by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
(Feb. 11, 2008) Stories attesting to the power of faith during times of disaster are pouring in from all over the tornado ravaged south which left 59 people dead last week.
“I was in a tornado – and I lived,” said a 49 year old electrician from Tennessee to reporters soon after the storms subsided. When the winds hit his 100-year-old home, it flew off the foundation and left him sprawled on the grass nearby. He attributes his survival to a higher power. “The bottom line is something kept me there,” he said.
In Fairfield, Ala., just after the tornado ripped her home off its foundation, 24-year-old Jade Eddy came outside to find her 86 year old neighbor laying on the ground, barely breathing. Eddy sprawled on top of the woman to protect her from flying debris and recited the Lord’s Prayer.
That consoling prayer may have been the last words her neighbor heard. She later died of her injuries.
Charles Hale, a 66-year-old retiree, relied on faith to get him through the destruction of his Tennessee home. He and his wife huddled in a closet beneath the stairs as the house shook around him. When the twister passed, he opened the door and saw nothing but sky above.
Everything was gone, but through it all, “It was just like there was something comforting through the whole thing,” he told reporters. “The Almighty was raging outside, but everything was peaceful inside.”
Faith runs deep in this part of the country and it was to the churches that people flocked after the storms in search of shelter, comfort, and to reunite with family members.
“They say there are no atheists in foxholes,” said Terry Gillim, a minister at the Church of Christ in Lafayette, Tennessee, to a reporter while distributing clothing and medicine to anyone in need.
“There is a deep desire to know God. And when tragedy strikes or adversity comes our way, those desires are brought to the forefront – whether we want them or not.”
Everyone’s faith was tested in the last week, especially as the first funerals began to take place
this weekend.
In some towns, whole families were buried together, such as in Russellville Arkansas where Jimmy and Dana Cherry were buried along with their 11 year old daughter, Emmy.
“They wouldn’t have wanted one to go without the other,” said Ron Kauffman, their pastor and a Baptist Minister.
In Greenville, Kentucky, relatives gathered to bury 69 year old Bobby Joe Crick who died along with his 62 year old wife Diane and their 40 year old daughter Gilda when a twister hit their trailer park.
There were plenty of miracles in between the tragedies, however. One of the most remarkable was of an 11 month old boy who was found alive in a field 100 yards away from the home he shared with his 23 year old mother. The home was destroyed and the body of his mother was later discovered in the same field.
Brian and Lisa Marie Vaske, parishioners of Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church in Hendersonville, Tennessee, never imagined that a tornado would strike them again after it destroyed their home in Gallitin Tennesee in 2006.
The family was watching television on Feb. 5 when they heard the news that violent storms were moving into the area. Lisa and the couple’s two children, Travis, 6, and Brook, 4, moved to the bathtub for safety, but husband Brian wasn’t moving.
“I was laughing at her,” he told Andy Telli of the Tennessee Register. “There’s no way a tornado will hit us twice.”
He was wrong. When the electricity went out and his ears popped, he knew the improbable was about to happen and quickly jumped into the tub with his family.
Thankfully, they all survived, as did their house, which was heavily damaged but still standing. The family was forced into a Red Cross shelter where they could only thank God they weren’t among the 31 people who lost their lives in the state of Tennessee on that fateful day.
Amidst the rubble of once beautiful towns, no one was surprised to see a new monument of hope being erected along the route into the storm ravaged area. It was a billboard containing only 10 words from the Gospel of Matthew: “Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” (Numerous reports from the Associated Press and the Tennessee Register contributed to this story.)
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