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Service for 9-Year-Old Is the First for Two Dozen Tornado Victims
(about 4 hours later)
OKLAHOMA CITY — Three days after one of the most destructive tornadoes to strike Oklahoma in decades, people here filed into a mortuary chapel Thursday morning amid heavy rain and flashes of lightning for the first of two dozen funerals.
OKLAHOMA CITY — Three days after one of the most destructive tornadoes to strike Oklahoma in decades, people here filed into a mortuary chapel on Thursday morning amid heavy rain and flashes of lightning for the first of two dozen funerals.
As soaked mourners stepped into the South Colonial Chapel, they were handed a strand of pink yarn and asked to tie it to a finger or wrist. Of the 24 victims of the tornado that damaged or leveled parts of this city and the suburb of Moore on Monday, seven were 8- and 9-year-old students at Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore. The first funeral was for one of those students, Antonia Lee Candelaria, 9.
As soaked mourners stepped into the South Colonial Chapel, they were handed a strand of pink yarn and asked to tie it to a finger or wrist. Of the 24 people killed by the tornado that damaged or leveled parts of this city and the suburb of Moore on Monday, seven were 8- and 9-year-old students at Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore.
They called her Tonie. She and the six other students who died were in the same third-grade class at Plaza Towers. Their teacher, Jennifer Doan, had sought to protect them in a hallway as the tornado approached, but the building caved in around them with the force of winds that reached speeds of up to 210 m.p.h. Antonia’s best friend, classmate and neighbor, Emily Conatzer, 9, was also killed.
The first funeral was for one of those students, Antonia Lee Candelaria, 9. Tonie, to friends and family.
“They were always giggling, running, laughing and playing,” her family said in an online obituary. “They were inseparable, even in their last moments, they held on to one another and followed each other into Heaven and they will never be alone.”
She and the other students who died were in the same third-grade class at Plaza Towers. Their teacher, Jennifer Doan, tried to protect them in a hallway as the tornado approached, her boyfriend, Nyle Rogers, said. But the building caved in around them with the force of winds that reached speeds of 210 m.p.h. Antonia’s best friend, classmate and neighbor, Emily Conatzer, 9, was also killed.
The service on Thursday was held nine miles from the wreckage of Plaza Towers. Inside the chapel, family photos of Antonia were displayed on large framed boards. Relatives filled the pews, as did a number of children sitting next to their parents. The program was adorned with ladybugs, which she loved, and country music played in the background. Antonia liked to sing and knew most of the lyrics to the songs on her favorite country station, and had recently auditioned for the talent show planned for the last day of the school year.
“They were always giggling, running, laughing and playing,” Antonia’s family said in an online obituary. “They were inseparable, even in their last moments, they held on to one another and followed each other into heaven and they will never be alone.”
Emily’s funeral will be held Saturday at 10 a.m. at the First Baptist Church of Moore. The funeral for another classmate, Christopher Legg, 9, will follow at 2 p.m.
The service for Antonia was nine miles from the wreckage of the school. In the chapel, family photos of her were displayed on large framed boards. Relatives filled the pews, as did a number of children with their parents. The program was adorned with ladybugs, which she loved, and country music played in the background. Antonia liked to sing and knew most of the lyrics to the songs on her favorite country station.
“Tonie always danced, not walked, to the beat of her own drum,” the obituary read. “And she banged her drum very well.”
“Tonie always danced, not walked, to the beat of her own drum,” the obituary read. “And she banged her drum very well.”
For more than a century, Moore has taken a battering in Tornado Alley. At least 22 tornadoes have struck in or near Moore, killing more than 100 people, since the town was incorporated in 1893, according to the National Weather Service. The tornado that destroyed dozens of homes, businesses and schools on Monday carved a destructive path for 17 miles and killed at least 24 people, but the one that touched down May 3, 1999, left an even longer, deadlier trail, staying on the ground for 38 miles and killing 36.
The storm caused as much as $2 billion in damage, and it damaged or destroyed 1,200 homes in Moore and Oklahoma City, affecting about 33,000 people, the authorities said Thursday. The number of affected homes is significantly lower than officials’ previous estimate of 12,000. A spokeswoman for the state Department of Emergency Management said the numbers were preliminary and the damage assessment had not been completed. Nearly 400 people were injured.
