Page 42 - AAA Magazine – AAA Ohio Auto Club – November 2019

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off in the house. The glass breaking. The sounds were unreal. The sounds are nothing you could re-create.”
The EF-3 tornado that terrorized Celina slipped away into the night, but not before leveling several neighborhoods, killing one and injuring seven. A drive through the destruction leaves the observer to wonder how so many made it out with their lives.
“It’s dark, but I can see that it’s destroyed,” said Kelly of her house. “There wasn’t a window left unshattered. Our neighbor’s stuff was in our dining room. Golf clubs. Ice skates. Pictures. Their house was in our house, pretty much.”
The neighborhood where Kelly and John lived had been transformed into a massive debris field, like a bomb had gone off, as Kelly remembers. Their neighbor across the street was trapped in her basement with her golden retriever. The rest of her house had collapsed above her. Kelly and John’s nephew managed to pull them to safety.
Kelly’s and John’s house was a total loss as well. The start of rebuilding likely won’t even begin until the spring.
Maybe what is so striking about Kelly’s story is her resiliency and never-ending smile. She hasn’t missed a beat serving as a fixture in the Celina community, most notably as sales manager of the Celina AAA store.
Said Kelly, “Why would I sit and complain? What does it do for anybody? Someone is out there praying for my worst day. Remember that. I always say that to myself. So many people have it so much worse.”
But Kelly did hit a wall during clean-up three days into the massive task. That’s when she found the jewelry box given to her as a gift from her late father. The two were very close, as Kelly lost her mother as a young girl.
“My last Christmas present from him was destroyed,” said Kelly through tears. “That one kind of hit me hard.
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I just sat down and balled. I was being selfish for about 30 seconds. But the box still had all his stuff in it. The cards. The letters. Everything was there. Untouched.
I think that was God’s way of showing me that it isn’t that big thing that I lost; it’s the little things that I still had. It’s not about your big house and cars. It’s really about love and being nice. It was a life lesson for me.”
Kelly learned a few other essential life lessons from this tragedy, including those surrounding homeowner’s insurance. Kelly and John are luckier than many of their neighbors because they had replacement coverage. That means their house and belongings will be replaced at current prices. Those who insured their home based on its estimated value – some who did so 30 years ago and more – have to make up the difference of the cost to rebuild.
Another piece of advice offered by Kelly is to videotape all of the contents of your house and not just furniture. Include everything from jewelry to picture frames and computers to toasters. Store that footage offsite, in a home safe or on an online data server.
Kelly’s last piece of advice? Take tornado warnings seriously.
“Before this storm, I was the first person to open a window or even want to go to sleep, because I love sleeping in the rain,” said Kelly. “I ignored plenty of alerts. I’ve laughed about them. In a million years never did I think I’d have to live through a tornado.”
This time around, Kelly admits, the only reason she took action was because of John’s unusual anxiety and the fact that the girls were visiting. Kelly’s story was seconds away from a very different ending.
William J. Purpura is the editor of AAA Magazine.
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