Smoke Signals: Operation BBQ Relief

As he was preparing for work the morning after a tornado flattened the town of Joplin, Mo ., last May, Stan Hays ’s wife made a suggestion that would change his life. “She sat up in bed and said, ‘You need to go down there and help those people,’” he recalls.

Hays, 41, who lives in suburban Kansas City, Mo., about three hours from Joplin, is a sales director for Farmers Insurance. But he didn’t need to be an insurance man to understand the enormous scope of this disaster.

On his way to work, Hays, a barbecue competitor, called Jeff Stith , a fellow competitor from another area team. “We should go down there and cook some food and help those people,” he told Stith.

Stith, as it happens, was thinking the exact same thing.

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