The Tennessean (Nashville, Tennessee)
April 4, 2006 Tuesday, Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 2464 words
HEADLINE: 'It took my life away'
BODY:
Trail of terror 25 miles long, 1 mile wide
By BRAD SCHRADE and LEON ALLIGOOD
Staff Writers
BRADFORD, Tenn. -- There is little in Larry Taylor's 43 years of tending to the dead in this small northwest Tennessee town to prepare him for the heartbreaking task ahead.
Sunday night's storm cut through the north side of town, ripping up trees and rooftops, but sparing his funeral home on East Main Street, before pushing onward across the cotton and cornfields that drive the economy in this part of Gibson County.
Taylor's youngest son, Brad, 28, lived with his wife, Tanya, and two young boys, Tyce, 5, and Kyle, 3, in a home on a beautiful bluff overlooking those fields. The brutal twister ripped apart their home, destroying it and tossing the family members hundreds of feet into the surrounding fields and brush, killing them all.
Now, Larry Taylor must prepare to dress their bodies and place his son and daughter-in-law each in separate oversized caskets. He must leave room in the coffins to bury each parent with one of the sons. The boys were Taylor's only two grandchildren -- and he lived for them.
"It basically took my life away," Taylor said of the thieflike storm that came and left under the cover of darkness. "If you want to know the truth, I don't care if I see daylight tomorrow."
The emotions, raw and torn, yesterday lay open like the rubble of the homes crushed by tornadoes that cut through eight states Sunday night.
The furious funnel of wind hit Tennessee the hardest, with 23 deaths in Gibson and Dyer counties and 2,000 damaged buildings counted along the 25-mile path carved by the "supercell" of storms. More than 82 people were injured, including 17 critically, state officials said yesterday.
The death toll may yet rise as authorities continue to comb the rubble today with specially trained search dogs. The revelations of the deaths fell on the anniversary of the 1974 "super outbreak" of tornadoes that killed 50 people in Tennessee and more than 300 across the nation.
Among the dead were a couple baby-sitting their infant grandson, a young married couple who worked in Dyersburg and two sisters-in-law in Gibson County. But the identities of most of the dead had not been made public last night.
The Taylor family accounts for four of the six who were killed in Bradford, Mayor Ernest Pounds said.
Also dead in Bradford is a woman, identified as Patsy Cooper Lewis, and a sixth person who moved to town just recently, Pounds said.
The mayor said he did not have any information on the unidentified Bradford death, but said the person lived in a mobile home in the area. Larry Taylor said he expected also to handle funeral arrangements for Lewis, whom a commercial database service last night listed as 53 years of age and most recently of an address on U.S. 45-S.
'You feel everything'
First came the blackness, a sky that looked as dark as outer space. Then came the roaring, a malevolent rumble that grew in volume exponentially, louder with each second as it drew a bead on the small town of Newbern in Dyer County.
Betty Barham said her brother and sister-in-law, Eddie and Vicky Sherron, no doubt knew the Sunday night twister was headed their way.
She believes her little brother, 56, took care to protect himself, his wife and the couple's not quite 1-year-old grandson, Luke, whom they were baby-sitting. Probably they huddled in a closet or bathroom, Barham conjectured, tear droplets tracing the contours of her cheeks.
"But it just wasn't enough," she lamented.
"The house is gone. They're gone. Their son found all three of them. They were lying out here in the yard, lying side by side in the mud. It just breaks our heart."
Broken hearts and broken bones, there are plenty of both in Dyer County, where 15 people lost their lives and about 60 others were injured Sunday night in a tornado whose wildly twisting funnel followed the lay of the land for about 10 miles through the county.
Every person, tree, cow, home, business, church and car that was within the twister's 1-quarter- to a half-mile corridor became matter for the howling winds to hurl about at will.
"The homes where the victims were found were totally destroyed. There's nothing left but the foundations. The power of this storm was something to see," said a tired Sheriff Jeffrey Holt yesterday afternoon.
The death toll in Dyer County is likely to rise by at least one. An elderly woman who lived with her son remained missing last evening, Holt said.
