Many of the children in my first grade classroom had lost a parent in the tornado that came right down the middle of main street in April of 1942.  It hit on a Saturday around four o'clock when everyone was in town.  In those days, everyone went to town on Saturday to do their shopping.  Malls didn't exist.  All of our stores were on main street, and the tornado--which was a quarter mile wide--took out the entire street from one end to the other.  It killed 52 people and injured 350 more.   

For a town so small, it was a critical decimation of the population.  The town was gone.  Very little was left that could be used.   This was a contributing factor in the lack of housing.

First Baptist Church was destroyed and had to be rebuilt so they called a new pastor who had been a master carpenter and "brick and mason pro" before he became a preacher.   E.R. Jacks--who rounded up all the able men and taught them to lay brick.  They rebuilt the church.   

My mom and dad joined the church and became friends with E.R. and his wife Mary Jane.  So did dozens and dozens of others who had come to town to work at the powder plant.  My aunt and uncle Ruby and Cleo.  My grandmother and grandfather.  The church became the center of our lives.

That was the church I grew up in.  Mary was my Sunday School teacher and E.R baptized me.  I don't remember anything about their children since they were so much older than me--I was in the third grade when Ken graduated high school.  But life is a circle, and when he came to visit my folks after he got back from the Korean war,  I was a senior.  He liked what he saw.  And the rest is history.

Time passes.  Events mark our lives.  We remember moments, but the rest is forgotten.  I'm glad Ken didn't forget how much my mom and dad meant to his family, and took the time to come see them when he was on leave.  Otherwise, I would never have met him.