“Stood up, opened the door and realized I could see East Middle School and it had been destroyed. When the storm passed and the Frerers emerged from their bathroom they realized it was the only room still standing. This sounded much more like World War III,” says Raye. And it didn’t sound like the tornado that had gone over my childhood home. And I thought: Lord, what on earth am I going to do? This is serious. “My chest started getting tight and my ears got tight and all of the sudden they started popping, they must have popped hundreds of times. Once Fred was back in the house, he grabbed a twin mattress from one of the beds and the two of them settled onto the floor of their small bathroom with the mattress on their heads. “I was really excited because the very first time ever in 33 years of marriage that I ask him to come in, he actually came in,” she says.įred came in after seeing what was clearly not just another twister approaching the town. When they got there, Fred stood in the road to check the sky as he did every time a big storm came through town - until Raye called to him to get back in the house. Raye and her husband Fred, who is 60 and retired, left for home. And I looked at Fred and he looked at me and I thought, you know I do not want to get this hair wet! Wasn’t worried about the home, I was worried about the hair,” she says. And my mother, who is close the 80, said that’s the blackest cloud I’ve ever seen. “And we were sitting in my parents’ little breakfast nook. Raye Frerer, a 58-year-old teacher, was at her mother’s home south of Joplin that Sunday afternoon celebrating Mother’s Day a week late. As Joplin’s residents make their way through the stages of grief they want to share how they survived and how they’re preparing for the next one. That’s what happens when an EF-5 tornado touches down eviscerating everything in its path as it did there on Sunday, 161 people died. Even today, you can stand on what passes for a hill in Joplin’s midsection at 23rd Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, look east and look west and see empty space.
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