Mayfield’s Mayor, Kathy O’Nan, in a press conference I saw via a poor iPhone recording, told all of America, “Pray for us now, but we’re going to be OK.”
I hear them even now, and I hear them as I sleep. Like the haunting words of that awful night, they stayed with me. The town that reared me, that still considered me one of its own despite my departure in search of opportunity, was mortally wounded, and I couldn’t do anything that felt worthwhile.Īll I could do was stand and watch it bleed. I would drop them off and return to the safety of Clarksville, feeling inadequate and useless. In the days to come, I would return to my hurting home carrying supplies. I was driving, and the last thing I needed was blurred vision while navigating destruction at a level I’d never seen before. I felt tears sting at my eyes but held them back. It was, at the risk of being hyperbolic, hell.
Buildings were piles of unidentifiable brick and wood. Houses were smashed, roofs either caved in or flung across the street. Trees were uprooted and lying over driveways and cars. It was always home.Įverything, everywhere was pure, unfiltered devastation. I didn’t need to know a single street name – although I knew them all – to navigate the place. It hurt to see it.īefore that morning, I could look at the corner of any building and recognize what part of Mayfield it called home. “It’s already crowded, and none of the buildings are safe.” “They don’t want people down there,” she added. I was, in fact, the person who pulls over, gets out of his car and goes to talk to the police officer about said car wreck. “You’re like the person who slows down to see a car wreck,” she said. “It’ll hurt to see it, but I need to see it.” My son and I huddled together on the floor in absolute darkness, save the light offered by my iPad, which had a handful of Ducktales episodes downloaded.īy morning, I felt what I’ve come to describe the “journalist’s itch.” We huddled around the only phone getting any signal – my mother’s – and stared at the rubble that was once our home. With no power, no internet and meager cellular signals, they trickled in slowly on Facebook. It then leveled any and every structure unfortunate enough to stand nearby. Meanwhile, alongside First Methodist, the storm destroyed First Christian Church and what was, until then, the oldest church in town, First Presbyterian.
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It tore away roofs, shattered windows and carried the resulting debris for miles before depositing it across the county. The storm ripped both buildings apart in minutes. Often, I found them gathered over coffee and, yes, doughnuts.īefore me, my editor at the time did it for several decades. It left their house and surrounding neighborhood unscathed, but unleashed its fury on the downtown area.īefore I came to Clarksville, I used to visit Mayfield’s City Hall and County Courthouse every morning to meet with the mayor, the sheriff, police, deputies and more about news for the day. That noise, that strange rumbling mixture, was an EF4 tornado chewing its way past my parents’ home. Tornado: Dickson tornado victims’ recall destruction around them: 'Please Lord, let us live' We knew storms were in the forecast Friday, but we had no idea the danger that awaited.ĮF-2: Cleanup begins across Middle Tennessee counties ravaged by EF-2, smaller tornadoes I was visiting family, hoping for, of all things, a date night the following evening with my wife while the grandparents babysat. It was pure happenstance I was back in my childhood home when Mother Nature felt it necessary to destroy the place. It was nearly 200 years old, almost as old as the town it called home, Mayfield, Ky. The church she spoke of was First United Methodist. Somehow, they both understated what just happened while also describing it better than any paragraph. It was the neighbor’s words, however, cold and simple, that remained with me. Lucky to be alive: Tennessee woman survives EF-2 tornado ripping through her Stewart County home Speechless: Stewart County tornado sounded like freight train, damage unbelievable All at once, it sounded like a generator, a car and a train.īefore that, the only sound was from television meteorologists all but begging viewers to take shelter, while struggling to hold back tears as they described the level of threat their radar showed. Moments before, the only sound we heard was a faint rumble, like an engine somewhere in the distance. For several seconds – several long seconds – there was no other sound, just the empty silence that reiterated her words. The words, spoken by my parents’ neighbor over the phone, hung in the darkness.
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