There are many things that shape a person’s life.

    While many are positive events, unfortunately it is often the traumatic that leave the most profound impact. And while I rarely reflect back to nearly 20 years ago, the events of this past week have forced my thoughts and emotions back in time.

    Shortly after midnight on March 10, 1992, at the beginning of spring break, and two days after my 12th birthday, I was sitting in the floor of my bedroom in my family’s home located in the southern portion of Lauderdale County. It was late, but I was up because I had a friend spending the night after my birthday party. Like most boys that age, we were being a little mischievous by staying up, as surely the warning for bedtime had come hours earlier. But I was excited because I had been given enough money in presents to count, and count again. A whopping $111 – the bills were stacked neatly on the top of my desk, and I was already dreaming up ways I could spend it. I had just purchased a pair of Air Jordans from the money I had earned as a page in the Mississippi Legislature the week before. And now I was contemplating a Mississippi State SEC championship basketball to go with it. These were the thoughts most important to me at that moment. These priorities would soon change, and in an instant.

    I remember we kept shutting the door, to evade my mom’s attention. She would check on us periodically, leaving it open. We would wait the appropriate amount of time, and shut it quietly again. We were on the phone talking to girls – another of my priorities important at that moment. Shortly after midnight, I went downstairs to take allergy medicine. When I returned, I left the door open. Mom was asleep by then, and a door was no longer needed to dodge her awareness. That decision, to leave the door open, proved a pivotal point, a crucial decision, moments later.

    What seemed like only seconds later, the now unmistakable sound of a tornado, followed by my house being ripped apart, forced me to jolt through that open door and into the center of the house for safety — a door that if closed, would have been impossible to open due to the mounting air pressure.

    By God’s grace, my entire family survived. And to this day, it’s hard to explain how. “God just had His hands on us,” my parents would tell me numerous times throughout the coming days.

    As the sun rose the following day, it shone on the splinters that remained of our home. It made clear with its light the devastation that can occur in an instant. It made obvious and with such clarity, how quickly it can all go. Looking at the crumbled remains of our home that day only reinforced the fear of that moment, and the doubt that we had all somehow survived. I recall that it was hard to pinpoint where we had been when it hit. It was difficult to make out what had once been this room and that room — yet it seemed important to try and do so.

    I recall my great-grandmother’s piano, still intact. Used days before to make music, it had been used the night before to shelter my body, my mother’s and my sister’s, from falling debris. I recalled my father, who raced to the center of the house as the storm hit, and tackled my friend, thinking the whole time it was me he was covering. In the chaos that followed after the storm had passed, my father panicked when he realized it wasn’t me he was holding. I will never forget the sound of my father’s voice as he screamed out my name, unable to see through the night air and the dust left by the debris. I was next to mom, beneath the sheetrock walls that were torn apart by the storm’s wind. Other than carpet burn on my knees from where the floor had been sucked out from underneath me, I was fine.

    Somehow, we all survived. We survived despite the fact that there was nothing left of our home, other than the concrete slab of our front porch. Parts of my water bed, which I had been in moments before the storm hit, were later found more than a mile from my home. My mother and sister received hospital care for injuries resulting from broken glass lodged in their scalp and back. I still recall details of pine straw hurled with such force that it punctured the landau top of my father’s car — another  eerie reminder of the storm’s strength..

    Not everyone was as fortunate as we were. Three people died that night and many more were injured. This week as I watched the storms pass and saw the damage in Kemper, Clarke and Jasper counties — and across the Deep South — my mind raced back to 1992 and the total loss of property, of life, and of the feeling of safety. 

    The memories came flooding back. I could still smell the snapped pine trees. I could still feel the red clay in my hands and on my skin that never seemed to come off (all tornado victims know what I mean because the wind actually has earth in the debris that is blown into your skin when it hits). I could still taste the warm chicken dumpling soup from the Salvation Army van parked in my neighborhood that I ate for days.

    It was an event I’ll never forget.

    Though we did not experience loss of life, in some small way, I understand the pain that can be caused in an instant. In a matter of seconds, your home is gone and your life is altered.

    But the good news: you can rebuild. With the help of friends, neighbors, family and emergency responders, life will get better each day. Eventually, the events of last week will become the tornado of 2011. And with that time and space, come healing.

    There will be moments of small victories that you will cling to. I can still remember exactly how much of that $111 in birthday money I was able to recover — $75. I still remember how our preacher found my mom’s engagement ring and wedding band in the debris. I remember the new Air Jordans — a birthday present — I wasn’t able to recover in the debris but bought again thanks to a generous McRae’s gift card from the Red Cross. While these are material possessions that don’t matter in the big scheme of things, reclaiming any semblance you can of your former life is healing. This week I have watched as the victims rummage through the debris, scooping up an old dish, an old shirt, whatever they can find from where their homes once stood. I understand that it doesn’t matter to them if the other eleven dishes are gone, or if the shirt is no longer fit to wear. It matters that something in the heap of chaos looks familiar, and therefore comforting to them.

    I’ll never forget the generosity of people like former University of Southern Mississippi football coach Jeff Bower, who sent my entire family USM memorabilia and clothes after seeing a story about our survival on a Hattiesburg television station.  And even though my family consists of diehard Mississippi State fans, we still cheer on the Eagles today because of that.

    I’ll always remember the hand-written note and autographed photos that Texas Ranger baseball stars of the time, Nolan Ryan and Rafael Palmerio, sent me after finding out my baseball cards had been lost in the storm.

    I’ll never forget the family that let us stay in their home rent-free while we rebuilt our home. People who sacrificed weekends and late nights to volunteer to help us wire our house, nail down floors and put a new roof over our head shaped my life. I have hope that this same kindness and sacrifice will now occur for the thousands currently affected.

    This week as we pray for those affected by the worst tornado outbreak since the Great Depression, I pause to also remember those who lost their friends and family back in 1992. And I feel positive that East Mississippi residents will recover and move forward because, well, we have a history of doing just that.

    Fredie Carmichael is executive editor of The Meridian Star. Email him at 

editorcarmichael@gmail.com. Listen to his weekly radio show — Sunday Mornings with the Editor — today from

8 a.m.-10 a.m. on WMOX Radio.