Dear Friends,
As someone who recently experienced the devastation of the outbreak of tornados in the south, I wanted to share with you this story. My wife Patty and I traveled from Huntingdon, TN on wednesday for most of the day, heading to Tuscaloosa to be with our friends at Eagles Wings. We saw numerous areas in North Alabama that were having severe storms and clouds forming into tornados. We kept pushing to make it to where our friends were going to be. As we drove near Fayette county we saw a tornado coming down off in the distance and I pushed the excellerator to the floor traveling at about 80 on a two lane road. Lightning, hale and high winds pelted our car and my wife said "Keep going"! We made it to Tuscaloosa and into the Holiday Inn Select and saw our friends Eric (Mayor Pike), Bob (Brisco Darling) and his dear wife Pat and breathed a sigh of relief to be with friends. Twelve to twenty minutes later the manager of the hotel demanded that we gather in the hallway on the lower floor. We held hands and as the winds began to build and Pat began to pray. Everyone had their head down in the darkened hallway and the winds grew stronger. The volume of the storm and the pressure it created gave a surreal and suspended feeling to us as the storm passed. Before we went into the hallway, everything outside was intacked but when we emerged from the hotel while the winds were still whipping and slashing in all directions, the world had changed. What had been an incredible area that I have been to many times, had changed forever. The exterior of the hotel had been blasted and we thought it was pretty bad. The sign of the hotel was broken and lying over on a small car. Cars on the north side of the hotel had been moved and damaged by pieces of the hotel. We thought it was pretty bad. We took some pictures and thought, well, maybe it wasn't as bad as predicted. Patty and I went up to the fourth floor of the hotel to our room and looked out the window and were changed forever. What had happened in less than two minutes has changed the city of Tuscaloosa forever. Looking across McFarland Blvd. we saw total devastation. Entire buildings destroyed and lives taken. We will never be the same after this occurance in our lives. We will always be connected to Bob, Pat and Eric for the rest of our lives as we held hands and prayed as death and destruction passed us by.
Peace, David Browning The Mayberry Deputy _______________________________________________ WBMUTBB mailing list [email protected] http://www.mayberry.com/tagsrwc/wbmutbb/
