Students offer aid to disaster victims

It was an offhand remark, made by a high schooler gently teasing the school nurse -- the nurse he's known since kindergarten, and whom he's obviously quite fond of.

"After I found out what happened, I felt awful all week," said Drew Janes, a senior at Twin Rivers High School.

Sheri Farmer, a registered nurse and the school health coordinator for the Twin Rivers School District, and her husband are building a new home, and as work progresses, she snaps photos and downloads them onto her computer. She even uses the images as wallpaper on her computer at work.

"Whenever someone asks, I can just pull up the pictures," Farmer said.

One day last week, Janes says, he had stopped to chat with Farmer in her office. She showed him the latest pictures of her home and, knowing how proud she was, he teased her.

"I said, 'What if it rains in there?' and then I said, 'Well, what happens if a storm comes by and blows your house down?'" Janes said. "She said, 'Well, I guess we'd just start all over again.'"

Janes might not have remembered the conversation, except that the day it occurred was Wednesday, April 24, and Farmer's new home was in Pine Cone Estates north of Poplar Bluff where a tornado, with estimated windspeeds up to 210 miles an hour ripped through it. The twister cut a 38-mile swath through Carter and Butler counties.

"I felt awful all week," Janes said. "And then, I couldn't tell her. She didn't come to school for three days. I felt so bad."

But when he got the chance, Janes did more than tell her how he felt. He and a busload of Twin Rivers seniors also showed her. They pitched in to help with cleanup in the subdivision Wednesday and Thursday.

"After it all happened, they came back to school and told us her house had been destroyed, and I knew whether they brought us down here or not, I was going to come help. I would do anything for her," said Rachael Baker, a Twin Rivers student, as she helped clear away debris from the yard of one of Farmer's neighbors.

Seniors on the scene

The students -- 23 of them Wednesday and 33 Thursday -- scattered across the neighborhood and helped where they could. They were free both mornings because of Missouri Assessment Program testing at the school -- tests that they don't have to take. They were originally slated to sit in study hall.

"I just thought it would be a really good idea. A lot of people need help, and these seniors are just sitting around, not taking the test," said Twin Rivers coach Jeff Walk. "Put the two together. It's a pretty simple solution."

"It's making me realize how lucky I am," Baker said as she worked. "It makes me feel 10 times better about myself to be out here helping."

Farmer and the seniors, who call her by her first name, share a special bond, said Dan Vandiver, principal at Twin Rivers High School. The students were kindergartners the year she started to work for the district.

"Mrs. Farmer is very well liked by the kids, and does a lot for them. I think a lot of them saw the chance to kind of repay her for everything she's done for them," Vandiver said. "She goes above and beyond just passing out aspirin and doing the things a school nurse would do. The kids -- they trust her as a confidant and she goes out of her way to help them. And that's coming back to her now, I guess."

"She's had all of us since we were in kindergarten. She was always there for us," Baker said. "Now she needs someone to be there for her, and we're going to be there for her."

At the Farmer home, the walls and roof were up and construction workers were supposed to start shingling the roof the day after the tornado. Now, there's nothing standing above ground level. But Farmer and her husband have quickly put the loss into perspective.

"None of our possessions were here. You can't compare it with our neighbors. We just lost lumber," she said.

The students who went to help Thursday represented well over half the senior class. The project was voluntary, Vandiver said.

'Ready to work'

"I saw one girl in the office this morning with jeans, boots and leather gloves in her back pocket. She's ready to work," he said. "I had a student in my office yesterday morning trying to talk me into letting him go, even though he didn't have a permission slip."

Farmer, who was piloting the school bus around the subdivision Wednesday, seemed happy that the students could help.

"It's a special thing to have them out here," she said, seconds before she called out to them, "You all are doing a lot of good work here."

As he wrapped up on Wednesday and got on the bus, Adam Brown said he felt good.

"She has helped me through a lot of things. She's a wonderful person," Brown said. "I just wanted to come help. A lot of good people had bad things happen to them. They need all the help they can get."