“You know, when I was 19, Grandpa took me on a roller coaster. … Up, down, up, down, oh, what a ride! … I always wanted to go again. You know, it was just so interesting to me that a ride could make me so frightened, so scared, so sick, so excited, so thrilled all together! Some didn’t like it. They went on the merry-go-round. That just goes around. Nothing. I like the roller coaster. You get more out of it.”
Our favorite quote from one of our favorite movies, “Parenthood” (1989), describes life in Chattanooga these days as the city recovers from a devastating tornado and takes tentative first steps out from stay-at-home orders during the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Thursday, those steps were on display in Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke’s “State of the City” address, in the Hamilton County school board’s budget discussion and also in the neighborhoods where an Easter evening twister changed life as residents knew it.
“These last few weeks I have been reminded, over and over again, of the great faithfulness of this community,” the mayor said, delivering his address remotely rather than in front of a usual audience of well-wishers. “We have experienced our own form of fire and earthquake. We have certainly experienced the wind. And yet, we have found, Chattanooga is not in the storm. Chattanooga, our true character, is in the still, small voice that sends us to work when the storm is passed.”
Weeks ago, the term-limited Berke was set to finish his final year in office on a high note. Business was humming, the city coffers were full and some of the most difficult decisions were which of the many streets that needed repaving would be resurfaced.