Despite the continual destruction, people have not fled Moore. They have stayed put and rebuilt, and others have moved to the town. Nearly 19,000 people lived here in 1970; by 2011, there were 56,000 residents.
In Moore, a working-class suburb south of Oklahoma City, officials have completed their search and rescue operation, and all of the people thought to be missing have been accounted for. The focus has shifted to clean up, along with providing emergency services for those left homeless or jobless.
Moore is a working-class suburb at the southern edge of Oklahoma City where churches outnumber bars and Republicans outnumber Democrats. In the 1890s, a railroad employee named Al Moore who lived in a boxcar had trouble receiving his mail at a settlement here. He painted his name on a board and nailed it on the boxcar, and the town’s name was born, city officials say.
Labor officials were helping people sign up for unemployment benefits, and other officials were assisting those who lost their birth certificates and other forms of identification in the storm. The Salvation Army has fed thousands of residents, and volunteers with the American Red Cross were busy cleaning family photos found in the rubble.
Most residents are white, and the town has a median household income of $56,601, higher than the $44,973 median in Oklahoma City. People park their R.V.'s in the driveway, next to their cars as well as their boats. They work in the oil and energy industry, run small businesses, cut hair, wait tables, tutor schoolchildren. The longtime mayor, Glenn Lewis, owns a jewelry store. The Republican lawmaker who represents the area in the state House of Representatives, Mark McBride, owns a roofing and home building company.
At a news conference on Thursday in the lobby of Moore City Hall, state and local officials asked people to attend a memorial service for the victims on Sunday at First Baptist Church.
“It is a blue-collar town,” he said. “We’re pretty plain. We pay cash for things down here.”
State lawmakers, in their last week of the legislative session, voted to tap $45 million from the state’s rainy-day fund for disaster relief, and Gov. Mary Fallin said she would sign the bill as soon as it reached her desk.
Mr. McBride, 52, was born and raised in Moore and still lives here, and in his cowboy hat, boots and jeans he embodies the town’s unpretentious manner. At a news conference, he stood and announced on live television that if anyone needed a place to stay, he had room at his house. Then he gave out his cellphone number.
A group of state lawmakers, led by two who represent damaged areas in Oklahoma City and Moore, Representatives Mark McBride and Jon Echols, were establishing a nonprofit organization to raise private money to build or retrofit storm shelters in schools across Oklahoma.
“I wasn’t joking,” Mr. McBride said. “I’ve got extra beds and a couch.”
Plaza Towers had no safe rooms and no underground shelter, and parents of students as well as other residents have questioned whether the school was safe. The two lawmakers said the Apache Corporation, an oil and gas exploration and production company, had donated $500,000 for shelters in Moore’s public schools.
Ken and Doris Saxon moved to a redbrick home a few blocks from City Hall in 1962 with their four young children. A few years later, a tornado damaged Moore High School, where Mrs. Saxon’s brother was band director. There were other close calls: The 1999 tornado struck about 10 blocks north, and on Monday, they crouched in their bathroom, holding pillows and comforters over their heads. Their home, and their neighbors’ houses, were spared any major damage.
Ms. Fallin said requiring the state’s schools to have storm shelters or safe rooms was an idea that needed to be discussed, but she stopped short of supporting such a mandate on Thursday.
On Wednesday afternoon, the couple — their children are grown, and they are great-grandparents — was busy outside in the yard, picking up fallen tree limbs and branches. Mrs. Saxon, 78, a retired office manager, had her red gardening gloves on, while her husband, 80, a retired auto mechanic, rested in the shade. She recalled that when the tornado hit the high school decades ago, her brother had been leading the school band in a performance. The roof came off and the rain poured in. He told them to stay and keep playing.
“I think it’s something we need to think about and to plan, and not rush into something,” she said.
“In California you have earthquakes,” Mrs. Saxon said. “In New York, you have hurricanes. Everywhere you’ve got something. We just choose this over everything else. It’s a good place to live. It’s home.”
All of the victims have been identified, and all but one of their bodies have been returned to their families. The youngest was a 4-month-old boy, Case Futrell. The oldest was Deanna Ward, 70.
Jerrie Bhonde was with her husband, Hemant, when the tornado struck their home. They lived about a block from Plaza Towers Elementary School.
