The Mercy of the Sky: The Story of a Tornado

by Holly Bailey

  Her mother had survived a direct hit from the 1955 tornado that had leveled much of tiny Blackwell, Oklahoma, near the Kansas border. Later categorized as an F5 tornado, the storm had killed twenty people, injured two hundred, and destroyed nearly four hundred buildings, wiping them clear to the ground. Simpson’s mother had been only five at the time, but she was still haunted by the vivid memories of that day. Rescuers had dug her out of the rubble of the family home, her tiny body passed from stranger to stranger down a line of people frantically searching for survivors. She had been separated from her family for more than a day. Her parents had thought she was dead, and she had thought she had lost her family forever. It was trauma she’d never really gotten over.

  The story had scared Simpson to death when she was a child, but only now did she truly understand how horrifying it was to be in a path of a storm. The sound alone was terrifying. But it was the smell that she noticed the most as the air became rich with the overpowering odor of freshly tilled earth, mowed grass, and lumber. It was a confirmation, as if she needed it, that the tornado was doing major damage as it ravaged its way toward her. She thought of the kids crouched in the hallways, the only shelter they had. She prayed the building would be strong enough to withstand what was coming. Miracles could happen. Her mother was a living, breathing example of one—a tiny child who had survived a deadly tornado.

  What was happening seemed so unreal, so alien, as if she were floating outside her body watching someone else’s life. She could not comprehend how the day had turned out like this, the final Monday before school let out for the year, a day that was supposed to be a celebration of the kids and how much they had accomplished, with summer vacation just days away. They had been so close to the end of the day, when most of the kids would have been safe with their parents. Why had the tornado formed so early? Unanswerable questions raced through her head, and she could barely wrap her mind around any of them. The storm was coming, and she had to be ready for whatever would happen now. It was her job, her duty. She was the principal, responsible for everybody in the building, the kids and her staff. She wished she could unleash some protective bubble around them to keep them safe, but there was nothing more she could do. She felt completely helpless.

  In the dark Simpson felt the other women trembling in fear around her, scared for their lives. Kristin Atchley, the school’s counselor, was hanging on to one side of the toilet for dear life and began to cite the Lord’s Prayer out loud. “Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” she said in a shaky voice. Atchley suddenly paused. “I don’t want to die,” she said as she began to weep. By now the others were quietly crying too, listening to the storm approach and wondering if they would live to see the world outside the bathroom walls.

  Simpson was terrified too, but she was determined not to allow the fear to overtake her. She pushed it all to the back of her mind, willing herself to be strong and focused for everyone around her. She was strangely calm, as if some other force had taken over to keep her from really thinking about how much she had to lose. As the tornado inched closer, she leaned her forehead on the cool white porcelain of the sink, which began to vibrate from the energy of the monster grinding its way toward her. All she could do was wait and pray that her school could survive this and be ready for what would come next.

  • • •

  Along the east corridor of the school, where the fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade classes were held, Justin Ayers, a twenty-nine-year-old fifth-grade teacher, had been nervously pacing back and forth between the students sheltering inside and the back door at the end of the hallway that led to a concrete courtyard outside. He kept walking out and peering off toward the west looking for the tornado. By then it was hard to see. At more than a mile wide, it was wrapped in so much rain and debris it simply looked like a massive black veil of darkness as it stretched across what seemed to be the entire sky west of the school. Somewhere in the cloud was the killer tornado, but even though they could hear it, the people directly in front of it couldn’t see it until it was right on top of them.

  Suddenly it was there, a few hundred yards away. Ayers saw a house just on the other side of the school’s library suddenly explode in the air as the funnel blasted into it like an unstoppable tank. His heart began to race. Seeing how that house had been so suddenly pulverized, he realized almost instantly that the hallways inside the school would not be enough to protect them from what was coming. He raced as fast as he could back into the building, where he screamed at the top of his lungs at the teachers and students crouched against the walls to get into the bathrooms. “It’s coming! It’s coming,” he yelled, so loud that he could be heard all the way to the front hallway of the building, where first graders, kindergartners, and pre-K classes were huddled.

