Towns in mourning while digging out from tornadoes
DAWSON SPRINGS, KY. » Tight-knit communities still digging out from the deadly tornadoes that killed dozens of people across eight states in the South and Midwest are turning to another heavy-hearted task: honoring and burying their dead.
The storms that began last Friday night destroyed lives and property from Arkansas to Illinois and in parts of neighboring states, carving a more than 200-mile path through Kentucky. The National Weather Service recorded at least 41 tornadoes, including 16 in Tennessee and eight in Kentucky.
Along the violent storm path, a funeral home in western Kentucky prepared to serve the families of those who lost loved ones while grieving losses of its own.
Beshear Funeral Home in Dawson Springs was preparing for at least four services in coming days for storm victims, while also catching up with funerals delayed by the massive storm, said funeralhome owner Jenny Beshear Sewell, a second cousin of Kentucky’s governor.
The storm-related deaths include those of two sisters who had worked at the funeral home, the only one in town.
Eighty-year-old Carole Grisham and 72-yearold Marsha Hall decided to “ride it out” in their home as the tornado barreled down in the dark of night, Sewell said by phone Wednesday. The home, which lacked a basement, was demolished.
Hall, a fixture at the funeral home, had a hard day’s work last Friday, hours before she died in the storm, Sewell said. As she left work, Hall’s parting words were, “Well, I’ll see you.”
As the tornado approached, Sewell texted Hall with an update on the storm’s path and urged the sisters to shelter in the funeral home’s basement or a church basement. Hall replied “OK,” the last communication Sewell received from the longtime employee whom she considered a member of the family.
Arrangements were still pending for Grisham and Hall, but a double funeral was expected, Sewell said.
Meanwhile, the funeral home is also preparing services for other storm victims and for a woman whose funeral was delayed since last Saturday, the day after the storm hit. If the building’s natural gas hasn’t been restored once services resume, “everybody will just need to bundle up,” Sewell said. “That’s the best we can do.”
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has pledged $5,000 payments to each of the victims’ families to help with burial expenses. The state was the hardest hit, with 74 deaths reported.
In the western Kentucky town of Madisonville, family and friends were mourning a couple killed when the twister ripped through nearby Dawson Springs.
Jeffrey Eckert, 70, was remembered as “mysterious and cool” by his nephew Mike Eckert, who recalled his uncle playing in various bands, always owning a boat and buzzing his home after he’d earned his pilot’s license to let the family know it was time to meet him at the airport.
Many of the mourners wore animal prints in honor of Jeffrey Eckert’s wife, Jennifer Eckert, 69, who loved to wear them, and was remembered by her niece Kathy Moore for her chocolate meringue pies and the love of her grandchildren.