All were accounted for at 1607 Biffle Road, home of Billy and Betty Sisk, and their two children, Erica, 13, and Brandon, 10.
Accounted for.
Betty Sisk said she didn't fully understand the expression until Sunday night's storm plucked her and her two children from the closet of their home, where they had prayed and linked arms as the tornado came closer.
"You could feel the walls start popping and hear the glass breaking and you could actually feel it when it took us up. You could feel everything just falling apart," she said yesterday afternoon as family and friends sorted through the remains of their three-bedroom, two-bath home for mementoes and valuables.
Mother and children sailed through the air, landing about 50 feet from the front door, on what used to be the front door, she said.
"Everything just falls apart in front of you. You can feel stuff hitting you, flying by you, you just feel everything, the dirt slapping you in the face, you feel everything."
As the tornado moved the trio outside, the brute force wind wedged Erica from the mother's frantic armlock.
"I thought I had lost her. It pulled her away from me. She had to crawl back to us, and finally, I was able to grab her hand and pull her to me. I didn't let go," Betty Sisk said.
"The storm took 20 years of stuff, but my most precious possessions are still here -- that's my kids."
After the tornado passed over them, she said she rose from the mud and called for the Sherrons, her next-door neighbors.
"Eddie," she shouted. "Eddie."
There was no reply.
Searching until daylight
Larry Taylor held back tears as he stood in his driveway in Bradford yesterday, describing the horrific night before. Over his shoulder lay a large pecan tree that once shaded his back yard. It had been ripped by its roots from the ground.
Taylor said his wife spoke to their son by telephone 10 minutes before the storm hit Sunday night. Golf-ball-sized hail had been pelting the family's home and beating down on Brad Taylor's truck.
Larry Taylor said his wife told their son to be careful and "watch himself." She huddled inside their home, which is about three miles away, while Larry Taylor stood in the carport to see the storm through.
After the storm passed, he couldn't get through to his son on the phone. He tried to drive to the son's house, but trees and power lines blocked the way. It took him three hours to get there on back roads -- and when he got there, the house was gone.
"If it hits right, it doesn't matter where you are," Larry Taylor said. "You can be in a bathtub or closet, it doesn't matter. I ain't found their bathtubs. I ain't found anything. It's bare lot."
Larry Taylor's other son, Tim, also lost his home. He is the fire chief for the city fire department -- a volunteer force of about 30. The chief was out at his brother's home, along with other rescuers searching for the family Sunday night.
They couldn't find them and were about to give up until daylight, Larry Taylor said, when they found Brad's body. He was hundreds of yards away, the father said. They then found Brad's wife and the two grandchildren.
Larry Taylor said his son, the fire chief, would not let him see the bodies. They were sent to a funeral home in Jackson for initial burial preparations, but Taylor said yesterday that he expected to see them soon.
"I'll see them tomorrow," he said. "I'm gonna dress them. I have to. It's peace of mind."
'Like that'
A few miles away from the Sisks' home, in the hard-hit community of Millsfield, Mary McQuarters rode out the storm at her brother's home next door to her own. His was heavily damaged. Hers was gone.
"It's just vanished. It's somewhere out there," she said, pointing across the road from her house, toward a stand of hardwoods twisted and bent.
"It's just so unreal that this happened. If you could have heard the roaring you would have thought, 'Well, this is it. This is the last thing I'm going to do.' If I had been home eating supper, instead of eating supper with my brother, that might have been my story," McQuarters said.
The Wal-Mart employee said she counted the deaths of seven friends in the storm. "This just hurt us so hard. A number of good people just taken away, like that," she said.
As the sun was going down yesterday, McQuarters and other family members were searching through the rubble of her home for anything of value. A friend called Mary's name.
"Looky here," he said, holding a .22-caliber lever-action rifle.
"Oh, Lord, that's Daddy's gun that he won at the coon-hunting club," said McQuarters, her voice choking.
She had never been attached to the gun, the woman said, until the storm hid it under 4 feet of broken two-by-fours and insulation and wallboard. For some reason she had thought of it several times yesterday. When it was found, emotion got the best of her.