  Paula Fleener, a fourth-grade teacher, jumped to her feet and ran to a bathroom, whose stalls were already crammed with students from another class. Fleener, who at fifty-nine was one of the oldest teachers on staff, grabbed a trash can and hurled it down the hall, quickly making room for her students on the floor near the sinks. She ordered them to crouch and squeeze together with their backpacks over their heads. She then threw her body on top of them, grabbing as many of them as she could underneath her and holding them tight. She thought only of their safety. “I want my mama!” one of her students began to sob as the horrifying roar of the tornado was punctuated by the terrible screech of twisting metal and breaking glass as it began to inhale the neighborhood around them. “I won’t let you go,” Fleener told the boy, squeezing him and her other students even tighter beneath her.

  A few feet away her colleague Rhonda Crosswhite, who taught sixth grade, had thrown her body on top of her students inside one of the stalls. She could feel them shaking underneath her. One girl was crying hysterically, her body heaving with sobs. Another boy lifted his head up to look at Crosswhite, his face gripped with fear. “I love you,” he told her, tears running down his face. “Please don’t die with me. I don’t want to die.” Short and blond, Crosswhite, who was forty-four, was a bulldog of a woman, a strong, unfailingly positive mother of three teenage daughters whose voice was so boisterous and loud that she often joked that she had been born with a built-in microphone. She spent her time outside the classroom as a “cheer mom,” a special breed of mother who devoted hours to ferrying her youngest daughter, Abby, and her cheerleading squad all over the state for competitions.

  But as the tornado neared, it was Crosswhite who became the cheerleader inside that cramped stall, bucking up her students and refusing to give an inch to a ruthless storm that seemed to have no mercy on any of its victims. “I am not going to die today,” Crosswhite declared matter-of-factly, her booming voice louder than the roar of the storm. “I have other things to do in my life, and I’m not going to die, and you’re not going to die. . . . We’re going to be fine. I’m protecting you. We’re not going to die today.” Crosswhite refused to even consider the possibility that the storm would kill them, as if the power of positive thinking would make it go away. Still, she began to pray out loud so her students could hear her, calling on God to protect them, to keep them safe from the destructive tornado.

  On the other side of the wall, Janice Brim and her sixth graders were still singing church praise songs that called on God for protection as they sat squeezed in the tiny printer closet. And as the roar of the twister grew louder and louder, Brim and the students raised their voices louder, singing almost at the top of their lungs, as if they were trying to shout the storm away. Brim grabbed the knob of the door to hold it shut, since the lock was broken. She braced her feet in one of the corners of the closet and prepared to hold on tight, hoping she would have enough strength to keep the storm out.

  • • •

  In the back building Jennifer Doan clutched her third graders as close to her as she could. If she could have fit them all under her to protect them, she would have bu
t, small and diminutive with the slightly swollen belly of a woman two months pregnant, she simply couldn’t. On her left was Xavier Delgado. On her right was Porter Trammell and next to him was Nicolas McCabe—nine-year-olds who had been so gleeful earlier in the day celebrating their final week of school before summer vacation. Now they were terrified and sobbing, their tiny bodies shaking in fear. “I don’t want to die,” one of the boys, his voice quivering, told her. Doan, her heart suddenly in her throat, tried her very best not to cry. “It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay,” she said again and again, stretching her arms as far as possible to rub the boys’ backs and comfort them.

  A few feet away Cheryl Littlejohn, another third-grade teacher, was watching for the tornado from one of the classrooms that faced the west. She suddenly saw the funnel begin to tear at the playground equipment just yards away. Littlejohn ran back into the hallway, screaming for the teachers and kids to get down. Up and down the hallway the children cried and screamed as the tornado began to pummel the building, hurling massive pieces of debris against the roof and walls as if they were under attack. The ground began to rumble like an earthquake, and there was the sound of glass shattering as the windows exploded inside the classrooms from the force of the winds. Within seconds the air became thick with dust and insulation as the storm rattled everything loose. It quickly became hard to breathe.

