‘Healing’: Beauregard mourns lives lost in tornadoes last year – The Auburn Plainsman

As families, friends and a community looked and listened intently, the choir of Providence Baptist Church sang the gospel melody, Im Gonna Make It.

Through so many dangers and toils of this life, I have already come, the choir sang. But He keeps on giving the grace and the strength to just keep pressing on.

Families gathered who had loved for years and lost in only minutes. Families whose lives were forever changed by the events of a tragic day one year ago. These were the families of Beauregard and Smiths Station, Alabama, and they came together for a night of remembrance on March 3.

Twenty-three people from those two communities died on March 3, 2019, after an EF4 tornado tore across Lee County. So, people gathered in memory to honor those they cherished through spirit, speech and song.

Good to see you, said Rusty Sowell, senior pastor of Providence Baptist Church, as he shook hands of families seated in the front row of chairs filling the chapel.

People came to help us when we couldnt help ourselves, Sowell said after taking the podium at 6 p.m. before the congregation and first responders. Were here tonight to honor victims, to grieve families and to celebrate lives.

Earlier that evening at 5 p.m., they did so by breaking ground on a new memorial in front of the chapel. The memorial will commemorate the 23 victims, each with a black granite impression circling around a cross. Families of the victims dug 23 shovels into the ground as their names were called to perform the ceremony.

Its a symbol of the whole time moving through the recovery effort and people who came to help us, Sowell said. Its three tiers. The first tier has etchings of the victims names, dates of birth, date of death. The second tier has an expression of appreciation to all the volunteer fire departments and career units that came that day. The top tier has Beauregard Strong and the shadow of the cross.

The church is also seeking to build what will be called the Four Childrens Library, named after the four children who passed. It would be a repurposed train caboose or dining car, Sowell said, and would be a library promoting literacy among local kids.

Later, as Sowell opened the service, he welcomed the Rev. Laura Eason before the audience, who has been involved in the recovery effort since the day after the disaster. She began by allowing each affected family to light their own candle to pay tribute to their loss. Sniffles throughout the room preceded each lighting followed by thoughtful smiles after.

Please know your community is here to help you heal, Eason, chaplain of East Alabama Medical Center, said as she addressed the crowd. We live in an incredible place with an incredibly generous community.

As an EAMC employee, Eason was one of the communitys first responders, and she soon learned that 241 homes were destroyed, 140 were damaged and around 100 people were injured.

One of our first tasks, the hardest task by far, we coordinated with County Coroner Bill Harris, she recalled. [We] negotiate[d] with all of the funeral homes to make sure all of the 23 funeral expenses were covered, and we were even able to pay for the cemetery headstones and grave markers for all the victims.

Eason and other EAMC employees established MEND two days after the tornadoes, initially a hospital committee to handle immediate effects of the disaster that evolved into more of an organization that aims to rebuild Lee County, one life at a time.

What started as the hospitals way of helping with communication and coordination of recovery efforts so as not to have duplication morphed into a community-wide effort to bring hope and healing to our hurting neighbors, she said.

The group eventually reached out to 80 faith groups, various nonprofit organizations such as the American Red Cross and Team Rubicon and religious charities like Samaritans Purse and the Billy Graham Association. Eason said its strongest partner, however, was the Chattahoochee Fuller Center.

We partnered with the Chattahoochee Fuller Center to build 16 new homes, she said.

MEND is continually constructing new homes with the center, as well as with Samaritans Purse, which gifted 13 mobile homes in the area and built one house. MENDs goal is to have 32 houses built by the end of April. Some groups contributed to housing needs in other ways, such as the 10th Street Church of Christ, which provided furniture for new homes at a cost of about $3,500 per family, according to Eason.

We figured out that it cost $50,000 for the materials, and we used a lot of volunteer labor, Eason said. The professionals HVAC, plumbing and electrical we used the professionals to come in and do that, and they were able to do it at cost or donate their time.

All of this came free to displaced residents, who did not have to pay a mortgage because of the Fuller Center, she said. But Eason attributed much of her gratitude to the centers director, Kim Roberts, who followed Eason in sharing her stories of involvement in Beauregard and Smiths Station.

We built 11 houses in the hottest week of the year, Roberts told the congregation. That was a joy building all those homes in the midst of the heat.

The Fuller Center had some experience building homes from previous relief efforts, but the March 3, 2019, recovery brought on some all-new challenges. MEND requested that the organization initially build three houses in a month, when the most it had built before was four in a year.

Three houses went to six, six houses went to eight, eight houses went to 16, Roberts said. 16 sponsors came forward and paid for every house.

She added that 320 volunteers from 24 states assisted in the construction process.

Following these updates, Rick Lance, executive director of the Alabama State Board of Missions, appeared to provide encouraging words to the community. His speech consisted of describing to listeners what you do when you dont know what to do, a feeling he connected with losing his father at age 18.

He said this made him learn to cry as someone who was told avoid crying growing up.

I think, and this is presumptuous, if the 23 people who passed could be here tonight, they would be very proud, Lance said.

Those in the audience who were directly affected by last years events said they were grateful for the evenings proceedings.

Things are still kind of hard. They dont get easy at all, said Sara Crisp, who lost someone close on March 3, 2019. With ceremonies like this that happen, everyone involved is still recovering.

First responders faced their own considerable adversity in taking immediate action in the wake of the tornadoes. Mike Holden, fire chief for the Beauregard Volunteer Fire Department, said his team was thankful for their recognition but feel the families are priority.

No amount of training, no amount of planning could ever prepare you for what we walked into, he said.

I hope this has brought closure for a lot of the families, Holden said. I know its been hard on a lot of them.

The Providence Baptist Church choir concluded by singing another gospel piece, No More Night, in front of a now reassured gathering of people on what was a difficult day to remember.

No more night, no more pain, the choir sang. No more tears. Never crying again.

Here are the names of those who were remembered:

Jonathan Marquis Bowen (2009)

Vicki Joyce Braswell (1949)

Sheila Ann Creech (1959)Marshall Lynn Grimes (1960)

David Roaddog Dean (1965)

Armando Aguilar AJ Hernandez, Jr. (2012)

Emmaniel Jones (1965)

Jimmie Jones (1929)

Mary Lois Jones (1935)

Mamie Elizabeth Koon (1950)

Charlotte Ann Miller (1959)

Irma Del Carmen Gomez Moran (1977)

Ryan Wesley Pence (1997)

Maggie Delight Robinson (1961)

Raymond Robinson, Jr. (1955)

Teresa Griffin Robinson (1956)

Eric Jamaal Stenson (1980)

Florel Tate Stenson (1956)

Henry Lewis Stenson (1953)

James Henry Tate (1932)

Taylor Lillian Thornton (2008)

Mykhayla Latrice Waldon (2010)

Felicia Renee Woodall (1996)

Read this article:
'Healing': Beauregard mourns lives lost in tornadoes last year - The Auburn Plainsman