"I'm going to rebuild. Hard as that's going to be, I'm going to rebuild right here. This is family land. That's the church, Christ United Methodist Church, that I go to right over there," she said, pointing down the street to a building whose walls have collapsed.
"We'll rebuild there, too. This is home. You don't just leave home." o
The staff of The Jackson Sun contributed to this story. Brad Schrade can be reached at 259-8086 or bschrade@tennessean.com. Leon Alligood can be reached at 259-8279 or lalligood@tennessean.com.
HOW TO HELP
The American Red Cross is now accepting monetary donations for storm-affected areas.
To donate, mail a check payable to the American Red Cross with an "American Disaster Relief Fund" notation in the memo line to: 2201 Charlotte Ave., Nashville, TN, 37203.
To make a credit card donation, call 250-4264 or log on to the agency's Web site at www.nashvilleredcross.org and click on the "Donate" link.
Anyone interested in being a part of the relief effort also can call the Dyer County Red Cross at 731-286-4740.
SOURCES: Nashville Area Chapter of the American Red Cross
-- Larry Taylor, who lost son, daughter-in-law and two grandsons
Tornado safety tips
Now that tornado season has arrived, here are a few things you should know to get through April, May and June.
o Monitor a weather radio or local news stations. Program the radio one county to the west of your location. Typically tornado warnings occur within 15 minutes of a funnel cloud appearance.
o If finding shelter in a basement, stay away from the corners to avoid debris and get under a sturdy stairway or a workbench.
o Have protective gear handy, like a blanket, mattress or bike helmet, to protect from flying debris. Also, keep bottled water.
o If there's no basement, go to the most interior room in the structure. If living in a mobile home, determine the nearest shelter location beforehand and go there as severe weather approaches.
o Keep identification with you. If you must evacuate it will be required to return to your neighborhood.
SOURCE: Dan McCarthy, warning coordination meteorologist for the NOAA Storm Prediction Center.
Killer tornadoes
Here's a look at some deadly tornadoes in Tennessee history:
Nov. 20, 1900 - 27 people killed by an F-4 near Columbia.
April 29, 1909 -- 29 people killed by an F-4 in Giles and Lincoln counties.
Oct. 14, 1909 -- 24 people killed in Wayne County.
March 11, 1923 -- 20 people killed, including 18 in Madison County.
March 18, 1925 -- 39 people killed by an F-4 that hits Sumner County and crosses the Kentucky line.
March 14, 1933 -- East Nashville tornado kills 15 people.
May 10, 1933 -- An F-4 kills 35 people, most of them in the Beatty Swamps community in Overton County.
March 21, 1952 -- 38 dead in West Tennessee, most of them in Chester County.
April 3, 1974 -- Multiple tornadoes in the 1974 "super outbreak" kill 50 people across the state and more than 300 across the nation; one twister, an F-4 in Lincoln County, kills 22 people.
SOURCES: National Weather Service's Nashville office online database of Middle Tennessee tornadoes; The Tornado Project (www.tornadoproject.com)
Death toll
Of the 23 people killed in Sunday night's tornadoes in West Tennessee, officials, friends, relatives and neighbors had publicly named 10 of them last night. Those killed included:
o Brad Taylor, 28; Tanya Taylor, age unavailable; and their children, Kyle, 3, and Tyce, 5. The family was killed in the tiny town of Bradford, in Gibson County. Their bodies were found 800 yards from their home.
o Patsy Cooper Lewis of Bradford and at least one other resident of that community.
o Eddie and Vicky Sherron and their 11-month-old grandson, Lucas Simpson, whom they were babysitting when the tornado hit their home in Newbern, in Dyer County.
o Jeremy and Jodie Price, both 27, of the Maxey community. The couple met as students at the University of Tennessee-Martin and had been working at a detergent factory in Dyersburg.
o Five other people in Maxey were killed. Their names had not been made public last night. Maxey is just west of Newbern.
o Two sisters-in-law who lived on China Grove Road between Bradford and Rutherford, Tenn. Their names had not been made public last night.
Information was not available last night on the remaining five fatalities.
-- TENNESSEAN AND JACKSON SUN STAFF REPORTS AND NEWS SERVICE REPORTS
