The night their world blew away
BY CATHY FRYE, AMY UPSHAW AND BILL HORNADAY ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
.....In Clinton, about a 90-minute drive northeast of Atkins, Jaclyn Derreberry also was relishing a crisp afternoon. Her girls, Vanessa, 8, and Jasmine, 5, had even worn short sleeves and flip-flops to school that day.
At 3:30 p.m., Jaclyn pulled into the driveway of the older, three-bedroom home that had belonged to her husband’s family for generations. A survivor of other storms, the wood-and siding house off U.S. 65 wasn’t much to look at. But for the Derreberrys, it was a much cherished home, furnished with warm memories.
The girls, along with their 3-year-old brother, Dekota, clambered out of the car and went inside. Vanessa pulled out homework while Jaclyn looked over a few notes from Jasmine’s preschool teacher.
The television stayed off. It was too pretty an afternoon.
At 4:45 p.m. Jaclyn piled the kids in the car and headed 17 miles south to Damascus to pick up her husband, David, who tests gas lines for Klaasmeyer Construction.
Normally, David would have driven himself to and from work, but the transmission had gone out on the family’s only car Monday. So Jaclyn had borrowed her mother’s car.
Once on the road, her cell phone rang.
Jaclyn’s mother wanted to warn her about bad weather and possible tornadoes near Clinton. So when David got into the car at 5 p.m. - talking about how he was looking forward to going home, taking a shower and watching television - Jaclyn cut him off.
No, she said. She didn’t want to be anywhere near the storms.
Since it was close to supper time, David figured the family could find a place to eat and wait out the weather.
Agreed on this plan, the Derreberrys drove even farther south, to the Wagon Wheel restaurant in Greenbrier, where they ordered hamburgers and several slices of apple pie.
As they ate, other patrons stared nervously out the windows, watching as dark clouds rolled in.
...David and Jaclyn heard that the tornado warning for Clinton would end at 6:15 p.m., so they stayed at the restaurant until about 6:30 p.m. before heading home.
They anticipated seeing a few downed trees or broken windows on the way home, but nothing major. David’s gut told him his house would be fine. But as they drove home, the rain hit harder and faster. So many bolts of lightning spread across the sky at once that Vanessa thought it looked like daylight.
When her daddy told the children to settle down so he could concentrate on the road, Vanessa quickly took on the role of big sister. As the family talker, she was good at it. She covered Dekota with her jacket, and he eventually fell asleep.
She snuggled under her sister’s coat and tried to settle her fears.
...
By 7:15 p.m., the Derreberrys, still several miles from home, were stuck in traffic on U.S. 65 trying to get into Clinton.
They waited and waited and waited.
Jaclyn was anxious for David to find a way around all the idling cars so they could go home and check on their 7-month-old black Lab puppy, Suzy-Q , who was sitting in the bathroom when the family left that afternoon.
Everyone - except for a sleeping Dekota - was growing more tense as the minutes ticked by. Finally, David was able to turn left at the town’s only stoplight and drive behind Wal-Mart, a back way to get to the other end of the highway.
As they drove over downed power lines and dodged huge pine trees in the middle of the road, David got the sinking feeling that his gut was dead wrong.
Jaclyn and the girls cried, partly out of fear and partly because they feared the worst for the puppy.
Shortly after 8:15 p.m., David pulled over and started walking the last two-tenths of a mile up the highway to his house. There were no streetlights, no cars, the trees were snapped into pieces and strewn across the road. Nothing was recognizable.
When he got to the place his house should have been, at 1174 Highway 65 South, he found only 15 feet of one wall standing. Had he not lived there for seven years, he would not have known there used to be a bathroom or a kitchen.
Everything else - appliances, toys, clothes, cabinets, windows - had been upended, overturned and scattered across the property.
For a moment, the devastation took David’s breath away. Then he thought about Suzy-Q , alone in that place when it imploded.
“Suzy-Q?!” he yelled into the darkness and then let out a whistle. “Anyone have a flashlight?” he called out to the few people walking on the road. “I need to look for my dog.”
