Luck

Font Size:

By Times staff | Saturday, May 31, 2008 |

Aplington-Parkersburg High School industrial tech teacher Brian Surratt kicks the remains of the home he built himself. (Matthew Putney/The Courier) Buy this Photo

They sure don’t look lucky. Residents of Parkersburg and New Hartford pick through life’s remnants strewn over open fields that used to hold trees, homes, garages and families. Yet the refrain from these tornado survivors is one of luck.

Gaylen Miller talked about how lucky he was to stop by his elderly mother’s home in Parkersburg on the way to a high school graduation. He coaxed her into the basement and in five minutes everything above them was gone. “You could hear the popping and cracking. We knew the house was going. But we were safe. We thank God for that.”

Brian Surratt was lucky he’d gone to a movie in Cedar Falls when the tornado destroyed the first house he’d built himself. Surratt is the industrial tech teacher at Parkersburg High School. This lucky survivor pledges to stay and build again.

Megan Steffen says she’s lucky to have good friends in New Hartford. She described holding a basement door shut against tornado-whipped debris, then emerging to find just shards of her one-year-old home. She and friends searched the landscape. “We actually found a lot of clothes out here,” she said. “We found both our wallets, believe it or not.”

Luck? Not hardly. The odds of devastating tornado damage are incalculably small. Vagaries of nature sent the punishing storm through Parkersburg and New Hartford.

On May 9, 1995, it was Stockton and Durant, Iowa. On July 21, 2003, it was Galva, Ill. Fruitland, Iowa residents’ luck ran out June 1, 2007.

Oddly, some survivors from these tornado scenes also talked about luck.

Far from being rare, luck seems to abound in tight-knit communities with selfless emergency responders and overflowing compassion from friends and even strangers. In the midst of depravation, tornado survivors seem to easily recognize this kind of luck.

The truly lucky are Quad-Citians and others spared from this storm. Weather and winds mostly smiled on our community over the weekend. So what might we do with our abundance of luck?

Share it generously with Parkersburg and New Hartford, where it will be deeply appreciated.

To help

Contributions may be sent to Red Cross Hawkeye Chapter, 2530 University Ave., PO Box 1680, Waterloo, IA 50704. Call (800) REDCROSS, (800) 257-7575 (Spanish) or the Hawkeye chapter at (319) 234-6831.

Contribute to Salvation Army relief by calling (800) SAL-ARMY.

To donate goods and services, call Iowa Concern Hotline (800) 447-1985.