The Mercy of the Sky: The Story of a Tornado (28 page)

As the summer went on, Simpson practiced what she called her “happy face,” the one she used around her kids and the children at Plaza Towers. Sometimes it wasn’t so hard. Before the new school year began, the community united around the school and threw parties for the kids who had survived the storm, trying to keep their spirits up. There were trips to amusement parks and basketball parties with members of the local NBA team, the Oklahoma City Thunder. And the gifts kept coming well into the school year, warehouses full of books and new school supplies that would last years. The kids, many of whom came from poor backgrounds, had never been given so much. It was like Christmas every day.

Simpson was thrilled to see them so happy. But it wasn’t enough to stop the pain or curtail the fear she felt about what the next storm season would bring. They would be crouched in the hallways again the next spring if another storm came. There was nowhere else to go until they moved into the new building. But someone had gifted the school hundreds of tiny football helmets—armor to protect the kids’ heads if the walls somehow came crashing down again.

While she improved by the day, the tears still flowed from time to time without warning, and by October her son told her that he’d had enough. He was tired of hearing her talk about the tornado and of seeing her cry. Simpson again felt guilty, realizing that her own kids, in some ways, had been victims of the storm too. They came to an agreement: If he felt she was going on and on too much about the tornado or was too sad, all he had to do was say, “Ten-twenty”—short for October 20, the day of their talk. Over the next few weeks her son didn’t hold back. “Ten-twenty!” he’d tell her, and immediately Simpson would snap back into focus. As with her students at Plaza Towers, she realized that it was the kids who were the strongest after the storm while the adults were a mess. In private moments she sometimes wondered if the tears would ever stop.

O
n a windy Tuesday morning one year after the tornado, the people of Moore gathered on a barren patch of land just west of Interstate 35 where the hospital had once stood to mourn the people who had died. Dignitaries from all over the state were there, including the governor, Mary Fallin, and the local congressman, Tom Cole, whose own home had been narrowly missed.

An honor guard slowly marched up to a tiny stage positioned in front of a fire truck, and there was a long moment of silence, interrupted only by the whoosh of cars passing on the nearby highway. Finally there was a slow tap of a bell—one toll for every victim who had died. It rang twenty-four times for the people who had been killed on May 20, 2013—and once more for Kathryn Bagay, a ninety-year-old grandmother who had succumbed three months later to head injuries she’d suffered when the tornado tore apart her house.

The mood was somber, and many wiped away tears throughout the service. Several clutched photos of their relatives who had died—a sister, a mother, an uncle, a son. All taken too soon. It was the first time out of all the tornadoes that had hit Moore that the city had held a ceremony like this. It was an affair that was held as much to remember the ones who were gone as to remind the people here that they had survived. Somehow, in spite of everything bad that had happened, the people of Moore were still standing.

Surrounded by tiny red flags that read, “Moore Strong,” the dignitaries broke ground on a new medical center—one that would be even better than the one that had been destroyed. A gleaming, 120,000-square-foot, glassy structure standing five stories high, it would be the tallest building ever built in Moore. “Our Devon Tower,” Glenn Lewis joked, referring to the tallest skyscraper in the state, which loomed fifty stories high over nearby downtown Oklahoma City.

While there was still much rebuilding to do, it was startling to see how far Moore had come. Just to the west, neighborhoods that had looked as though they’d been leveled by an atomic bomb were starting to rise again—packed with brand-new homes that were often twice the size of the ones that had been there before. All were accompanied by new storm shelters that peeked slightly out of the ground. Many of these were positioned right in the front yard, front and center, as if daring another storm to come.

Farther to the west, the new Plaza Towers and Briarwood Elementary Schools were nearing completion. They sat in the middle of what was still largely a construction zone—packed with workers who had come from all over the country to rapidly rebuild. Some were undocumented, though nobody here said a word—not even in the middle of red-state America, where many argued against amnesty for illegal immigrants. But Moore had always been more tolerant, more welcoming in that respect. It was just the way people here were—and they were grateful to anyone who would help them get their city back to normal again.

While some residents had moved on, most had chosen to stay—determined not to let Mother Nature run them away from the city they loved. Some moved to other parts of Moore, but many rebuilt homes right in the same spot where they had lived before. “I could never live anywhere else,” a woman named Kristy Rushing told me as she prepared to move back into her home across the street from the newly rebuilt Plaza Towers. Her husband and two of their five kids had barely escaped with their lives on May 20, and in the days afterward, as her family grappled with having lost everything save a few pictures and mementos, Rushing had vowed to never return to Moore. It was too risky. But then, eleven days later, they’d had to flee for their lives again when the El Reno tornado took aim at a relative’s home where they were staying as they tried to figure out their lives. Scared and crying and wondering how such a nightmare could be happening again, Rushing had realized that no matter where they went, they were at risk of some disaster. “You can’t control Mother Nature,” she told me. Still, she admitted to feeling anxious every time the wind blew. Everybody did—especially the people who had been in the path of the tornado.

