Bombing marks a dark day for Nashville

NASHVILLE, TENN. >> When Sandy and Geff Lee finally saw a photo of the building that was home to their Nashville boutique on the day after the Christmas morning bombing, a quiet came over the room.

The rubble was overwhelming. Debris shadowed familiar details. Geff Lee pulled up a map to verify they were looking in the right place.

“That moment? It was silence. It was an eye-opener,” Sandy Lee said, owner of Ensemble. “It was blown up.”

The Christmas Day explosion has sparked shock across the country after a bomb detonated in the heart of Nashville’s historic downtown and killed the bomber, injured three other people and damaged dozens of buildings.

Yet for those who call Music City home, the bombing feels like a cruel capstone to an already dark year.

“It won’t be the same,” Sandy Lee said. “You can’t rebuild that.”

In early March, a massive tornado rumbled through the city — uprooting homes, destroying businesses and killing two dozen people.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, shuttering businesses as people stayed home and the virus spread rapidly. Some people who lost their homes in the tornado saw their jobs disappear.

Things have steadily worsened over the course of the year. The post-Thanksgiving resurgence left Tennessee with among the highest number of cases per capita as state leaders remained hesitant to impose statewide mandatory restrictions. And while the city is known as a health care hub, Nashville’s hospitals have strained to keep up with the stream of COVID-19 patients that have been rushed from all corners of the state.

Those weren’t the only setbacks. Some downtown businesses experienced property damage in late May during a peaceful protest that turned violent in response to racial injustice and police brutality.

Many structures in the tornado’s path remain broken and tangled to this day, a reminder of a bad wound slow to heal.

State and local officials shake their heads in dismay that a city that had been flying high on an economic boom for years managed to pack in so many tragedies in just 12 months.

Nashville Mayor John Cooper recently described 2020 as the city’s “hardest year.”

“We’re getting through the tornado, then COVID. And then this. Just when you start to see the light, it’s taken away in two seconds,” said Pete Gibson, whose tattoo parlor was just across the street from the site of the Christmas Day explosion.