Three Months Later They Finally Get Their Diplomas

The University of Alabama finally got to have their graduation ceremony:

About 3,300 University of Alabama graduates have finally gotten the chance to walk in cap and gown, more than three months after a tornado hit Tuscaloosa and forced their commencement to be postponed.

The university held graduation exercises for its class of 2011 on Saturday and Friday night. The school awarded 4,770 degrees in all during three ceremonies, with about 70 percent for students who were to graduate in May but had to wait because of the deadly twister that struck near campus on April 27.

Several hundred people attended a candelight memorial service Friday night for the six students who died in the storm. All six received posthumous degrees.

I feel a little bit sorry for Tuscaloosa and other areas affected by the Super Outbreak of April 25-28, not just because of the damage and loss they sustained, but because they were largely forgotten once the Joplin tornado hit on May 22. For some reason the Joplin storm resonated with people much more than the April storms even though more than twice as many people died in the April storms. I'm sure a lot of that had to do with the live TV coverage that Joplin received on the Weather Channel within minutes of the storm. One of their reporters had been chasing the tornado and was the first national media on the scene. I watched it live myself and I know how it affected me.

I've heard of lots of special relief efforts going towards Joplin, but not near as much being directed toward Alabama, Mississippi and the other states damaged in April. My own city was raising money for Joplin, and a friend went on a relief trip from his Huntington Beach church to deliver supplies to Joplin, but I haven't heard of similar efforts for Tuscaloosa, a town hit just about has hard as Joplin with an equally powerful EF-5 tornado.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the support Joplin has received, I just don't understand why there hasn't been a similar effort directed at the south.  Those people need our help too.