Ringgold -- Chilly, ghostlike mists crept over the mountain ridge behind Ringgold Middle School for the first days of class, as if the weather was determined to once again put a damper on this town that has endured so much.
But then came the chant from an 8 a.m. pep rally -- “We are Ringgold! We are Ringgold!” -- cutting through the morning gloom, and before long students poured into freshly rebuilt classrooms, smiling and joking.
With them came a new and welcome sense of normal for the northwest Georgia town, as the middle and high school complex reopened Wednesday for the first time since tornadoes ripped through town last April.
Things aren’t truly normal, of course. Normal hasn’t been seen in Ringgold since the twister killed eight people -- including two Ringgold High students at home -- and left the school complex and much of the rest of town in ruins.
The complex has been largely rebuilt, and on Wednesday morning -- after rainstorms on Tuesday delayed the reopening a day -- Ringgold High principal Sharon Vaughn could hardly contain herself as the old routine came back to life. “They’re home again, they’re home again .. I saw one of them hug the wall they were so happy,” said Vaughn, a bantam woman with a fast smile and lively spirit that she spent the day spreading around the front office, classrooms, the lunch room -- wherever she went on campus.
Many of Ringgold’s buildings remain in ruins, while rubble is piled on other lots next to foundations swept clean by the tornado. But most students’ lives have been relatively stable, Vaughn said.
“We don’t have many displaced students that we know of, but we’ll have a better sense today,” said Vaughn. “Most are back in their homes.”
The football team finally got to practice on its home field for the first time Tuesday. It will still play home games this season at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s stadium.
It will be a couple of weeks before the weight room is rebuilt, said Coach Robert Akins, but his Tigers have played two games and won both.
“If I die today, we’re perfect,” said Akins. “But we’ve got a tough game ahead on Friday.”
Offensive lineman Zack Shahan is one of the few students uprooted by the tornado. He used to live two blocks away in an apartment and walked to school every day.
The apartment was destroyed and for a time he shared a single hotel room with his mother and father, aunt and a cousin. For a guy who is six feet tall and weighs 360 pounds, having to share a bed is an inconvenience for all concerned.
“I have to tell you I don’t like hotel rooms no more,” said Shahan, who now commutes to school from a home in the south part of Catoosa county.
School officials figure it will take another year or more before things appear fully normal. By then there’ll be a rebuilt stadium, and the loss and change wrought by the storm will feel more like history.
The school rebuilding efforts had some help from private benefactors. An anonymous donor gave $130,000 for the media room, Vaughn said. The football team raised $260,000.
Mysteries remain.
“We still don’t know what happened to the 30 ton air conditioning unit that was torn off the top of the middle school,” said Vaughn. “They never found that.”
And a few weeks after the storm a man showed up with a photograph of the 1983 Ringgold High School wrestling team that disappeared from the trophy room when the tornado hit. He found it in a field in Bradley County, Tenn., about 30 miles away.
It’s water damaged, but the school plans to reframe and display it.
Officials also plan scholarships in the name of the two students who died, senior Chelsea Black, and Adam “Tex” Carroll.
The storm that dumped almost ten inches of rain on Ringold Monday, postponing the scheduled reopening Tuesday, tested the schools’ new roofs and revealed eight leaks, said Damon Raimes, Catoosa County schools’ director of operations.
“But, eight leaks on 75,000 square feet of roof surface?” said Raimes. “I’ll take that.”
Some Ringgold High students figured they might have to transfer to Heritage High, where they shared facilities last May for about a month to finish the school year.
“I was afraid I’d have to go back there, and I sure didn’t want that,” said Joseph Walker, a senior who hated the idea of graduating with a diploma from the rival.
Not all the students seemed swept up in the storyline of a school reopening that buoys the spirits of an entire town. It’s still school, after all. A reporter asked sophmore Catrionn Lungcharoen if she was happy classes are back in session.
She stuck her hand out and wiggled it, the international sign for “meh...”
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