VILONIA -- Among the first signs that something bad happened here are the mangled and downed trees alongside U.S. 64, the main street and primary business district for this Faulkner County town of roughly 3,800 residents.
Next are tattered blue tarpaulins still on the roofs of a few buildings; some boarded-up windows; and a small lot of twisted, banged-up cars.
The vehicles could have been in wrecks, but a service station left with no fuel pumps and barren concrete slabs where houses and a shopping center once stood suggest something worse. A tornado ripped through central Arkansas on April 27. It killed 12 people in Faulkner County alone.
Now, seven months later, the town is still working to rebuild.
"Need a house?" one of many signs says. Others advertise construction services, storage space and storm shelters. A deadly tornado also struck Vilonia in 2011.
"The recovery is strong, but it's going to be a slow process," said Marty Knight, who heads the Rebuild Vilonia committee and who has talked with people from Joplin, Mo., and other cities ravaged by tornadoes in the past. "It's a marathon and not a sprint ... especially if you're trying to do it in an organized way."
Among the town's losses in this year's tornado was the roughly $13 million intermediate school that was nearing completion and was expected to open this fall. But it's on its way back, too. The roof is up, and workers hope to have it ready for classes next fall.
Vilonia lost about 70 percent of its businesses in the storm, Knight said. He wasn't sure of the exact number destroyed and damaged but estimated it at about 20. Since then, he said, three, including a Dollar General store, have rebuilt, and one new business -- a cafeteria-style restaurant -- opened near the local post office and at the site of a demolished house.
Mayor James Firestone said some businesses have reopened in the owners' homes, while others -- such as a Citgo service station -- have made repairs and resumed operation.
A demolished business that quickly reopened in temporary facilities was Kieth's Texaco, a 17-year-old business that many residents visited after the tornado for urgently needed vehicle repairs.
Nearby, owner Kieth McCord's permanent station is being rebuilt, and he hopes to have it open in early 2015. He's also expanding it to include an auto-parts shop. O'Reilly Auto Parts, which had a store in the devastated shopping center, has decided not to rebuild, Firestone said.
"You'd have to look long and hard to find any better example of ... the American spirit and ingenuity," Allen Dodson, county judge of Faulkner County, said of McCord.
"He has been really good for that community," Dodson said. "He got that station back up and running early on" by using metal carports, a generator and temporary office space alongside piles of rubble and industrial-size trash bins.
Customer Jim Potter stopped by McCord's temporary office recently and agreed.
"He put a small shop in [right after the storm] and was trying to keep the town going," Potter said.
Just off Main Street, a new restaurant, What's for Dinner, opened at the site of a demolished house near the post office just in time to serve chicken 'n' dressing as Thanksgiving approached.
Owners Amy and Clint Tucker welcomed a long line of customers to the restaurant at its grand opening, which was attended by Gov. Mike Beebe.
The visit was Beebe's first to Vilonia since President Barack Obama toured the devastation in early May.
"The people here are resilient," Beebe said. "They fight hard. They don't ever give up."
The shopping center had housed a church, a satellite-systems store and a doughnut shop. "It wasn't really a big revenue producer for us," Firestone said of the center.
Now, the city is looking for a developer to buy the property and redesign it into perhaps a town square with businesses, maybe a farmers market and an outdoor activity area, the mayor said.
"We want to look at what we can build that had never existed there before -- a park, a green space, a town center," Knight agreed. "If you think of Hendrix Village, that's the type of development that's being contemplated."
That village, on the Hendrix College campus in nearby Conway, is a walkable neighborhood that features single-family houses, townhouses, row houses, landscaping, restaurants, banks and other businesses.
Of about 159 houses that the storm destroyed in Vilonia, the mayor said, "probably 50 or better of those are back under construction."
"We've come a long way," Knight said. "We still have a long way to go."
In the Parkwood Meadows subdivision, 56 of 57 houses were demolished, Knight said. When he stopped by the neighborhood Friday, he noticed seven or eight houses under construction, he said.
"A lot of different things are going on. Rebuild Vilonia is just one of them," Knight said. Another effort he mentioned is the Vilonia Disaster Relief Alliance, which is working with organizations such as Habitat for Humanity to build houses.
Residents also can look forward to the reopening of its Museum of Veterans and Military History. An organization called the Museum Brigade with members from Vilonia and other places has raised enough money to begin construction.
"We're hoping [it will reopen] by the first of the year, but that's probably a little optimistic," Firestone said.
Knight said the Rebuild Vilonia committee has worked closely with the University of Arkansas Community Design Center on plans for rebuilding the town's infrastructure, as well as ideas on where to locate development. A public meeting is planned for 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Vilonia Church of Christ to present the plan.
"What we're looking at is a plan" aimed at determining what Vilonia will look like "40 or 50 years from now," Knight said.
Dodson, the county judge, said Vilonia, Mayflower and other communities endured a "horrific tragedy." April's tornado claimed a total of 16 lives. In addition to the 12 killed in Faulkner County, three died in Pulaski County and one in White County.
But Dodson added, "You really see what folks are made out of. ... Being involved with it, from Day One, I'm just really proud."
State Desk on 12/01/2014