  Second-grade teacher Shelly Calvert, her arms stretched around six kids, peeked up just as the back door at the southern end of the hallway was torn open. She watched in terror as the tornado peeled it away hinge by hinge. A choking cloud of dust and debris swept through the hall as the teachers and kids began to feel their bodies being lifted and sucked by the storm—the unseen hand of a monster dragging them helplessly toward the outside.

  As she fought to maintain traction against the storm, Calvert felt for a little girl to her right who had been just beyond her fingertips, so tiny and light she worried the storm might suck her away. Feeling nothing, she peeked up and saw that she was gone. As panic raced through her body, she lifted her head up fully, her body now pummeled by debris, looking for the girl. Feeling something at her back, she turned and saw her, motionless on the ground behind her. She quickly grabbed her, shaking her and yelling her name, and for a second the girl didn’t move and Calvert worried she might be dead. But then she suddenly came to, coughing and crying. Calvert threw her on top of the kids in front of her and leaned down again as the debris flying through the hallway grew bigger and the winds grew fiercer than anything she had ever imagined. This is it, she thought. There was no way they could survive this. Images of her husband and kids and granddaughter flashed through her mind. She prayed she would see them again, but as she and the kids began to be battered by rocks and books and anything else the storm could pick up and hurl at them, she began to lose hope. Above them the roof began to disintegrate, pulled apart by the winds of the massive tornado.

  Down the hall Doan was hanging on to her kids for dear life. It was all happening so fast, but for a few brief moments it seemed as though it were in slow motion, like a scene from a horror film, with books and papers and pieces of the rapidly crumbling school swirling and suspended in midair. Before she could even grasp what was happening, the walls had caved in, causing everything to go black. The kids who had been within her grasp suddenly seemed to be gone, their warm touch replaced by cold, jagged pieces of concrete and steel.

  • • •

  In the front hallway Karen Marinelli and her colleagues had heard Ayers’s cries warning that the storm was approaching, and they had squeezed their small students even tighter. Marinelli had reached as far as she could around the kids, so far she was touching the teacher next to her. Marinelli had resisted voicing her fears, but as she grabbed her colleague’s hand she couldn’t hold it in any longer. “I’m scared,” she said as she heard the west side of the building begin to creak and crack as the storm devoured it piece by piece. Suddenly the skylights above their heads exploded, spraying glass all over the hallway.

  A few feet away Linda Patterson, a pre-K teacher, and her aide, Kaye Johnson, threw their bodies on top of their students as the ceiling began to rain down on them. They were crouched next to Erin Baxter’s class, and in an attempt to keep the kids calm Patterson and Johnson were singing the alphabet song. “A, B, C, D, E, F, G . . .” the teachers sang in unison, raising their voices in an effort to be heard over the storm. Underneath her Patterson heard the tiny, muffled voice of one of her students. “I can’t breathe,” the child said, pushing against her. But Patterson was not about to move. She felt a whoosh of wind at her back as the roof began to peel away. Just as quickly she was being pelted by rocks, cracked plaster, and everything else the storm had gathered up in its maw. The sound was now deafening.

  A few feet away Baxter clutched her students closer as she wondered if the building would collapse on top of them. She didn’t dare look up, but she felt things whizzing past her head—boards and ceiling tiles. Her ears suddenly began to pop, and she could hear sounds only in a muted, muffled way, as if she were caught underneath a giant glass jar. Her mind flashed back to the May 3 tornado, when one of her friends had been seriously injured by debris flying through the air. She began to pray out loud for God to keep her students safe and for the storm to go away. “It’s going to be okay! It’s going to be okay!” she yelled. “I love you!” She had no idea if her kids could hear her, but she knew for now they were still alive. She could feel them moving beneath her, but she didn’t know how much longer they could survive like this. The tornado seemed to be parked right on top of them.

