Holly – When Rene Dennis stood amid the ruins of her home last week, looked beneath a tornado-flattened wall and found the wedding ring she feared was swept away, she clutched more than a piece of jewelry.
It represented an emotional touchstone, a return to her roots. After busting out of this small town and staying away for two decades, Dennis moved back five years ago, married her high school sweetheart and refurbished a home at the corner of Park Street and Highland Drive.
“In a small community like this, when you’re young, you say you’ll leave and never go back,” she said. “But something always draws you back. There are a lot of ties here. You can see it when everybody helps everybody.”
Up and down board- and bough-littered streets, neighbors and friends put hearts, hands and heavy equipment into the cleanup stage of what nearly all who weathered last week’s twister describe as a long-term goal.
Rebuilding.
For most, that means right here, on the same ground torn by the tornado that ripped a 7-mile path of damage through town that claimed one life, injured several more and blew apart dozens of homes.
“You have to rebuild,” said Brenda Hazen, gazing up through what used to be her kitchen ceiling to watch a pair of doves in flight. “Where else do you go? This is where our lives are. You don’t see us boo-hooing and crying. Who can you be mad at, really?”
Within hours of the tornado, residents were on the move with tractors and Bobcats, chain saws and tools.
Forty-eight hours later, fallen trees had been chopped up, roofs covered with tarps, windows boarded up and many piles of debris picked through. One family put their wood chipper on the sidewalk, where branches and small logs were ground into dust.
After an assessment by state and federal agencies Friday afternoon, the first official comprehensive numbers were released Saturday morning:
More than 160 homes in this town of 1,100 on the Colorado-Kansas line were affected by Wednesday’s storm. That’s nearly a third of all homes.
Twenty-nine homes were destroyed, 19 had major damage, and 114 were damaged but inhabitable.
The tornado’s path was 300 yards wide and 7 miles long, north to south.
Rural communities attract independent people used to figuring things out for themselves and banding together, said Bill Williamson, pastor at Holly Evangelical Free Church.
“The nature of these people is if you need to get it done, you get it done,” he said. “You don’t ask any questions, you don’t expect anything from it. That’s the way we were raised.”
Even before the government agencies landed in Holly, neighbors were helping neighbors. The notion of government assistance was a foreign thought as families took in those affected by the tornado.
“We’ll stay here, my husband farms here, this is home,” said Tanya Rushton. “You pull yourself up by your bootstraps and do it.”
Rushton and her husband, Casey, barely made it to the basement before their walls and roofs were ripped away, leaving their couch and brown leather recliner in the open air. Within hours friends and family were helping them pack.
The tornado marks only the latest challenge this community has faced.
A December blizzard devastated the ranchers and farmers nearby and nearly buried the town. Two months of snow on the ground may have paved the way for the tornado to uproot trees and homes from the soft earth, said Ray Pecina, who was clearing uprooted bushes and trash from his mother’s yard.
“The blizzard made us frail and set us up for the tornado,” said Pecina, 25. “But it didn’t scare us away. There is always room to rebuild.”
But determined talk of reconstruction came tempered by some small-town economic realities.
Families suddenly left homeless face a low inventory of rental units. And while offers of lodging from friends and relatives flowed freely in the immediate aftermath of the tornado, so did the acknowledgment that even the most cherished guests can wear out their welcome.
A sudden construction boom in a relatively isolated town also raises the question of who could do the work.
Rodney Hazen, Brenda’s husband, who owns a lumberyard in Holly, had remodeled virtually every corner of his family’s house before the tornado struck.
“There aren’t going to be that many available contractors, with so much work going on,” said Rodney Hazen, 48. “I don’t know how soon we’d be able to do anything.”
Throughout town, families delayed cleanup and waited anxiously for insurance claims adjusters to arrive and confirm what in some cases seemed painfully obvious – that their homes were a total loss.
Bill Potestio and Keith Crow of Farm Bureau Insurance moved quickly. By Friday morning, they said, they’d declared six houses totaled and handed checks to the homeowners. Their average payout on Highland Drive, which locals describe as the town’s most upscale neighborhood, ran about $150,000 per house, not including additional claims against lost contents, Potestio said.
For some still waiting for word, the numbers associated with rebuilding on the same site didn’t immediately add up – especially in a time of such mixed emotions.
“I’d have more buying power if I bought an existing home,” said 52-year-old Dale Willhite, who farms south of town. “I may rebuild; I won’t rule that out. I’ve got options. But this would be a great chance to leave. I’ve been here all my life, and I’d like to see something else.”
For many residents of a certain age, this disaster prompted comparisons to the 1965 flooding of the Arkansas River that swept away much of the town’s commercial base.
“This is worse,” declared Pat Campbell, 68, outside the house where she and husband Wesley have lived since 1961. “After the flood, you had something to clean up and go back to. Here, you just gather your personal belongings and move on. But we’ll be back.”
The house has continued to shift visibly since the tornado, and the Campbells waited for final word from the insurance company as to whether it could be salvaged.
“It would be heartbreaking to tear it down,” she said. “It’s not much, but it was built with blood, sweat and tears. And it’s paid for, too.
“People are deeply rooted here. Their families made this land. This is home.”
For some homeowners, the tornado arrived at a time of personal transition. Empty-nesters like the Hazens, for instance, mulled downsizing their next house on the same lot.
Along West Cheyenne Street on the town’s south side, Dallas Hart stood in the front yard of his elderly mother’s badly damaged house and hatched an idea. He could perhaps sell the lot to neighbors, who could in turn move their aging mom’s large country house to a double lot in the city.
“My mother’s in a nursing home now, so we’ll probably sell the lot in a year or so,” Hart said. “But it will be built on.”
So will the lot at the north end of Highland Drive, where 89-year-old Louise Neill moved into a modular home a few years ago.
Her son, Dean Neill, recalled how the family wanted her to move to town from her farm property so she would be safer.
“I guess that didn’t work out so well,” said Neill. His spry mother, who’d mowed her lawn and planted lilacs the day of the tornado, was injured slightly when it sliced through her house and moved the structure 30 feet off its foundation. “But this is an ideal place here – no traffic and good neighbors. I truly think she’ll build here again.”
Even Gus Puga, the husband of tornado victim Rosemary Rosales Puga, has told his family he wants to remain in Holly.
“He has his whole life here,” said his cousin, Carmen Ramirez of Lakin, Kan.
Two missing envelopes stuffed with cash were found in the rubble under a wall torn from their home during the tornado, which flung Puga’s wife into a tree. She later died at the hospital.
Puga’s cousin, Victor Mendoza, had been sifting through the debris for any remnants of Gus and Rosemary’s life together when he found the envelopes filled with most of the $8,000 Puga had saved.
It was seed money for their future.
Staff writer Kevin Simpson can be reached at 303-954-1739 or ksimpson@denverpost.com.
How to help
Adventist Community Services is coordinating donations for victims of the Holly tornado. New, clean underwear and diapers for all sizes and ages are needed. Wait until more information is available to donate other items.
The Adventist Community Services office is at 5045 W. First Ave., Denver, CO 80219.
Cash donations earmarked for “Holly Tornado” can be directed to the Salvation Army at P.O. Box 2369, Denver, CO 80201; 303-863-2188; or imsalvationarmy.org.
The Red Cross is also accepting donations at 444 Sherman St., Denver, CO 80203; 800-733-2767; or denver-redcross.org.
