Though he may be known to only a few residents of Kiowa County at this time, Bob Fraga (pronounced frog-uh) could approach being a household name a year from now, as Greensburg gathers to mark the second anniversary of its near annihilation by a killer tornado.
  If Fraga’s anticipated timetable comes to fruition, an approximately 150-page book he’s begun on the infamous night of May 4, 2007 and the efforts of the town’s survivors to rebuild their community in a new image will be in print in another 12 months.
   With a working title of “Greensburg: The Death and Rebirth of an American Town,” for his project, Fraga has already written a rough draft of the chapter covering the events of that fateful night.  Having just finished a five day presence in Pratt and Greensburg Thursday, Fraga returned to his home in Lawrence to rework that chapter and modify his book proposal within two weeks in order to get it to a literary agent he hopes will agree to represent him.
   Preceding the chapter already begun will be another detailing the origins and recent history of the Greensburg community.  Following summarization of the May 4 event will be chapters covering the aftermath of that night, the media coverage of the tragedy and recovery since, decisions within the community to rebuild green, how those decisions are being implemented and funded, and a recap of the May 4 weekend celebration just held.  “It will basically cover what’s transpired from May 4 a year ago to May 4 of this year,” Fraga said.
   Fraga developed an interest in pursuing a book about Greensburg’s tornadic destruction and later resuscitation after spending an October day helping with a make-a-difference-day cleanup effort.  By December he’d become convinced the town’s resolve to rebuild green was valid and worth pursuing.
   Another visit to Kiowa County in March yielded conversations with such local leaders as Dennis McKinney, city administrator Steve Hewitt and his assistant Stacey Barnes, and people associated with Daniel Wallach’s Greensburg GreenTown.  His just-completed trip added insights from the likes of NWS meteorologist Mike Umscheid, KCMH administrator Mary Sweet and the architects designing the new facility, former mayor Lonnie McCollum and Lynn Billman of NREL.
   While he describes those he’s sought out as “very accessible and helpful” in his getting a feel for how the town has recovered thus far along its environmentally friendly path, Fraga did say he’s been “frustrated” in repeated efforts to get in touch with Discovery Channel supervising producer Brian Meere about the network’s nearly completed work in documenting the town’s process of rebuilding.  “We’ve been like ships passing in the night,” he commented.
   Asked what the import of his forthcoming preface might be, Fraga said, “I think Greensburg is an important story.  It tell us (Americans) who we are, who we aspire to be and what the future holds for us.”  As for who Americans currently are, Fraga said the pervasive spirit of cooperation and mutual support he’s found to characterize Greensburg’s reaction to the tornado from the first moments after the storm’s passage “exemplifies a sense of community that isn’t widespread across the nation.  The stories of selflessness I’ve encountered can’t be found everywhere across the nation.”  Several examples of altruism, in fact, go beyond being neighborly.
   “I’ve heard several stories of out and out heroism the night of the storm and they’ll be in the book,” he said.  “But the heroes were modest, so that I had to get details of what they did from third parties and then go back to them to verify the accuracy of what I was told.”
   To be more green and protective of the environment is what Fraga identifies as the aspirations and future hope of his fellow Americans, noting Greensburg is part of an “important forward-looking movement” that’s more advanced in other corners of the globe in terms of awareness.
   “There are green cities being planned in other countries and a real ecological awareness throughout Europe,” Fraga said.  “If Greensburg carries through with the level of greenness it’s aiming at, it could serve as a model for how green communities can be approached in this country.”
   Though Fraga’s written books before, the subject matter was in his field of specialty—mathematics.   Having taught math over the years in Egypt, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, he returned to do the same at a small college in Ripon, Wisconsin in 1986, and later headed up the math/computer science/physics department at Baker University in Baldwin City form 1997 until his retirement in 2005.
    Fraga then attended a career discovery event in the field of architecture—a discipline in which he’s long held more than a passing interest.  That interest, in fact, has convinced him to plan a second book touching on Greensburg—one that will cover “an architectural response to contemporary crises,” such as the Greensburg tornado.  The working title?  “Building for Hard Times.”
   Writing about people and their responses to life-changing events is, as Fraga has discovered, a far cry from describing the analytical intricacies of math.  “It’s more engaging and tiring,” he said Thursday morning, shortly before departing for Lawrence.  “It’s not easy remembering everything to ask when interviewing folks.”
    When it comes, however, to participating in life-changing events, Fraga has a model of his own, his father Hannibal having left his son (then five) and wife behind in New Bedford in the fall of 1944 (they later joined him in 1946) to join the Manhattan Project of developing the nation’s first atomic bomb in Los Alamos, New Mexico.  An engineer, Hannibal Fraga worked in the inspection department, making “sure the bomb was being constructed according to spec’s,” his son remembers.
     While the bomb first tested July 16, 1945 had a tremendous destructive power that would hasten the end of World War II by leveling Japanese cities much larger than Greensburg, the Kiowa County seat was just as thoroughly devastated, looking to many as though it as well had been bombed into oblivion. 
    The event in New Mexico, of course, ushered in the atomic age—a power that can be put to either constructive or destructive use.  Tornadoes, on the other hand, are equated only with destruction, except, perhaps, in the case of Greensburg.
   The desolation of Greensburg was quick, random and thorough.  Its resurrection, by contract, is slow, painstaking and intentional. Bob Fraga, however, is betting the town’s eventual, green emergence from ruin will be just as thorough as the EF5’s apocalypse.
    Fraga mentions former mayor Lonnie McCollum as someone who “laid the groundwork for this town coming back” as a model of sustainability by emphasizing the need to rebuild in “a well-planned, strategic way.”   He likewise names Steve Hewitt and McCollum’s immediate successor, John Janssen, as having picked up McCollum’s emphasis while adding the peculiar element of rebuilding green.
   He knows others have played a role as well, such as Greensburg GreenTown founder Daniel Wallach and internationally renowned planner John Picard—men still on his list of must-do interviews.  He also knows the time of interviewing must soon come to an end, giving way to the labor of writing the book itself, particularly if he expects to get it into print by May 4 of next year.  His determination to meet that deadline is unflagging, despite the nuisances of growing older—he’s now 68.
   “Some days I think I’m getting too old for this, that maybe someone younger should be doing it,” he said.  “But then I think of a particular interview that really struck me, and I know I’ve got to see it through.  What this town and its recovery can mean to other communities is just too important a story not to finish.  I need to see it through.”