  A little farther down the hall, Jennifer Simonds, a twenty-six-year-old kindergarten teacher, couldn’t believe what was happening. A native of Naperville, Illinois, Simonds had been through a few thunderstorms since she’d moved to Oklahoma a few years before, but nothing like this. It was like The Wizard of Oz mashed up with a horror movie. She felt her body being pummeled and sucked at by the tornado’s winds. It seemed like one big gust of air, and she and her kids would be gone. Only a few minutes earlier she hadn’t even really believed the tornado would hit them. This had to be just a precaution. Why would something so terrible happen to a school? But then she had heard the glass shattering in another part of the building. She quickly stood up and grabbed backpacks off hooks nearby and threw them on top of the six students she had left. “This is going to hurt,” she said, and she dove on top of them, using her body as a shield. Within seconds the heavy concrete cinder blocks of the wall started to crack apart, and she felt them falling one by one on top of her. Simonds began to worry that she was crushing the kids. Like other teachers, she worried more about their safety than her own. They were so young, just five or six. Their lives had barely begun. She was young too, but at least she’d lived a little bit of a life. She began to cry out loud to God, “Take me! Take me! Not my babies!” She repeated it again and again, as the storm lingered above.

  Nearby Marinelli felt something unbearably heavy hit the small of her back, and her pelvis and legs were pushed to the ground, almost flat. Her upper body remained tightly wrapped around the three boys from her class, who began to squirm as the world seemed to be collapsing around them. At that moment Marinelli was sure they were going to die. “What’s going on? What’s happening?!” one of the boys cried out. Marinelli tried to respond, but she could barely breathe. Whatever it was that had fallen on them felt like it had cut off part of her flow of oxygen, and her voice came out as a labored whisper. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” she repeated. “It’s going to be over soon.” Pain was shooting through her body, and she wondered how much longer she would be able to last.

  • • •

  In the hallway of the back building where the second- and third-grade classes were, Eischen felt her body being sucked up into the air. She clawed at the wall, trying to pull herself back down, worried that the winds lapping at them like a thirsty dog would take one of her kid
s. She screamed again to God: “Lift it, Lord! Please lift it!”

  • • •

  On the east side of the building near the fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade classrooms, Janice Brim was using every bit of strength she possessed to keep the door to the closet where she and her students were sheltering closed. They were still singing the words to Psalm 91, shouting them now to be heard above the storm. “I will say of the Lord: He is my refuge and fortress,” they yelled. By now they had sung the hymn a dozen or so times, and as the tornado began to tear through the school, slowly and agonizingly, they sang it even more fervently. Brim could hear the fear in her kids’ voices, but some strange calm had fallen over her. She was prepared to go if the Lord wanted to take her, but she prayed that the storm would spare the kids. In her hand the doorknob began to twist. She struggled to hang on even as it twisted her wrist, spraining it. She ducked her head as the roof above them peeled away, but still she hung on to that door, refusing to let go. “His faithfulness, your sure defense,” she sang.

  • • •

  Back at the front of the building Simpson was still grasping the pedestal sink for dear life. The storm seemed as if it had been over them forever, as if it had purposely stopped for maximum impact. It didn’t seem to be moving. She and the three other women were crammed so tightly into that bathroom that there was barely an inch of distance between them, but somehow debris was filling in that space—rocks and dust and parts of the ceiling. Waiting for the tornado to hit had been excruciating, and for some reason Simpson had found herself narrating out loud what she believed to be happening outside the bathroom door, like a play-by-play announcer. “It’s hitting the library,” she’d said matter-of-factly when she heard it tear into the west side of the building. She thought it would move through quickly—that’s what most tornadoes did. But it just sat there, and Simpson began to slowly bang her forehead against the porcelain sink, almost like a personal countdown. “It’s almost over. It’s almost over. It’s almost over,” she said again and again. Outside the door it sounded like the building was imploding. Crash after crash. She ached to get out of the bathroom and to the kids. She knew from the terrifying sounds that her school had been ripped apart, though she didn’t have any idea how badly. But it wouldn’t go away.