Fourteen-year-old Tanner Moody considers himself an average teenager.

“I like hanging out with my friends, skateboarding and playing soccer … anything anyone else my age would do,” said Tanner, who just learned he made the soccer team at Clarkdale Attendance Center.

But to some people, particularly those who live in the Zero community, Tanner is anything but average. He is a living testament — a miracle baby.

“People have often said that God has a special purpose for Tanner,” said his mother, Laura Potter.

“It was just a strange thing, and good things have come from it,” Potter said, referring to an incident 14 years ago which transformed her family’s life and provided Tanner national celebrity — even if he doesn’t remember any of it.

On March 10, 1992, an early morning tornado hit the Zero Community, leaving behind destroyed homes and extensive property damage. Tanner, then 3 months, was found hanging by his nightgown in a tree.

“It all happened so fast,” Potter said. “I was 2 feet from Tanner, about to grab him and the next thing I remember, I was flat on my back, looking at the sky. There were no walls in our trailer; it had been torn to bits and scattered.”

Potter, her then husband, Keith Moody, and their daughter, Shellye, who was 6 at the time, immediately began to look for Tanner.

“It was very dark and difficult to see, plus everything was turned around,” she said. “We heard a noise off in the distance and we all stopped talking trying to figure out where it was coming from. At first, we thought it was some of the animals crying. But as I listened, I realized it was Tanner.”

They found the infant hanging upside down from a downed tree.

“He was about 8 feet off the ground, hanging upside down and crying,” she said.

The infant suffered extensive damage to his hand — a severed flexor tendon in the third finger on his left hand (ring finger). He underwent several surgeries at St. Dominic’s Hospital in Jackson.

“He had to have some of the nerves that went down into his palm repaired,” Potter said.

Tanner had a complete recovery from the injury, with no complications. An avid sportsman, he plays baseball, basketball and soccer.

The incident not only brought Tanner local attention, but also statewide and nationally. He was featured on CNN and in a magazine ad for Timex Watch Company.

“They had this campaign slogan, ‘Takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’, and that year the company had a special campaign for people and animals that had survived extraordinary circumstances,” Potter said.

“A company representative had heard about Tanner and they tracked us down. The ad was featured in Time, People, US Weekly and several other publications. They sent us a framed copy of the ad. And he got to go to New York City — even though he doesn’t remember it.”

Although Tanner does not remember the storm, he’s heard about it — a lot.

“I still get ribbed about it from kids at school,” he said, noticeably embarrassed. “They call me ‘Miracle Baby’ and bug me about hanging upside down in a tree from my nightgown.”

He said the story is amazing, but also “kind of scary, when you think about it.”

Potter agrees that it was a scary experience.

“I feel so blessed to be his mom, but also his friend,” she said. “I just hope that whatever the Lord has in store for Tanner, I hope that it’s very long and prosperous.”

The family has since moved from the Zero community and now lives in the Clarkdale area. Asked if severe weather brings about any uneasiness, Potter said: “I don’t get worried, I just am a little more cautious.”

HOW IT HAPPENED

As Weather Watch 2006 was being assembled, newsroom staffers looked through The Meridian Star’s archives for weather-related photographs — and ran across a photo of a baby turning the pages of a scrapbook. In the scrapbook were Meridian Star newspaper articles with headlines like, “Treed tornado tot tickles Timex.” On the back of the photo was the only clue to its history, the words “Tanner Moody.” The photo ran on page 35 of Weather Watch 2006, published on July 28; the caption that accompanied it asked for anyone who knew the background to give us a call. This story is the result.