I have no idea if this legal or not...but it is our story as told by my daughter as she remembers it on a very dark day in our lives... A GRADUATION DAY I WILL NEVER FORGET “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about that day.” BY LACY HEISKELL I was outside Missouri Southern after my graduation taking pictures with my family when it began to sprinkle and the sirens went off. Like almost everyone else in Joplin, we didn’t think much of it and continued with our picture taking, then decided to leave. I was driving my Nissan Sentra and was planning to drop my mother and stepfather off at home then meet up with my boyfriend to go eat. Sitting in the traffic of the parking lot, we felt something smash against my car. My mom asked if it was hail and we all replied that we didn’t know. It happened again and we knew this time it was hail. Still, we didn’t think much of it. I started driving and began to turn onto 7th and Rangeline when the radio announced that a tornado had touched down there, so I turned my car around and headed down Duquesne. It began raining so hard that I couldn’t see anything outside any of my windows and we began to panic. I pulled over and my stepfather and I traded places. He got into the driver’s seat and I climbed into the backseat (looking back, I realized we were both in such a panic that neither of us re-buckled our seatbelts). He started to drive, making his best attempt to figure out what we should do or where we could go. Finally we pulled over, unable to drive anymore. We couldn’t see outside the windows. At this point, we’re on 20th and Duquesne, near the roundabout, and across the street from the gas station (yep, the one with all the videos on YouTube). My mom tried running out of the car to the building we were next to, but my stepdad quickly grabbed her and pulled her back in. The next thing we knew, we saw what looked like a giant black wall heading toward us. The driver’s side window was the first to blow out and then complete chaos hit. We all ducked down and covered our faces. I remember glass and wood hitting my body and the wind howling. Then my car began to move and I thought, “This is it, I’m going to die right now.” I had never been so sure of something in my life and in that moment all I could do was scream, cry, and pray. I started off praying, and then I began begging. I begged God to save my family and me. I later heard that the tornado only lasted about 45 seconds. This stunned me; it felt like hours. Then it was finally over. My stepdad kept asking if I was okay, but all I could do was cry. I was in such shock and I still am. We didn’t know what to do. My roof had caved in except for the last layer of metal. We attempted to drive a little but all the wheels of my car where popped except one and there was too much debris in the roads to get anywhere anyway. We finally got out of the car and looked around us. Everything was gone, including the building my mom was trying to run to. Cars twice the size of mine were flipped, smashed or wrapped around what was left of buildings. It literally looked like someone had taken a bomb and dropped it on that area. We began to walk and the destruction continued. We ran into a woman who was kneeling and crying, her children were in a red truck that was flipped, smashed into the ground, and had another car on top of it. There were more people walking the streets, some crying, others not saying a word. We walked for a while and then a family was nice enough to pick us up - complete strangers who were willing to help people in need. All their windows were busted out besides the front windshield. We drove past Home Depot - gone. Wal-Mart - gone. Half of Rangeline - gone. Then a thought occurred to me: ‘Is everyone safe?’ I tried countless times to reach my boyfriend, my family, friends, somebody, anybody, but the phone calls refused to go through. We got almost to my house (I live behind Lowe’s) and the family couldn’t take us any further because of all the trees in our roads, so we headed home, unaware of if we had a home to go to or not. Just then we realized my mother’s leg was cut up very bad. A neighbor of ours (who we had never met before that day) offered to help. The man was an ex-EMT and cleaned my mom’s wound but told her she would definitely need stitches and should get it checked out before it got infected. I wore my graduation robe throughout the whole ordeal and I think that’s part of the reason I wasn’t injured as bad, just a few minor cuts and bruises. My stepdad walked the rest of the way to our house while we waited for my mom’s wound to be cleaned. The man pulled out glass, grass, and insulation from my mom’s leg. We were very fortunate to be alive and to have a home to go to. My car was destroyed, but it kept us alive and you can’t put a price tag on life. I later went back to my car and found pieces of lumber, glass, insulation, dinner plates, pictures, and building blueprints inside. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about that day. The town I was born and raised in was destroyed in seconds. The school I had attended for the last four years was gone. You can look at pictures of Joplin but it’s nothing like actually seeing it and living through it. The images still make me sick to my stomach. I have blocked out a lot of images from that day, but I will never forget May 22, 2011. I know God has a plan for me and for Joplin.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 20:03:41 +0000
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