photo by John Shackleford
John Shackleford, popular school bus driver, photographer and friend to many local politicians, survived the Tornado of 2020, but just barely.
"It was a wild ride for four minutes," he said from his Holly Hills Home in East Brainerd as he surveyed the carnage all around him after the sun came up on Monday morning.
Mr. Shackleford said when he and his wife Sherry began hearing rumblings late Sunday night she got up and closed all the doors, then yelled, "It's coming!" They then both headed for the linen closet, which he considered the safest area of the house. He said he wedged themselves in, covered Sherry up and lay on top of her. He said the swirling wind threatened to jerk them out, but they managed to hang on.
He said, "It's like they all say - it sounded like a freight train going by."
Mr. Shackleford said he and Sherry "got beat up" as their home collapsed around them, but fortunately suffered no broken bones and escaped the flying debris.
He said, "If we had gone to the bathtub it would have been a lot worse. Some of the flying 2x4s, 2x8s and 2x12s went in there."
Afterward, he said they went outside and could not believe that much of Holly Hills - a subdivision of some 80 homes - was wiped out. He said, "The only houses that were not heavily damaged were those at the base of hills that got some protection."
He said the sight "was amazing to us. It was like a scene from an Oklahoma tornado."
Mr. Shackleford said his roof was gone as well as the front porch.
His almost new Dodge Ram with 20,000 miles was crushed "by something that just kept going." His wife's Nissan Pathfinder was "beat all to pieces" as well.
Mr. Shackleford said he has no idea what happened to a shed he had in back or the 2,000 pounds of rebar and five five-gallon cans of gasoline that were inside.
There were some special items lost as well - like the electric train set "my dad had when we were kids and my granddaughter's bicycle."
photo by John Shackleford