A few days before the anniversary I went to see Jennifer Doan at her home in Edmond. She was in the nursery rocking her new son Jack, a tiny baby with an infectious grin who was now almost six months old. As we sat at her dining room table, Doan talked in a quiet, sometimes quivering voice about what the last year had been like for her. There had been good days and bad days. She knew she would never forget, never really heal fully, and she wondered if she would ever feel normal again, if she would ever be able to hear the rain or a gust of wind and not feel a jolt of fear shoot through her body. Spring used to be her favorite time of year. Like everyone here, she had loved the storms. But now even a small crack of thunder made her a wreck. Her husband, Nyle, closely monitored the weather on his phone, and when anything erupted, she would put on headphones and turn the music all the way up until it was over. She did the same thing on Saturdays when they tested the emergency sirens around the city. Doan had an alarm set on her phone a few minutes before testing began to remind her to put them on. Still, she had never considered leaving Oklahoma. “This is where I live,” she told me.

Doan longed to be back in the classroom. She missed being around kids. Being a teacher was her calling, and she was angry at the possibility that the storm could take that away too. Doctors were still unconvinced that she was emotionally ready, but she saw it as a final, vital step in healing. A few weeks later she was given permission to go back to work the following fall. She was going to teach third grade at a newly built school in Moore—South Lake Elementary—where Amy Simpson, her principal at Plaza Towers, was being transferred. Like the new Plaza Towers and Briarwood buildings, South Lake had been built with a storm shelter.

Simpson had mixed feelings about her new job. It was an honor to be asked to open a new school in Moore—a rare opportunity to truly build something from the ground up. She was hiring every new teacher and helping to decide on colors and logos and everything else. But her heart was with Plaza Towers, and she wondered how she would feel not being near those who understood in a way others simply never would what it was like to survive a tornado and deal with the loss of life. As I spoke to her on the eve of the anniversary, Simpson was still looking forward to the moment when she could get through a day without crying.

What gave her the strength to move on was the kids, she said. Everyone had been anxious about how they would adapt in the months after the storm, and while there had been bad days—some kids still wore headphones on gusty days or grew anxious at the sight of dark clouds—it was the children who proved to be the most resilient. “It’s the adults who are a mess,” she told me.

I saw what she meant a few days later. On the afternoon of May 20 Simpson invited me as her guest to a gathering to mark the anniversary of the tornado at Plaza Towers. The school system had decided against participating in the larger remembrance ceremony earlier in the day or holding something equally public—worried about the impact on the kids.

Across town Briarwood held its own ceremony. Students, teachers, and parents happily paraded from their temporary school at a church a mile east to the site where a new school was rising up to replace the one that had been destroyed by the tornado. At Plaza Towers Simpson and her colleagues had decided to hold a celebration of life. It would not only honor the seven who were lost but also acknowledge the ones who had survived and had triumphed over a tough year.

Before the ceremony anxious parents had made their way into the tiny auditorium, where they took their seats. They worried about how the ceremony would go. There would be a slideshow featuring photographs of the children who had died, followed by a moment of silence. But they worried: Would it be too much? Would it be too traumatic?

Soon the kids marched in, led by their teachers. They were happy and chattering. It was a school pride day, and the students wore shirts covered with slogans like “Oklahoma Strong.” On stage Simpson began the school assembly as she always did, asking the students to recite the Plaza Towers creed. And then she launched a slideshow that featured pictures of the kids’ year. There were shots of teachers giving hugs to beaming students and of the classes posing together with local celebrities who had come to visit the school, including Damon Lane, the weatherman from KOCO, and the Thunder Girls, the dance team from the local NBA team. Simpson had designed a soundtrack for the pictures, which included songs like “Happy” by Pharrell and “Roar” by Katy Perry, which the kids danced to and sang along with as if they had not a care in the world.

A few seconds later they were all rapt and still as the school held a moment of silence for the victims of the storm. On the screen the pictures of the seven who had died slowly flashed in succession, followed by an image of a burning candle. On stage Simpson wiped away tears. A few feet away I watched a teacher dab at her eyes with a tissue, and as she did, a tiny little girl next to her looked over and grabbed the adult’s hand in hers and squeezed it, the child trying to comfort the adult.

Afterward I stood outside talking with others who had come to the school that day to remember. Among them was Jack Poe, the city chaplain, who told me that he hoped to never go through another day like May 20. It had been one of the worst days of his life, seeing the parents of the kids killed in such anguish. “Thank God, the weather has been good to us this year,” he said, peering up at the clear blue sky.

And it was true, the weather had been good—unusually good. Usually the stormiest month of the year, that May had been strangely quiet. Up to that point there had been only five tornadoes in the entire season—the strongest being an EF2 tornado with winds upward of 135 miles an hour that hit in the northeastern corner of the state, near Arkansas. By the end of 2014 Oklahoma reported just sixteen tornadoes for the entire year, the lowest number of storms ever recorded since records had been kept beginning in the 1950s. A record-breaking year of strong tornadoes followed by almost nothing, and scientists had no idea why.

As quiet as the weather was, the people of Moore would never stop eyeing the sky with unease. They knew another storm was coming. Maybe not this year, but someday. “We hope that this will never happen,” Mayor Glenn Lewis told the crowd that morning at the anniversary service. “But . . . this is Moore, Oklahoma, and we’re probably going to have another tornado someday.”

