Friday, June 12, 2009

Anniversary- Part IV

I promise today's post won't be as long as the others. (Well, we'll see!) I have spent the last few days remembering a year ago when a tornado hit our small town. If you haven't seen the pictures or read the posts you can click here: Part I, Part II, and Part III.

When I think back on the events of last year, there are things I will never forget:

  • The former student with his newborn baby wrapped in his letter jacket, trying to get to a relatives house that night after their house was destroyed.

  • Two of the more serious injuries happening to community men who were opening the tornado shelter for others and trying to get people to safety.

  • Our high school cheerleaders returning from camp on the athletic bus the afternoon after the tornado. They were still in uniform while the bus made its way through the rubble. I will never forget their faces pressed to windows, the horrified looks and the tears rolling down their cheeks as they got their first glimpse of our town and their school.

  • That first Sunday morning in church, hearing the laughter (recognizable anywhere!) of one lady in town. She and her husband (both in their 70's) had been out of town when the tornado hit and had lost almost everything. Their home was destroyed. Their funeral home was gone. Their other business had major damage, and still Kay could find reason to laugh. Life would go on.

  • Walking in my room at school and seeing 26 years of collages of student pictures ripped from the wall and lying in the debris. (I didn't take the few that survived. They all went down with the school.)

  • The cramping in my hands the night after we rescued every book from our high school library. I couldn't sleep my knuckles and joints hurt so bad. I'm not sure they will ever fully recover.

  • Seeing a group of cheerleaders from a school two hours away, volunteering and moving textbooks in a book brigade. They wore matching outfits of T-shirts painted with words of support for our students and schools. They weren't in our league, and we had never played their school, but they'd met our squad at camp and wanted to help.

  • Going shopping in a nearby town about a week after the tornado and finding myself in tears that everything was so normal. I felt like things would never be normal in our town again.

  • The shock of driving down our street and realizing that I could see the school five blocks away. Besides the old homes, the trees were all gone.

  • Seeing the scrabble tile the tornado left on our front steps. The only sign the tornado had come close to our home.
Photo by L.

6 comments:

Gayle said...

You got me right away with your high school cheerleaders returning from camp to the devastation. So, so sad. But also, as you said in your previous post, so wonderful to see the goodness in people.

Puna said...

Things will be better again, they will. I'm so glad you and your family and your home are okay. But the trees...oh the lovely trees...it will take years to have them grow back. So good that you were able to save the books. Wow, thanks for sharing this...

ELK said...

your posts about this stirs such emotion ~ thank you for sharing your feelings and thoughts E.

Shawna said...

The scrabble tile - A tiny symbol for a huge disaster.

This must have been an eye-changing experience. I can't even imagine what it must have been like.

Thanks for the kind words you left me about my utter disaster of a going away party. I'm still very disappointed, but life goes on. I do my best to take things in stride. I'm sure you understand.

Shawna's Study Abroad

Heidi said...

The scrabble tile is an "A". A is where you start, it's for the best work you can do-and maybe for the best is yet to come. It's for the Alpha- The Beginning that begins with Him- and Omega, the end, when He decides it. And A is for apple, as in the ones kids give to teachers to let them know they are well loved.

You still have one more story in the line-up right? Our Town the Way it Is Today- right?

And now, Mrs. E, my newest, favoritist teacher, I am pleased to bring you a blog lesson from my one room blogschoolhouse. Robin at Be Still and Know taught it to me.

To strike a word: type < strike >now write the word or words you want to strike in here like this< /strike > then put that ending on it, no spaces between anything (the only reason spaces are here between the < and the word strike on both sides is because the Comment box won't accept it otherwise, because it is HTML code. I think you do put regular spacing between the words you're striking if you're striking more than one in a row together. So above- the words "now write the word or words you want to strike in here like this" would be the ones that appear crossed out w/a line through them.

Does that make sense? Try it and see if it works and then let me know right away, because learning is THAT exciting, at least for me!

Heidi

Melonie said...

Oh how I can hear Kay's laughter! :)