Reconstructing Renick

RENICK — Tom Carr stopped his work briefly on Tuesday to watch as the group of Amish men on his barn roof laid another sheet of aluminum. Less than an hour earlier, the roof had only been timber framing. Now, the south side was almost covered.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” he said, marveling at their speed.

When Tom and Marilyn Carr braved the rain and lightning after the March 12 tornado to survey the damage it inflicted on their Randolph County property, hope of this kind of repair was far from their minds.

“We had damage to every single building,” said Tom Carr, a retired carpenter.

His wife, who operates a horse pedigree service, detailed the losses: a broken window, torn siding and three demolished sheds, among other things. The Carrs also had to replace the roof on their house and make several repairs to their two large barns, where they keep the horses they raise as another business.

“We only had one that ended up with scratches,” Marilyn said, of their 14 horses, but their oldest horse, Pete — or “Studly Dudley,” as Marilyn likes to call him — lost the lean-to that served as his shelter. It was the same wooden structure that caused the most damage to their home, tearing the white siding on the south side of their house and shattering a window.

“We even had mud splattered on the north wall across from that window,” Marilyn Carr said.

Damage of this magnitude should come as little surprise, considering the force of the storm that hit Randolph County that weekend was part of a larger outbreak of severe storms that spun tornadoes across the state. There were four deaths in the Renick area. Sixteen homes were destroyed, and 34 were reported damaged.

Help was not far following the disaster.

“What’s been so amazing about this whole feat is these are people that have donated their time and equipment to come in and help out,” said Renick Mayor Daren Barfield. “It’s just been unbelievable.”

Barfield had pages of volunteers’ names in his office, people from all over the country; the longest distance anyone had traveled, he said, was from Pennsylvania.

Volunteers have offered many services. Many groups provided crews to help with clearing debris and initial repairs, but others have provided clothing and supplies such as tarps and food.

One group of men, whom Barfield referred to as the “Baptist Chainsaw Guys,” stayed for nearly a week to remove potentially hazardous trees and brush. The superintendent of Renick Schools, Tara Lewis, provided sleeping quarters for them in the schoolhouse.

“It’s been an unbelievable task for all of these folks, but they’ve tackled it, and we’ve had a lot of stuff taken care of,” Barfield said.

Another common presence for post-storm Renick has been the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Barfield said that he has seen representatives in the area every day since the county was declared a federal disaster area. The faces are usually the same — no doubt a comfort for a town of 221 — although Barfield explained that FEMA does bring different agents from time to time.

“They’re doing their job, and we need to commend them for that,” he said, posing the same question to everyone who walked into his office: “Have you registered yet?”

“Anybody that still has not filed, even if they have insurance, they need to file with them because there (are) other avenues to go down to help them out with stuff,” Barfield said.

Unfortunately, in an agriculture and labor-rich area such as the Midwest, FEMA cannot cover all losses. The Carrs discovered after registering that they were unable to use FEMA’s assistance because the majority of their damage was to outbuildings, which the agency doesn’t cover. FEMA’s assistance extends to primary residences; the Carrs have found their insurance through Farmer’s Mutual in Macon will cover their home repairs and most of the outbuilding damage, though they will incur some costs.

Nevertheless, Marilyn Carr remains undaunted. She had already counted her blessings.

“We don’t have a basement,” she said, explaining that when the storm hit, she and her husband took shelter in the bathroom. “We were very lucky because the people that were killed were in the same path.”

Another blessing was the help they have received. The Amish workers at their home completed most of the repairs in one day, all in the name of friendship.

“These people don’t charge anything for this,” Marilyn Carr said, explaining that the group was conducting what they call a “frolic.”

“That’s what they do in their own community,” she said. “Whenever somebody has a fire, or a tornado ... they’ll get together and rebuild the buildings for them.”

This generosity stems from the Carrs’ long-standing friendship with the Amish community. The Carrs became acquainted with the group when Tom Carr suffered injuries from a car accident that forced him to retire from a carpenter’s union. So he began hauling livestock, a service some Amish in the area began to use.

The Amish who helped the Carrs took a bus ride in the village center to eat lunch with other volunteers. It’s a service the village has tried to provide regularly. On this particular day, members of the Immanuel Baptist Church in Moberly provided the food, letting the workers fill their plates with sandwiches, chips, desserts and something they called a “juicy burger,” a sloppy Joe-style mixture of ground beef, brown sugar and onions, among other ingredients.

Although the church members from Moberly saw little damage from the storms, the Rev. Mark DeShon said they were happy to help their neighbors in Renick.

Despite the wave of free help, Barfield said some people remain reluctant to accept the assistance.

“It’s so wrong to refuse free help,” he lamented, saying one of the biggest motivations to make speedy repairs is to erase evidence of the tragedy. “People don’t want a reminder.”

The only memory Marilyn Carr has chosen to keep is the 4-inch splinter that winds drove straight into a wooden fence post.

“That’ll be the remnant of the tornado,” she said, laughing heartily. “I didn’t want anyone to bother that.”

But other reminders exist; the apprehension she feels now when the wind picks up, the association of a freight train on tracks with the sound of a twister, and the empty space in her yard where a peach tree stood for more than 60 years. She loved to eat fruit from that tree, and last year her friend Fannie Yoder canned many from its harvest.

“That’ll be the end of that,” she said with a smile. Then she moved toward the work that faced her.