Becky Nowiski heard his pleas and persuaded a trucker stuck in traffic to give her a flashlight. Together, Becky, her husband, Jerry, and David searched the ruins for what David was sure would be Suzy-Q’s body.
“I just pray to God daylight will come so I can see what I got,” David said as he lifted chunks of debris off his children’s toys. He found Dekota’s beloved Spider-Man blanket, but no sign of the dog.
The family had lost nearly everything. David fretted. He didn’t have renter’s insurance. And while his sister owned the house, she didn’t have homeowner’s insurance.
What would they do?
A few minutes before 9 p.m. Jerry walked from the back of the house into David’s flashlight beam with a wet and trembling Suzy-Q in his arms.
“Oh my God!” David yelled. And then - “I can’t believe this dog.”
He immediately called his wife.
It had been an excruciating 45 minutes for Jaclyn. She had been standing outside the car, too nervous to sit, when the phone rang. Jaclyn pulled open the car door and told the girls that the house was gone but Suzy-Q had survived. They all cried.
David squeezed Suzy-Q tightly to his chest and told the Nowiskis that he would take the puppy to his wife and then return to get their names and number. They had been so kind and he wanted to thank them properly once he had time.
Jaclyn opened the car door again and handed Suzy-Q to the girls. “She’s wet and scared,” she told them. “Give her some love.”
The puppy jumped at Jasmine, scratching her in the face, but the ecstatic little girl didn’t mind at all.
...The Derreberry family, on the other hand, would be dealt another devastating blow.
Suzy-Q disappeared from the two-bedroom trailer in which the Derreberrys had been staying since the storm.
Maybe she chased after a deer, David thought.
But as they pulled out of the driveway Friday morning, armed with a long list of things to do, they saw Suzy-Q’s body on the road.
The puppy that had survived winds of up to 200 mph had been run over.
At that moment, David wondered how much more he could take. Would things just get worse - or better? They still had to find a place to live and deal with FEMA.
Emotionally drained and physically exhausted, they drove to David’s workplace to pick up his paycheck.
It was smaller than usual because he’d been sick with the flu, but his co-workers had taken up another $400 for the family and collected five bags of clothes. His boss threw in $500 more and loaned him a backhoe to help clear debris. Jaclyn’s coworkers at Sonic saved tips and gave her another $100.
The family also found coats, blankets, cases of water, more clothes and even a few stuffed animals for the kids at the old Volex factory in Clinton, where donations for storm victims were piling up.
David and Jaclyn counted all of this as blessings - thoughtful gestures they could hold onto as they tried to navigate life after the storm without insurance money to fill in the gaps.
“It’s hard, but we’re making do,” David said Friday. “At least I still have my family.”
...
Tuesday night, several hours after a tornado demolished the Derreberrys’ home, authorities reopened the highway, and David drove his family down to see what was left. Vanessa could hardly look, but she was certainly old enough to grasp what had happened. Jasmine probably was, too. But Jaclyn hoped that Dekota wouldn’t remember anything he saw that night.
The family stayed for hours, trying to salvage anything they could. The rain had stopped, but they didn’t know how long that would last. All three kids fell asleep in the car. Around midnight, Jaclyn declared it was time to go.
David didn’t want to. He was looking for one more thing - Jaclyn’s wedding ring.
Jaclyn had left it in the kitchen that afternoon, thinking she would be right back.
David hunched over the debris for hours, throwing up every so often because of his rattled nerves. After shoving the stove and the overturned refrigerator out of the way, he found a couple of trinkets and cheap pieces of jewelry that Jaclyn kept on a blue, glass ring-holder shaped like a hand. David knew he was in the right area. The ring had to be there.
He peeled away more layers. Finally, he saw pieces of the ringholder. And there, glittering in all the debris, was the wedding ring.
It was 2 a.m. when David walked back to the car, the wedding ring around his pinky finger.
When he reached Jaclyn, he held out a hand filled with the cheap jewelry.
“No you didn’t,” Jaclyn said, stunned that he had been able to find anything that small.
Then, David stuck out his pinky.
And once again, Jaclyn just cried.
