By Craig Murphy

Springfield Times Editor

February is the shortest month, and that's just fine with Lonne Morse.

After all, January was quite the long month for the owner of Get N Go Grocery Deli on 28th Street.

The long month actually started right before Christmas, when Morse had a fire at his Lonne's Cabinet Shop.

In January, Morse was part of a missions team from Thurston Christian Church doing work in the Dominican Republic as well as Haiti. The team was leaving Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Jan. 12 when the massive 7.0-scale earthquake hit.

On top of that, on Friday night Get N Go was robbed.

When Monday came and marked the start of a new month, Morse was all-too-ready to flip the page on the calendar.

"I was," he said with a chuckle. "I'm hoping things are going to improve now. I'm hoping everything is over now. It's been a wild few weeks."

Morse, who helped set up a cabinet shop in Haiti, couldn't believe what he became a first-hand witness to after the quake.

"What I saw in Haiti I haven't seen before," he said. "I've never been through an earthquake, and the mass destruction. The only way I can describe it is all of Springfield and Eugene dropping to ground in 40 seconds and everyone being dead. It was something."

Morse assisted Dr. Stephan Ames from his team, and saw a number of bodies.

"We were documenting things," he said. "At one point, I was so sad with seeing all of the deaths and destruction, I quit taking the pictures. I just couldn't do it anymore."

Morse was back home less than two weeks before last Friday's robbery. According to a release from the Springfield Police Department, a white male suspect described as being 6'2" with thin build and about 40 years of age entered Get N Go Deli with a knife around 8 p.m. and took money from the cash register before fleeing on foot, leaving a shaken female employee behind.

For more on this story and other news from around the Springfield area, be sure to pick up a copy of the Feb. 5 issue of Springfield Times, available at news racks and stores all around the area. Look under the 'Newspaper Locations' link on this site to find out where. To subscribe to the paper, call 741-7368 or stop by 741 Main St.