Terri Long, 49, was making her way home on Monday to make sure her daughter was safe when she pulled over and sought shelter at a 7-Eleven convenience store. She had lived through the 1999 tornado that leveled parts of Moore and was afraid of the storms, said Kathryn Brewer, her sister-in-law.
“In Oklahoma, we’re used to tornadoes, but this is more than we’re used to,” she said on Thursday from a hospital where she was being treated for injuries. “We went into the middle of our house where there is an enclosed bathroom. That day, the tornado just hit and all of a sudden we were surrounded by walls coming down on us. My husband was lifted up into heaven. I tried to hold his hand, but he just blew out of my hand.”
“As soon as the footage started being shown, we recognized the 7-Eleven and saw that it didn’t exist anymore,” Ms. Brewer said. “My husband took off and headed in that direction. I couldn’t stop him. He kept calling her cellphone. My husband was still holding out hope that things would turn out all right.”
Ms. Bhonde has several fractured ribs, lacerations and bruises, she said, likening her experience to being chewed up in a blender.
Ms. Long’s home was destroyed, but her husband and her three children were safe. She would have turned 50 next week, and was looking forward to watching her youngest daughter graduate from Southmoore High School on Saturday, Ms. Brewer said. She loved riding motorcycles; her family bought a Harley-Davidson sticker to put on her coffin.
The couple had lived in the home for 34 years, but was destroyed, she said. Mr. Bhonde, 65, had retired after working for General Motors for many years. He was born in India and came to the United States for a better life, she said.
For more than 30 years, Hemant Bhonde, 65, lived about a block from Plaza Towers. He was at home with his wife when the sky darkened.
“He had a beautiful spirit and gave freely of his heart to everyone,” she said.
“In Oklahoma, we’re used to tornadoes, but this is more than we’re used to,” his wife, Jerrie Bhonde, said Thursday from a hospital where she was being treated for fractured ribs and other injuries. “We went into the middle of our house where there is an enclosed bathroom. That day, the tornado just hit and all of a sudden we were surrounded by walls coming down on us. My husband was lifted up into heaven. I tried to hold his hand, but he just blew out of my hand.”
In some of the damaged areas of Moore, it is hard to tell what the city used to be. In a residential area near the destroyed Moore Medical Center, the homes on Southwest Sixth Street were reduced to piles of wood, concrete and red brick. Marking the horizon were a few shells of homes, barkless trees and chimney stacks.
Mr. Bhonde’s remains were cremated. His wife had lost everything in the storm, their house and their belongings. The urn for his ashes, like so much else in Moore these days, was donated.
Late Tuesday evening, this flattened Moore was not the real Moore: there were no residents picking through their belongings, only reporters and news crews and TV trucks. Nearby, there were blockades run by National Guard members in the middle of what were once bustling intersections.
On Wednesday, the real Moore was on display at the Madison Place subdivision, where homeowners backed trailers and pickup trucks into their driveways and began cleaning up. The neighborhood was heavily damaged, but still recognizable, though with surreal touches. A thick shard of wood punctured a blue slide at a playground like a dagger; a UPS driver made his rounds, delivering to homes that were barely standing.
At a two-story brick house at the end of a cul-de-sac, you had to imagine the upstairs room where Crystal Sheppard’s children once slept. There was no more upstairs. There was just a window pane and open sky. Ms. Sheppard, 26, moved to Moore in April 2011 with her husband, her 4-year-old son and two girls who are foster children, drawn by the reputation of the local school district. She is a stay-at-home mother. Her husband, Daunte, 27, is a finance manager at a Chevrolet dealership.
On Monday, Ms. Sheppard was at home with the two girls when the tornado approached. Her son was at his prekindergarten and her husband was at work. She grabbed the girls and, joined by a neighbor, sped away. “It was behind us and we just tried to keep ahead of it,” she said. “It was literally pedal to the metal.”
On Wednesday, she and her husband removed some of their undamaged furniture and appliances. Underneath the rubble in the patio, she pulled her son’s pre-k graduation picture.
They will stay in town. “We’re not moving from Moore,” she said. “We’ll just have a shelter built.”
Manny Fernandez reported from Oklahoma City, and Emma G. Fitzsimmons from New York.
Manny Fernandez reported from Oklahoma City, and Emma G. Fitzsimmons from New York.
