NewsSeptember 23, 2007
Crosstown's renaissance
Newly poured foundations and unfinished walls now dot the rural scenery in the tiny community of Crosstown, Mo., near Perryville. The evidence of construction is not a sign of growth, but the beginning of rebirth after a tornado ravaged the area a year ago...
Newly poured foundations and unfinished walls now dot the rural scenery in the tiny community of Crosstown, Mo., near Perryville. The evidence of construction is not a sign of growth, but the beginning of rebirth after a tornado ravaged the area a year ago.
The Sept. 22, 2006, tornado ripped an 8-mile path beginning to end and peaked as an F4 in Crosstown. It stands as the strongest September tornado in the region, according to the National Weather Service in Paducah, Ky. The 210-mph winds threw cars into houses and swept homes off their foundations that Friday afternoon.
In the time after the storm, several residents packed what they could and moved into Perryville, but still more picked up what they could find and began planning to rebuild.
"It took us a long time to decide to stay," Loretta Lybarger said.
She and her husband looked for houses "in town," but eventually rebuilt on the same location just off Perry County Road 350.
"We just decided to come back home," she said.
Loretta and her husband Tom went into the basement after seeing the blackened sky that day. While they down there, the windows on one end shattered, spewing glass into the room and the door leading up to the backyard blew off, she said.
"We just kept moving back and back in the basement," she said.
"You could hear the timbers being pried apart above your head," Tom Lybarger said.
When the couple surfaced after the storm, their maple trees and swing were gone from the backyard, the shed had been tossed across the street and most of the house was destroyed.
Theirs was one of 102 homes destroyed or damaged by the twister. The Lybargers rebuilt and were able to move into their home in early September.
The layout is basically the same, the couple said, but they expanded the living room and took out some over-the-counter cabinets to open up the area.
"I'm getting used to it," Loretta Lybarger said. She still reaches up to get the salt and pepper from the missing cabinets before remembering what happened.
The Lybargers have been watching their house go up from a construction site next door where they are helping to build a new Bethlehem Baptist Church. The church had stood across the road from their house since 1904. Tom is a lifelong member and Loretta said she married in.
The church is being built in the lot adjacent to their house instead of in its old place across the street. The new location will be more handicapped accessible. It will have no basement, be all one level and have a larger parking lot.
Church members are helping to build the new church. Insurance and donations have fueled construction. A core group of members have been working on the church every day with more volunteers coming on Saturdays. The steeple was placed on the new church Friday.
Receive Daily Headlines FREESign up today!
The church members like the idea of the steeple going up a year after the church nearly came down.
"Just so something good can happen that weekend," said Jean Corse, a member of Bethlehem Baptist who cooks lunch for the workers every day.
The congregation has been holding services in the Masonic Lodge in Perryville.
"The consensus is, we're ready to go home," Steven D. Francis, the pastor of the church, said.
A mural of what members are calling "Old Bethlehem Church" will be painted in the entrance to the new building. The painting might be done by Harold Corse, a church member who now lives in a trailer next to the church while his own home is being rebuilt about a quarter of a mile away.
The two-story, 18-room home he shared with his wife Laura had walls three bricks thick. The extra layers did nothing to stop the winds of the tornado.
The Corses were standing in a doorway in the kitchen and were not hurt. But the couple had more than 2,000 hardbound books in their library, which was destroyed in the storm.
Laura Corse pointed to a Bible with "Harold and Laura Corse" etched into the front leather and said it was about 8 inches thick after being subjected to the tornado and following rain.
"You had to go through page by page and sift the sand and dirt out of there," she said.
The Bible, given to the Corses by Harold's parents, sits on the coffee table of their rented trailer. It is still 3 inches thick and peppered with dirt.
The Corses decided to rebuild on the salvageable foundation of the home they had lived in for more than 20 years. They plan on using bricks saved from the original house, which was built in 1875. The bricks were made in the backyard. They have since been cleaned and stacked in the front yard for reuse.
The workers began laying brick last week, and the couple hopes to be back in their home by Christmas. Until then, Corse said she is managing. She is mostly confined to a wheelchair because of a car accident and has trouble maneuvering in the trailer's tiny kitchen.
The houses of Harold and Laura, his mother and two of the couple's daughters were destroyed in the storm last year.
Three generations of a family and most of a neighborhood lost their homes, "all by the same tornado," Corse said.
While the tornado ripped up trees and knocked down houses, the worst injury to a person was a broken arm.
charris@semissourian.com
335-6611, extension 246
Story Tags
Advertisement
Related
Connect with the Southeast Missourian Newsroom:
For corrections to this story or other insights for the editor, click here. To submit a letter to the editor, click here. To learn about the Southeast Missourian’s AI Policy, click here.
Advertisement
Receive Daily Headlines FREESign up today!
