Trending
Fearing the worst, family members frantically searched for Betty Glenn after Wednesday's early-morning tornado ripped off the upper story of the farmhouse which has been home for all her 93 years.
They found her sitting in an upholstered rocking chair in what had been the living room of the lower story. Windows in the room were all blown out, an east wall was gone, broken furnishings and debris were scattered in all the downstairs rooms
"How did you get here?" she was asked.
She replied, "I walked, what do you think?"
It was typical Betty Glenn. She has had a sharp mind and often a sharp tongue for as long as I've known her, which is all my life. The Millers and the Glenns go 'way back.
The last I heard was that Betty was taken, protesting, to a hospital to for treatment of numerous cuts and to check her overall health. She made someone go in to retrieve her eyeglasses and dentures from another room, which were exactly where she said they would be.
Chuck Glenn, her son, said she might be in shock. Everyone seemed to be a bit in shock, though the family members I spoke to were invariably upbeat and grateful no one appeared to be seriously injured. Joe Snyder said the main thing was everyone was alive. He is married to Betty's daughter Candi. Their modern home, a short walk away from the old Glenn (Huff) farmhouse, lost its roof and suffered other damage.
Chuck, who operates the farm for beef cattle and is a local rep for the state soil conservation service, looked ruefully at what had been their barn. It was leveled to the floor. He pointed to large steel doors laying flat on the ground, saying they had just been installed. Three other sheds and farm buildings were completely gone, and a tractor was buried in the rubble of his garage.
None of his black Angus beef cattle or their calves were injured to his knowledge.
Up over the hill to the southeast, the tornado mangled the steel building that housed the automotive and towing business of Mark Maple. A number of vehicles appeared to be under the collapsed and twisted roof.
A short distance away, Candace Long sat on the porch of her badly damaged two-story frame house, adjacent to what had once been the apple barn of the former Hillcrest Orchards of the legendary C.A. Smith. She was petting her dog Samson, whom she credited with saving her life.
Just before the tornado hit, she said, "The dog was making sounds I never heard him make before." She left her bedroom and went into the main part of the house to check on the dog.
A neighbor who lives in a travel trailer came to her door with his dog about the same time and they all took shelter in her basement. The tornado ripped off the walls and roof of the room she had been sleeping in, blew shingles off her home's roof, and took the roof off her nearby garage, leaving eight Harley motorcycles buried in the rubble, she said.
Chuck Glenn said the downstairs kitchen in the farmhouse was damaged, but a collection of dainty teacups mounted on one wall was intact, not a one chipped or broken.