It has been one year since Tom Buell and Jennifer Flemings had their home south of Garland damaged by a tornado on Mother’s Day 2014. Flemings was nine months pregnant with the couple’s third child at the time of the tornado.
Jennifer Flemings had spent the day celebrating Mother’s Day with her husband and daughters last year. They had planted some flowers earlier in the day.
Jennifer was nine months pregnant with the couple’s third child. It was later in the afternoon when her husband, Tom Buell, decided to take daughters Olive and Lucy for a walk in the neighborhood so Jennifer could rest. The family lives near the Garland spur east of Seward.
Tom took the girls to the neighbor’s house, and Jennifer said it wasn’t long before her weather radio went off so she decided to head in that direction. By the time she got there, reports were coming in of Beaver Crossing being hit.
“I have never grabbed my kids so fast. We just booked it. We ran,” she said.
The family made it back to their basement but knew by the way the sky looked that things weren’t good.
“The weather outside was starting to get weird and we had a windmill and it was blowing. The wind was coming from the east,” she said.
Jennifer remembers Tom commenting on that being a bad sign.
As Jennifer and the two girls sat in the family’s shelter area, Tom went to check on things.
When he came back, he said, “Jennifer, it is green out there.”
When Jennifer went up to check on things, she remembers that it was eerily still.
“I got goosebumps,” she said.
She said they had taken backpacks with activities for the girls down to the shelter so they were unaware of what was going on outside.
“They were having fun,” Jennifer said. “They were so unaffected by it even though my anxiety was up.”
About the time the tornado was going through the area, Jennifer said she started noticing pressure in her ears.
“As we’re sitting there, the girls were in their own little world. All of a sudden, my ears started popping and I, for some reason, I was convinced it had something to do with the pregnancy,” she said.
At the time, she thought the stress was causing pressure in her ears and was concerned that her water might break.
She looked over at Tom and he was trying to get his ears to pop as well, so she knew at that moment that something was happening.
“You could hear the hail. And then it sounded like something slammed against our house,” she said.
After the worst of it had passed, Tom went up to assess the damage and told Jennifer that the playset was gone.
“And I’m like, that’s great. If that’s the worst that happened, that’s great,” she said.
He then told her that the cedar trees had been uprooted and a neighboring barn was gone.
“I knew something serious had happened,” she said.
As the family went upstairs in the house, the first thing they noticed was the rain.
“As hard as it was raining outside, it was raining that hard inside,” Jennifer said.
The tornado had taken off the home’s roof, allowing sheets of rain to pour into the house.
Jennifer remembers Lucy’s reaction.
“The only thing she said all night was, ‘It’s raining in my house. Mama, it’s raining in my house.’ And she was pacing,” Jennifer said.
As the couple started gathering as much as they could save to put into totes, Jennifer said their adrenaline was going crazy.
“We’re still finding insulation in things because it was everywhere,” she said.
The family stayed at the house that night packing items until it was dark.
Jennifer said there was another house in the neighborhood that also received heavy damage, but the family was able to stay in their house because of where the damage was.
When Jennifer and Tom returned the next morning, Jennifer remembers thinking they could still live there even with the damage.
“I was in total denial,” she said.
Jennifer said they spent the Monday and Tuesday after the tornado packing up as much in their house as possible, since she was scheduled to be at the hospital to give birth on Wednesday. She remembers all of the support they had as well.
“We had an incredible amount of people coming out to help us. Tom’s entire office came to help…and my coworkers,” she said.
Jennifer is an elementary school librarian and technology teacher at Seward Elementary, and Tom works at the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality.
Jennifer said someone from Junto Winery came over to help them pack as well.
“I can’t even put into words how the community just wrapped around us and just took such good care of us,” she said.
Jennifer said she thinks one of the biggest blessings that got them through everything was that people were there for them, making sure everything was OK.
“They comforted us and made us feel safe,” she said. “People were there for us. People just bent over backwards.”
When the couple determined that they couldn’t stay in their home, Jennifer’s first thought was, “Where are we going to bring this baby home to?”
Jennifer said they found out through a friend that the Seward United Methodist Church had a rental house available.
“The Methodist Church was very supportive,” she said.
She added that her family referred to it as their summer home since they were able to move back into their home before the fall.
“It was a chaotic time but we were the least stressed. There was such a sense of calm because we were taken care of. People were looking out for us. People came out of the woodwork to help us,” she said.
Jennifer said people came with meals, baby boy clothes after they had Van, and she had coworkers who came, picked up baskets of dirty laundry and then returned them cleaned.
Both Tom and Jennifer are from Bellevue, but Jennifer always wanted to live in a small town with the small-town feel but didn’t know how it would be without family around.
She said going through the tornado aftermath with the small-town support was an incredible experience.
“The people of Seward…I’ve never felt so cared for and loved. It was an amazingly touching time. Ever since then, I want to continue it. I want to pay it forward,” she said. “The community just wrapped around us and we are grateful.”
Jennifer said she feels like a totally different person because of the experience. And she knows that it could have turned out very different.
She said she is so grateful to be living in Seward.
“I’m super happy here. I’m so proud to be able to be here now and be able to raise my kids here. I just think that there’s great leaders here and great examples,” she said.
She said she is more open to doing things in the spur of the moment than she was before the tornado.
Her home truly feels like home now, she said, and she has loved being back with their neighbors.
Her daughters still think about one of the horses that had to be put down nearby as a result of an injury from the tornado. And they talk about the tornado and about if another one comes. Lucy says that if another tornado comes, they’ll be ready for it.
Above all, Jennifer said she and Tom are so thankful to their neighbors and the community.
“I just can’t emphasize enough how thankful we are for the people of Seward: Junto Winery for coming over and helping us pack when they could’ve easily drove right on by, our co-workers, the Methodist church community, Connie Doehring (an angel in disguise), Paul Davis for their amazing reconstruction work, and of course our incredible neighbors, friends, and family that have supported us during the highs and lows through this past year. Fortunate and thankful are two words that come to mind when reflecting on this past year,” Jennifer said.
