The Stories that Shape Us

What does it mean to be a Missourian?

For a long time, I wasn’t sure how to answer that question.

Friends I’ve met in my travels have often asked what Missouri is like—what it’s known for, whether I like being from here. I usually end up talking about sunsets. I’ve never seen a prettier one than a Missouri sunset. Then I’ll mention the farmland, the rolling hills, the quiet rhythm of rural life.

And then I run out of things to say.

I can talk easily about being from my hometown. I can talk about being an American. Those stories feel formed. Like they already exist in me, ready to be told.

Like reciting the Pledge of Allegiance every morning at school. Or how, on the Fourth of July, I’d watch fireworks bloom over the street while kids ran barefoot through the grass and parents sat on porches with lemonade and sweet tea. I can still remember the field behind the Methodist church where we played backyard baseball, and who could forget the countless hours spent riding our bikes to the local pool.

My memories of life as a “Missourian” have always felt more distant. Not empty, just not yet familiar in the same way. Our state of course has never lacked in stories, I just hadn’t yet found my place in them.

My time at Empower Missouri has changed that. I’ve had the privilege of visiting the Missouri State Historical Society’s archives over the past few months, and if there is a place that could define what it means to be a Missourian, this would be it. I walked through their doors prepared to look through Empower Missouri’s 125 year history—reports, accomplishments, legislative wins. And those are there. Decades of advocacy that helped shape systems still in place today.

But that’s not what I kept thinking about when I left.

I kept thinking about the people.

I think about Mr. and Mrs. Meyer, who spent more than 20 years fostering over 60 children in their home. Whose house was described to have always had at least one baby in it—and a couple who loved every child who came through their doors, while still believing those children ultimately deserved reunification or permanent homes built to last.

I think about how many people like them are still doing that work quietly today, in a system where more than 12,000 children are in foster care in Missouri.

I think about Mrs. Roscoe Anderson—“the First Lady of MASW”—who spent more than four decades working across local, state, and national efforts in health and welfare. People said she was the kind of person mayors and governors turned to when something needed to get done. But what stays with me is a note someone wrote that even after she stopped teaching formally, people still considered themselves her students, shaped by her “great classroom of life.”

It makes me think about how many people like her are moving through communities without titles that ever fully capture what they do.

And I think about Lorenzo Johnston Greene, who spent more than 30 years teaching at Lincoln University, and who beyond the classroom, was deeply involved in civil rights and social advocacy, serving on state and national committees, contributing to major studies, and helping document Black history at a time when many of those stories were overlooked or erased.

He is fondly remembered as one of Missouri’s foremost scholars in Black history.

Different lives. Different paths. Different people. All of whom were awarded the Missouri Association of Social Welfare’s (MASW, now Empower Missouri) award for Outstanding Service in Health and Welfare—Mr. and Mrs. Meyer (1954), Mrs. Roscoe Anderson (1956), and Lorenzo Johnston Greene (1974). 

The achievements I’ve learned about, the lives I’ve followed, and the stories I’ve read in these archives has left me with a sense that I am not standing outside Missouri’s story—I am standing inside it. Not at the beginning of it, not at the end of it, but somewhere in the middle of a long line of people who have been trying, in their own ways, to make this place better.

So — what does it mean to be a Missourian?

I’ve decided that to me, it means being part of a story more than 200 years in the making. It means being a part of Empower Missouri’s 125-year history.

It means being an activist. A teacher. A mother. A community member. A friend.

It means being both a storyteller and a story worth telling.

Do you have someone in your life who is making Missouri a better place to live and work? Take some time to tell their story. Submissions are open here until May 1st for our 125th Anniversary Awards, and an award given today might just be read 100 years from now—by someone like me, looking for stories to hold on to.