Loss, Strength in Ark City
By Fred Mann, The Wichita Eagle, Kan.
Jan. 14–ARKANSAS CITY — A crew from Geraldo Rivera’s Fox News Channel television show marches her up and down the street with the camera aimed at her.
They walk her south along Summit with an interviewer moving alongside, microphone extended.
They dash ahead, fall behind, looking for the right angles. Then, they turn her around and walk her north, back toward Brick’s Restaurant, where she is a waitress.
They are shooting “establishing” shots to show that this is happening in downtown Arkansas City, with the pink ribbons in the store windows and the flags at half staff flapping angrily in the windy gray sky.
The national television crew is part of what a small community endures as it deals with the shock of something like the Jodi Sanderholm case.
Now, waitress Eugena Henson is part of it, too. She starts this day like any other day, and ends up on “Geraldo At Large.” Producers are wondering what a waitress has to say about some of the people in the case.
“I was nervous,” Henson says after the “Geraldo” people let her get back to work. “I didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t want to mess it up.”
All of this, she says, “is really out of Ark City’s league.”
Later, the “Geraldo” crew comes to the studio where Sanderholm danced and taught and lit up the place with her smile and with her sheer love of dance.
They film there for three hours, much of it behind closed doors.
That makes Terri Schroeder, the studio’s director, nervous and wary because she doesn’t know what they’re up to.
She wants to protect Sanderholm and not have her life turned into something tawdry by a national television show.
What a way to end a long week.
“I think everyone’s just still pretty numb, trying to figure out how to deal with it all,” Schroeder says.
Town draws together
One way she will deal with it is to close the studio to the media from now on, she says after the “Geraldo” crew leaves.
The goal is protect the kids, she says.
The studio, Ark City Dance — its front window glowing with pink “Jodi” signs — has served as a gathering place for dancers of all ages to remember Sanderholm and focus on the positive things about her life.
Pastors, school counselors and others have drifted to the studio to talk with the kids throughout the week.
Parents have been coming, too, and not just to drop their kids off anymore.
They come in and make sure their daughters are safe, and make sure their daughters know when they will be back to pick them up.
Sanderholm has pulled off no small feat: Parents and teenagers in Ark City are communicating again, people here say.
Questions like “Where are you going?” and “When will you be back?” are no longer regarded by teens as irritable prying, they say.
Families are closer, the town is closer, teachers and students at the high school are closer, and it’s all because of Sanderholm, they say.
“What 9/11 did to the country, that’s what this has done to the town,” says Connie Kimsey, director of the city’s convention and visitor’s bureau.
Community still reeling
And yet, it’s still so unreal.
A week after the disappearance, and days after the truth became known — days after the “Have You Seen.. “posters came down and the “Jodi, You will always be Dancing in our Hearts”-type signs went up — the town is no less stunned.
“Everybody’s in shock,” says Art Van Nostrand, a knife and leather smith who has a shop downtown, a big guy in an apron who sits behind a bench not looking up, because he’s been in Boston and Florida and seen this before.
“Stuff like that happens in Wichita,” he says. “Not here.”
But it did happen here, and now the town is circling its children to help them through this.
Jennifer Blatchford, an instructor who taught and coached and traveled with Sanderholm for years, said her own daughter, Bethany, 7, was one of Sanderholm’s pupils before she disappeared.
Bethany hasn’t shed a tear yet, she says. Other kids have cried their eyes out.
But Bethany spends hours on a computer creating pages of photographs Blatchford took of Sanderholm over the years. She gives the pages to Sanderholm’s parents.
Here’s the main thing kids want to know: Why her? It happened to a perfect person, Blatchford says.
“All the kids looked up to her. No issues, no nothing. Never. That’s what’s so hard about all this,” she says.
Blatchford says she is trying to stay strong for all the kids, but she has moments when it all sneaks up from behind and hits her.
“You just don’t think it’s reality,” she says.
Classes are back in session at Arkansas City High School, but that’s not saying everything is back to normal.
“Kids just walk by you and hug you,” says Marci Shearon, the school’s principal. “They don’t say anything because there’s nothing to say. And the hugs do us as much good as they do them.”
“This is uncharted waters for all of us in this building, and probably in this community,” says Kim Hager, a physical-education teacher at the school and a member of Fellowship of Christian Athletes who helped counsel some of the kids at the dance studio.
“There’s relief in knowing she’s not in pain, but we also know days are coming where her loss will be felt,” Hager said.
“But one thing I’ve noticed is, the kids have really come together and reassessed their life. As far as the spiritual side, I think there’s going to be some growth from this.”
‘Gotta keep going’
Paige Givens, a freshman, says it’s hard to go to classes because that’s where you hear all the talk and the rumors.
Givens is a member of the same dance line that Sanderholm was on in high school. She danced with Sanderholm for 11 years. It bothers her to hear the talk. But she goes to classes because that’s what you have to do.
“Gotta keep going,” she says.
She is scared, for sure. Always checks to see that somebody is with her.
But it hasn’t really hit Givens yet. Even when she goes to the dance studio.
“I think once we get back in our routine with dancing, it’ll hit us that she’s not here anymore,” Givens says. “We won’t see her smile come in that door anymore.”
Two sets of parents are seated at a table in the studio while their daughters make more pink ribbons for Sanderholm at another table because the town still wants ribbons to put on car antennas, door handles, whatever.
An impromptu discussion ensues between Steve and Christi Lungren, parents of 16-year-old Siera; and Joe and Julia Langley, of Winfield, parents of 15-year-old Hannah.
They focus on trust, anger and fear, and faith.
It becomes clear they have learned things about themselves, their children, and about being parents.
“We’ve had a lot of faith questions at our house,” Christi Lungren says to the group. “‘Why do bad things happen to good people?”Why, when we pray for a miracle, doesn’t it always happen?’ It shakes your faith, but I know it makes us stronger.”
There are nods.
“As parents and as kids, we try to look for sense in this and it’s a senseless act, so you can’t,” Joe Langley says.
“An accident would’ve been one thing,” says his wife, Julia.
Christi says, “I think sometimes our kids look to us when they can’t find the answers, and there’s times we say, ‘We don’t have the answers.’ They find a real humanness in that.”
Steve Lungren says his daughter struggles with fear.
“I don’t want her to have that the rest of her life. I want her to live cautious, but I don’t want her to believe we live in a terrible world,” he says.
“There’s a fine line between cautious and fear, and I think she’s trying to find that balance now. As are we.”
They worry about trapped emotions. Anger hasn’t hit their kids yet, as it may when the details emerge down the road, they say.
Steve Lungren says that fathers need to show emotion, too.
“It’s important for guys out there let you see them cry,” he says. “When Siera saw me tear up the other night, she was able to curl up around me, not me put my arm around her, and that was a real step forward in her healing.”
On it goes, two couples sharing experiences, observations and questions about something they had no idea they’d have to deal with a week ago.
This is good to talk about it and get it out, they say. They have changed as parents. Other parents feel the same way. It changed overnight.
So did the town.
And it’s all because of Sanderholm.
“I truly believe we’re going have a better community, and our families are going to be stronger and healthier because of this,” Christi Lungren says.
Reach Fred Mann at 316-268-6310 or fmann@wichitaeagle.com [mailto:fmann@wichitaeagle.com].
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Wichita Eagle, Kan.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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