By Andrea Griffy

The spring day began quietly enough. Jennifer Farley was at her home, 1433 Tomahawk Trace, with her two oldest boys, Brett and James, preparing to give a Mary Kay makeover to a prospective client. When the client called to cancel due to tornado warnings she thought nothing of it.

“We have them all the time,” she remembered thinking. Then James ran in their house with a friend and shouted: “Mom, look out the window.”

The charcoal skies were accented by whirling onyx-colored debris. “Get in the closet,” Jennifer screamed. She and her oldest son, Brett, ran upstairs to get pillows before they joined the two younger boys in the foyer closet. As windows shattered and walls crumbled around them, Farley and the boys prayed.

After it became quiet again, they stepped out to find both ends of the house and the roof and upstairs entirely blown away.

Farley remembers asking neighbors if they had shoes because she and the boys were bare foot. The devastation was unreal. Trees were lying on top of their friends’ and neighbors’ houses, Destruction surrounded them.

Three or four hours after the storm, the family’s dog, Rueger, emerged from the rubble to a joyful reunion.

“The outpouring of blessings from the community and people that we didn’t even know was amazing in our time of need,” she said.

A year later, the Farley family has moved into a new home on Indian Place. They do not see themselves as having lost anything.

“I never thought I could love another house as much as that one, but I love this one more.”