And so it goes in Oklahoma, where people have long been accustomed to living at the mercy of the sky.

I knew that writing a book would not be easy, but this was much harder than I ever imagined, in part because the subject was so close to my heart. As a journalist, you always want to get something right, but with this book, I felt intense pressure to write the best story I could about my home state and its unique and sometimes dangerous relationship with the weather. This book would not have happened without the willingness of so many people to talk about what they went through on May 20, 2013. I am especially grateful to people in Moore, Oklahoma, who shared their stories of that day and beyond, even when it was incredibly painful for them. They are truly heroes, exhibiting the kind of bravery and resilience that we all should aspire to.

This book would also not have been possible without Joy de Menil, my amazing editor at Viking, who never gave up on me, even on the darkest days of this project—and there were many. From day one, Joy understood this story and why it was important to tell, and words do not do justice to how incredibly grateful I am that she stuck with me even when I had doubts about myself. Thank you so much to Joy and everybody at Viking for taking a chance on a first-time author. It is such an honor to have this book produced by an imprint with such a storied literary history—dating back to
The Grapes of Wrath
, another tragic tale of Oklahomans and the weather.

A huge thank-you goes to out to my agent, Howard Yoon, who had faith in me and in the story and worked tirelessly to find the best publisher, even when many were skeptical that readers would be interested in a story about the weather in a state most people have never visited. He played the role of agent, editor, cheerleader, and, at times, therapist, and saying “thank you” simply does not seem to be enough.

Behind every author is a cadre of friends, the support network that keeps you going on the good days and the bad. I would especially like to thank Sarah Schumacher, who I thought hated me when we first met more than a decade ago in Washington, D.C. At first, she was my roommate, but over the years she has become so much more—closest friend, a sister, my family. There is no one in my life more important. She has been there for me through everything—love and heartbreak, new jobs, new cities. While I was writing this book, Sarah was producing something amazing, too: her beautiful daughter, Matilda, who I know will grow up to be as smart and unique as her mother. I am so grateful every day that we are friends. I would also like to thank Sarah’s husband, Dan Ribaudo, and Michael Philip Fisher and Matthew Konopka. They are not only incredible friends, but they are also the best karaoke partners anyone could ask for.

One of the amazing things about covering the White House or a presidential campaign is not just being on the front row of history, but the close friendships you develop with other reporters. I first met David Greene in Waco, Texas, when we were both covering George W. Bush. He was with National Public Radio, and I was with
Newsweek
. We instantly bonded over the feeling of how lucky we were to have jobs that took us to far-flung cities all over the United States and the world. We found every karaoke bar in every presidential primary state, where I would hold up my cell phone close to the stage so that he could serenade his wife, Rose Previte, back in D.C. with “Mandy” by Barry Manilow. Over the years, David and Rose became two of my most beloved friends. In 2013, David, who was in the middle of finishing his first book, encouraged me to write my own and put me in touch with his agent, Howard. This book wouldn’t have happened without David or Rose, who, in the middle of opening her own restaurant in D.C., somehow found the time to give me pep talks on hard days.

I am lucky to have had many people in my cheering section. Chris Laible spent hours listening to me talk about the weather or working through ways of how to structure the story. And when I was locked away writing, he chimed in with supportive texts and e-mails. Katie Connolly and Jonathan Schleifer texted me photos of cute weenie dogs to cheer me up when I struggled to write some of the more emotionally fraught sections of the book. And I likely wouldn’t have written the book at all had it not been for the early support of Justin Sullivan, who often had more faith in me than I had in myself. I hope that I have encouraged you as much as you’ve encouraged me.

A big thank-you to Megan Liberman and Dan Klaidman, my editors at
Yahoo News
who gave me the time and support I needed to write the book. Thank you to Beth Fouhy, my former editor, who quickly deployed me to Moore that May as we watched the tornado on television in our offices in New York. Beth allowed me to go back to Oklahoma and do more reporting later that summer, which became a key part of the foundation for the book. Thanks also to Kelli Grant and especially to Liz Goodwin, an amazing reporter, colleague, and close friend whose unwavering faith, support, and advice helped me get through tough periods.

Thanks also to Sara Murray, Josh Haner, Khue Bui, Jennifer Sondag, Charley Devilbiss, Cecilia Jen, Cara Laverty, and Eric Pfeiffer.

I would also like to thank my mother, to whom this book is dedicated. She was a single mom who raised me on a paltry salary at a time when Oklahoma’s economy was in peril, and looking back, I still don’t know how she did it. But my mother was always a survivor. She came from a family that was so poor that they wore dresses made out of flour sacks to school. She devoured books and wondered about life beyond the farm in an era when girls were raised to think that finding a husband was their main career pursuit. One of my mother’s first jobs was working in an oil field—an industry that was not exactly packed with women. Any bit of adversity that came her way, she picked herself up and kept moving. Like any mother and daughter, we’ve had our tough moments, but I know everything I have accomplished in life is thanks to her. I love you, Mom, and thank you—especially for encouraging me to love the weather.