Husband described as peaceful, loving man Profififiles
MOORE — Hemant Bhonde was a Hindu who didn’t “yell around the house.”
His wife, Jerrie Bhonde, described her husband as a man “devoted to having love in his heart and sharing it with each person he met.”
He was, apparently, a very peaceful man.
“There wasn’t yelling at our house, it was all love,” she said. “Each day was how to make the day better ... how to help somebody.”
From a hospital bed, just three days after the May 20 tornado in Moore killed her husband and destroyed her home, Jerrie Bhonde recalled how her husband had fallen ill in recent years.
Hemant Bhonde, 65, suffered from a severe case of osteoporosis, which left him in need of home care, which his wife said she gladly provided.
“I never minded ... I wanted to do more for him,” Jerrie Bhonde said. “He was just a guy I loved. He was my best friend.”
The couple lived across the street from Plaza Towers Elementary School, where seven children also were killed by the EF5 tornado.
“My husband, being ill, he loved to sit by the window and watch the children play at the school,” she said. “We knew a lot of the kids and they would come by our house. It’s where my daughter went to school.”
The couple was at home together when the tornado struck.
As it passed over their home, Jerrie Bhonde said she held onto her husband’s hand as long as she could.
Eventually, the force of the twister became too much.
“It was like God said, ‘Let go, I’ll take care of him,’ ” she said. “The whole house fell apart, in like a second or two, and I was just swirling around. My husband, well, he just disappeared into the sky.”
Hemant Bhonde, a retired General Motors employee who began working at the Oklahoma City plant when it opened in 1979, moved to the U.S. from India decades ago.
He and Jerrie Bhonde had been married for nearly 40 years at the time of his death.
“I grieve that he’s gone because I loved him, but I know he’s in a better place,” she said. “I know he was taken care of.”