’re hurting, then creating the conditions for healing. I can only do so much. The family and the community can do a ton to help them heal. It’s communal work. It’s not an individual reality. It requires everyone around the traumatized to heal.”
Can you share something about what your organization or you personally are doing to help shape or heal, whether it’s housing or trauma?
Nicks: “These problems are massive. What are the starting points? First, there are 12-hour shelters, then move to a week of shelter, then a month, then three or four months. It’s immediate housing. There are over 11,000 people and we are helping them find adequate housing and making housing available using resources, and paying for and doing repair work directly on homes. The second is about debris and demolition. One of the most visible forms of progress is that someone cares enough to remove the trash and debris from the community. When you clear that land, when you repair the sidewalks, it’s a signal that there’s a chance you can rebuild. It costs hundreds of millions of dollars to remove debris and demolish the structures that can’t remain. It’s a start. Third is thinking about those community resource centers. Where do people find communal forms of help? These people aren’t on social media; they are trying to survive day to day. How do we create and provide permanent resources in these areas? We’re in conversations about what that looks like for the next six to nine months. Fourth is community engagement: how we engage communities in this long-term effort. This can’t come from city hall or leaders; it needs to be shaped by people in these communities. We are setting up neighborhood planning efforts and thinking about how we start to build long-term housing and reconstruction efforts.”
Cox: “Our focus right now is casework in conjunction with the city and Urban League to support clients to find intermediate houses and develop solutions. What’s keeping me up at night? There are so many cases that aren’t cut and dry. We’re working with some of the toughest cases right now, such as elderly populations that might have dementia and not enough resources. It might seem easy: they should go to a nursing home or get service, but affordability is a problem. We know they need to be in a skilled nursing facility, and there’s no place for them to go. Some are easier, and we’re happy to find those solutions. But to get down the road to recovery people have to participate in their recovery. When you experience trauma, then depression can set in, and other mental health issues. Generational houses have been lost, along with everything they own. You can’t just pick up and go. Maybe you were living in a house that your mother owned, and your grandmother before her, and your great-grandmother before her. It’s like losing a piece of them, too. Getting past that to rebuild is hard. We’ve been collaborating with other organizations, whether it’s spiritual care because people need that, too, or mental health care, so they can start to participate in their recovery.”
Dr. Punch: “One of the most important things I’ve been privileged to be part of is space making. People want to help, but they don’t know how to help. Maybe they live in a different state or a different country. There’s not a place for them to show up and bring time, talent, and treasury. We’ve been able to create a consistent presence, and that’s been powerful. It’s incredible what comes into the space.”
Dr. Punch then shared a story about a nursery owner who called to say, “I have a carload of plants. Can I bring them to you?” The plants showed up and “people went nuts. When you’re just trying to survive, little pieces of beauty get missed. We also did acupuncture outside. It’s the grace notes.”
Thomas: I have pivoted my team to get back to work things because client needs are important, but I’ve prioritized documenting the entire recovery process. Less of recovery back to what it was and more of imagining something completely different. I don’t want the North Side to return to what it was before. I want something different. My lineage has come through the North Side and I want something better. That means walking up to someone, and saying, ‘I want to know your story, what happened to your home. Tell me about yourself.’ It’s making people feel seen and cared for. Help isn’t hypothetical; it’s very active. Seeing each other is active. Compassion, care, and love are all actions. I asked for a pickup truck on Instagram every day, and every day someone answered. We asked, ‘Where can we fit in?’ We became whatever we needed to be. How can you help? There’s a very talented skill set, especially among the folks in this room. You can help a lot more than it may seem like you can. You can help today tomorrow. I have no business doing tornado recovery, but you answer the call when you see the need. We became what we needed to be, and we’re transitioning to see how we can continue to be helpful.”
What lessons do you hope we learned from this tornado?
Dr. Punch: “If you wait to be perfect, you’re already done. Just do it.”
Cox: “Preparedness. We need to be better prepared, and I’m so glad that MICDS students started a Red Cross club to work on preparedness.”
Thomas: “We can stop acting like St. Louis is two different cities. If the North Side falls, St. Louis falls. There’s no alternative version. There’s an entire portion of our city that needs help. If we don’t help, it’s like renovating your kitchen when there’s a fire in the dining room.”
Nicks: “It’s about laying out a plan, and then collaboration. The city was drastically underprepared for a tornado. The city’s responsiveness has come from a lot of things that could have been planned, partnerships that could have been built with the Red Cross, the Urban League, 314 Oasis. The city had not, and we’re still sensing that the strength and speed of our response comes from not having a plan. We are now planning more for this and for the future through collaboration.”
What can students do?
Dr. Punch: “We are updating our 314 Oasis website with volunteer opportunities. Check out the schedule there.”
Cox: “Join the Red Cross preparedness club here at MICDS. It includes all these opportunities.”
Thomas: “Argue with your parents at the dinner table. Make sure it’s known that things aren’t fine, it’s not all good, and there’s a lot more work that needs to be done. Let’s let it not fall off the radar.”
Nicks: “Follow the city on STL Recovers and @stlrecovers on Instagram. Volunteer opportunities will be posted there. High school kids can do debris clean-up.”
If another tornado or natural disaster comes through, how can we be better prepared or what can we do differently?
Nicks: “Relationships are built through direct experience. The fact that we’ve already done this will be helpful if it happens immediately. Long-term, keep things up. We need a functioning siren system. We need joint partnerships with the county, and building things as we go. We are still in the heart of this response. Relationships developed have already made us better.”
Thomas: “I need to get a pickup truck. You can’t get over anything in a Chevy Cruze! I’m glad that I’ve built a life that I can put things on pause to help. Knowing this can happen already better prepares us.”
Cox: “We cover 19 counties in Missouri and Illinois where a disaster can hit at any time. Start by developing a plan by helping us be better prepared, developing relationships and stronger partnerships to respond and support communities. Our work is continuous. Disasters are occurring more frequently.”
Dr. Punch: “Resilience. This is a nationwide reality and we need places of worship, libraries, and schools to develop the capacity to be a physical source of respite in severe weather events. We need solar panels, drinking water, heating and cooling, and shelf-stable food. We are working on creating a resilience center, or a series of them, in St. Louis. Severe weather is here, it’s not going to stop.”
In five or ten years, these efforts may slip people’s minds. How will you keep revisiting?
Dr. Punch: “The Red Cross talks about blue skies, gray skies. Keep yourself ready for gray sky moments by having robust blue sky moments. The resilience center model helps us stay ready and promote community wellness.”
Cox: “we do have resilience hubs all across the country, but we weren’t prepared to have them here in this community. This is an opportunity for growth for us. We are engaging more people from different communities. 90% of our workforce are volunteers because we focus on the mission and the people. It takes everyone to be involved.”
Thomas: “I’m going to make a documentary so we never forget. I’m documenting the course over the next ten years to show how we recovered and how drastically things have improved. I don’t go anywhere without my camera.”
Nicks: “We can’t control anything except the four or eight years while we’re in office. Long-term ability to help communities recover can’t exist in government. It exists in non-profits and organizations. We should invest capacity in organizations that already exist by creating funding and processes. How do we set up things like the centers and partner with groups like the Red Cross that can hold the response? The city takes a while to respond. The initial response has to come from these organizations and communities that exist.”
Students were then able to ask a series of insightful questions, and our panelists stayed after to continue the discussion in small groups. Many thanks to Dr. LJ Punch, LaKricia Cox, Cami Thomas, and Julian Nicks for spending time with our junior class and for sharing their experience, expertise, and wisdom.