The day seemed fairly normal. It was the weekend, so it was laundry day which meant we loaded up my Geo Tracker and headed to one of the parent's house for the day. The lucky washer and dryer ended up being Brad's parents house. We kept hearing reports about tornadoes in the area, but we never really thought it would be that close. Brad and my dad had went up to our apartment to deliver a new mattress for our bed. When they were there, sirens were blaring. The tornado was headed for William Jewell. Somehow, my mom had ended up over at Brad's parents house. Brad, Deena, Mom and I were all in the basement watching Katie Horner. Why we left Katie Horner on that day, I will never know. She is definitely not on my faves list of weather forecasters anymore.
Anyway, my mom's a Kansas girl. She knew something was in the air and she wouldn't talk much. The sky was an eerie green and Mom had an idea of what was coming. Lucky for us we were holed up in the basement. It really does sound like a train going by in case you're wondering. The tornado went by in Gladstone and we got the all clear. Unfortunately, our laundry time was cut short because the power had gone out in Gladstone and we were in mid wash. It wasn't coming back on that night.
Then, I get the news. We were eating at Steak and Shake and my mom calls me. "Have you talked to your sister?" she asked. I told her no. "You need to call her. Your apartments are on the news and she's been trying to get hold of you." I called Shannon and she told me that William Jewell married housing has been hit pretty bad and she couldn't tell if it was our row of apartments that were destroyed or not. I told her I would check it out.
So, Brad gets the idea that he needs to go back to our apartment to grab his medicine. If you know Brad, he can think of just about anything to get in the middle of the action without being the center of attention. So, we get in the car and head towards home. Power lines are down everywhere. You have to have proof of residence to get to your house. Lucky for us, we had a bill in the car with our address to give to the nice officer with a shotgun. Yes, I said shotgun. (They were patrolling the streets of Liberty in golf carts with shotguns during this time and while everyone was in clean up stage.)
We get to Jewell and tell one of the maintenance guys that we need to get to our apartment. He takes us for a ride on the golf cart and Brad says "Oh, wow." I look and see a bite taken out of our apartment building along with a pile of cars. I ask Brad, "Which one is your car." He slowly answers. "The one that's upside down." My answer. "Oh." That upside down car made the news and the local papers several times. Its sort of a trademark for the F4 tornado that hit Liberty.
As I waited for Brad to go in carefully to our apartment, but not as carefully as our Highway Patrol man neighbor who was making sure his weapons were secure, the actual tornado devastation hit me. We had no place to live, graduation was in one week, I still had finals, we had one car, and we both had to be at different places at different times. So, I did what any girl would do in the situation. I cried.
Then, I got over it. We ended up staying the night at Brad's parent's house(our temporary home for the week). Brad slept, but I tossed and turned all night. I couldn't stop thinking about what we were going to do. Everytime I tried to sleep, I had awful dreams and I would wake up. So, I figured it was time to have a long talk with the Man upstairs. Apparently, that long talk was helpful, because God provided us a place to live with our Jewell neighbors. William Jewell cancelled finals. He also provided another car. I wasn't picky about the car by any means, but I did joke that a blue Honda CR-V would be really helpful. Notice what I have now? Yep, I'm attached and its paid off. :o) People from our church, our parent's church,the schools we student taught in, our family all came to help us out in one way or another. It is amazing how prayers were answered in a matter of days!
The most outrageous thing that happened was during clean up. I was sitting on the sidewalk taking a break when a man in a black shirt walked by. He just stood and looked around for a minute. I asked if he was looking for someone. He said no and asked if I lived here. Of course, I said yes, and we struck up a conversation. I turn around and there is a boom mic coming at me. We made the national news, folks. I've been on CNN. In fact, that lovely husband of mine decided it would be cute to kiss me on CNN. He's still paying for that by the way.
So, every year May 4th comes around, I remember that tornado and I remember that things could always be worse. I look at it this way, if that tornado hadn't taken our apartment, we might still be living in a one bedroom apartment with no kids and dead end jobs. In fact, we might have never moved 5 times in one year, either.
We may have never ended up in Kearney, "where its normal" as I jokingly say. And we wouldn't want that, now would we?
