today will be known more prominently for another tragedy. but i am strolling down memory lane of another tragedy of a different sort. today is the 10 year anniversary of downtown nashville tornado. the sister got me thinking.

the weeks surrounding that day are very surreal. i remember being woken up at 5 or 6am by my older sisters phone call. i was still at ua then, and apparently an f5 tornado touched down on the east side of tuscaloosa and went almost clear across the state. i had slept through it all. she was seeing the first light pictures of that devastation on the national news. eventually, a crew of friends came down to nashville and we did some relief work for the red cross that weekend. we managed to work small town area around hueytown. it was the first time i had seen total devastation like that. only till katrina have i seen it since then.

our group liked doing the work we organized to go to nashville for a habitat build the next weekend.

well, a tornado came through downtown nashville the next week. we headed up to nashville (with tornado storms all the way up). we didn’t really expect to have the habitat build like originally planned. we didn’t have a plan at all. what ended up happening is that we went to lowes bought ourselves some chainsaws, axes, mules and sledge hammers and spent the weekend in some backyards in east nashville. the trees were sooo big and heavy. after we put the last cut log onto the street corner i can only remember feeling like i couldn’t lift one more thing. i think i even made my brother drive us home.

i’ve often wondered where exactly we were that weekend. now that i know the city so much more. one thing i do know. i won’t forget those days anytime soon.