I was awakened by the loud, unfamiliar, crashing, whishing noise just at daybreak. I had no idea what that could be. In a sleep stupor, I went out on my deck, rubbed my eyes, and saw the winds moving the tree branches in all directions at once. I was in awe, for what seemed like an eternity but was probably only a minute.
Suddenly, I realized that I might be in danger and that I should probably get to the basement. The noise lasted only a few minutes. Later in the day, I took a walk through town and through the campus of Berea College. I saw a lot of personal belongings that were blowing around – even old letters.
I saw that one of the stone buildings on campus that seemed invincible had been brought down by the tornado. Amazing! Even more amazing though, right next to the fallen stone building was a patch of yellow and red tulips. They had not been touched. Such seemingly vulnerable flowers not affected by the intensity of the tornado’s winds? I was again in awe.
It was 1996, when I was living in Berea, and a tornado came through. “It’s just pathetic destruction,” said Clifford Kerby, then mayor of Berea, KY, where a twister ripped a path right through the center of town.
Berea, a community of about 8,000, appeared to be the hardest hit in Kentucky. About 800 to 1,000 homes were damaged, with about 20 percent of them destroyed, said Kerby. However, only minor injuries were reported by the storm that hit about 6 a.m. “You’ll have one house perfectly all right, and the one next to it is missing the top half and it’s laying in someone’s yard blocks away,” Kerby said. Roofs were blown off most of the area’s motels, numerous businesses were wrecked and the campus of Berea College had “more trees down than standing,” the mayor said. At one gas station, he said, “the gas pumps were just bent in half. The Burger King sign was in some people’s back yard three blocks away.”
“It cut just a narrow swath, but it did a good job on that swath,” Kerby said.
I resolved that day I wanted to be like a tulip. I wanted to stand in my strength and beauty amidst the storms in my life. But, are there barriers?