Copyright © 2003 The Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee

Dara Hamm, left, pauses in her work at a Wartburg pharmacy to talk with Sharon Pinner, who spearheaded the efforts of St. Andrew's Church in Harriman to assist victims of the tornado that hit Morgan County a year ago. Hamm's home was destroyed, and she is still waiting for it to be rebuilt.

photo by Sharon Rasmussen

A year after the tornado hit the Mossy Grove and Joyner areas of Morgan County, area residents continue rebuilding their homes and lives.

Sharon Pinner, wife of St. Andrew, Harriman, rector Joe Pinner, said that in addition to Habitat for Humanity, she knew of homes rebuilt by the Dolly Parton Foundation, the Masons and a number of church groups, including a Lutheran group who last summer came to a work camp and cooked their lunches at St. Andrew’s Church every day.

Lois Tidwell, who lost her home to the tornado, is settling into a new house. Her daughter, Dara Hamm, and her grandson lived next door.

“I had the old homeplace of the Tidwells – it was around 50 years old – a perfect, beautiful house,” Hamm said. Her son had settled into the newly renovated upper floor only three weeks before the tornado hit.

“All that upstairs she had done, and she didn’t have it on her insurance yet,” Tidwell said.

Hamm said her parents moved in with her while their house was under construction. “She stayed with us – there were several rooms you could live in – and we watched her house being built,” Hamm said. Her damaged house was then demolished, and she and her son have been staying in her parents’ new house.

Hamm wasn’t able to keep much from the old homeplace, but she did salvage an arched door frame that separated the living room and kitchen. “My father helped build that archway,” she said. To assist in the original installation, “the pieces were numbered on the inside. It was carved by hand – and Daddy helped take it down too,” she said. “In the new house, I’ll find a place for it. And we did save the mantel of the fireplace.”

She’d had high-quality windows installed during her renovation of the homeplace, and they too survived the tornado, unlike most neighbors.’ “I’ll put them in my new house,” she said. “And my windows saved my personal belongings,” she added.

Her parents were getting resettled when tragedy struck the family again. “Seven days after they moved in” to the new house, Hamm said, “Daddy had the stroke. We stayed with him night and day in the nursing home.”

“We’ve got a new house, and we don’t stay in it,” Tidwell says. “Everybody just comes in and goes to bed.” Doctors recently told the family they’d reached the limit of what medicine could do for Roger Tidwell.

Construction on Hamm’s house began in June, “but it’s not coming like it should be,” Hamm said. “Things just can’t get together.

“I have a 17-year-old son,” she said. “He needs a place right now. My goal is to get it done before he goes to college.” She worries that he hasn’t had a settled home life in a long time. The family’s string of tragedies included her husband’s death of a brain tumor just a few years ago.

Now, another setback for her son: “He plays football, and he ended up breaking his leg, and then he had surgery,” she said. The dream of shining on a big university team has been modified. “He’s hoping he can play with a small college somewhere,” she says. “Football keeps him motivated; he knows he’s not going to make a career out of it now, but he wants to play,” she said.

Pinner says some in these tornado-struck communities have done well, and describes one instance where a family who got a new home through Habitat for Humanity had its mortgage paid by an area radio station. A number of families whose former residences were older mobile homes now live in larger, well-constructed houses.

“A lot of people came out with no debt,” she said. “Dara’s going to wind up with debt,” because the arrangement to rebuild her house doesn’t appear to working out.

“A lot of groups have assumed …” Pinner begins, then says, “You know, it’s been a year now, and they think everything’s been done. There’s been a lot of other things to happen in this state that may have taken folks away from this area. But we need to get Dara’s house done.”

If you would like to help, please call St. Andrew’s Church, 865-882-1272.

Related story in this issue:

• A year later: Morgan County communities rebuilding