UB student Sunday Moulton received a text message at 8 p.m. on May 22 that upended her life.
"Have you heard from your mom? There's been a tornado."
Moulton, 31, grew up in the Mid-West and knew about tornadoes, so she shrugged off the message. An hour later, she went online and her indifference turned to fear.
Joplin, Mo. is where most of her family lives, and it had been flattened by an E-F5 grade tornado that hit at 5:34 p.m. Already, 24 people were known dead. Countless were injured. And many more were missing. Cars had crumpled like accordions. Buildings had collapsed like Legos with people inside.
"When I saw the word multi-vortex [online], I actually got sick to my stomach," Moulton said. "Those are the only tornados that I'm afraid of."
A multi-vortex tornado has several mini tornados wrapped in one destructive package. This one had three within its almost mile-wide jaws. It was one of a series of tornados that wound from Lake Superior to Central Texas. The Joplin tornado now ranks as the deadliest tornado since 1950, and is the seventh deadliest tornado in U.S. history.
The survivors and the families of the victims face every day with a single question. Why?
They also live haunted by one of life's oldest and most perplexing questions: Was it luck or chance or destiny that determined their loved ones' fates?
FEARS CONFIRMED
Moulton called her mom's home and cell phone, but got no answer. She checked Facebook and quickly learned that most of her family was safe.
But two hours after she started calling – four hours after the tornado left Joplin -- she had no word about her mother, 58-year-old Sally Moulton.
"At that point I was actually pacing and I'm not usually one to panic or anything. The silence was just really awful," Moulton said. "I just kept watching the news online and every half hour that went by I knew lessened the chance that I was going to see my mom again."
The night turned into morning, and still nobody knew where Sally Moulton was. Close friends at UB kept watch over Moulton, an anthropology graduate student, to make sure she was never alone.
Finally, the next day – 16 hours after the text message – Moulton's uncle called from Joplin.
Sally Moulton was dead.
When Moulton heard the news, she froze. Her close friend Linda McCarthy "jumped over the coffee table and landed on the couch, and grabbed me in this bear hug, because she said it looked like I was going to physically fall apart," Moulton said. "She made all the calls because I couldn't call anybody; I couldn't say it. It took me two hours before I could even say it to myself."
TRYING TO OUTRUN THE WIND
Sally Moulton – like the 49,000 residents of Joplin – had little warning before the twister hit. Two loud sirens went off for 30 seconds and then the monster was there.
One hundred-year-old buildings crumbled to dust. Houses lifted off their foundations and crashed across the city. According to the Joplin website, close to 8,000 houses, churches and businesses were flattened. Damage is estimated at $3 billion, making it the costliest tornado in U.S. history. Close to 17,000 people have filed insurance claims.
They are the lucky ones.
Sally Moulton was at the Stained Glass Theatre when the tornado hit. In the past six months, the theatre had become her refuge and she had rediscovered her childhood passion for acting. Born into a military family, she moved often as a child and spent part of her childhood in England.
She became a military medic and then met her husband, who she later divorced. Her medical training helped her on May 22. As the twister came closer, she was in her final performance of the play I Remember Mama. The performances had exhausted her and at 2:30 p.m., she had sent a text to Moulton saying, "Tonight is the last performance, after that; freedom."
When the sirens went off, Sally Moulton roused everyone she could find in the theatre and directed them down a narrow staircase to the basement of the theatre. She then stayed up to make sure nobody was left behind. There she found 9-year-old Darby Dene.
"It's been easier to deal with [mom's death] because she had a choice," Sunday said. "She could have been one of the first people down in the shelter; she chose to help organize, check the box office, the bathroom. They had less than five minutes."
Nine-year-old Darby Dene owes her life to Sally Moulton.
"The suction of the tornado started to lift her up and she told me that my mom saved her life by holding her down," Sunday said. "Darby just turned nine. She wouldn't have had that birthday without my mom."
FATE OR CHANCE?
Two blocks away, Moulton's cousin Erin Mason was barbequing with her family. The sky went dark and mean. Mason heard the sirens. Like she had done many times in her life, she ran into the house to pack pillows, blankets, candles, and flashlights.
"My fiancé Sean was outside with his brother and I looked out the window and it was pitch black," Erin said. "They came running inside and said ‘Get in the bathroom now.'"
Mason and her family ran into the bathroom and dived into the bathtub, which they hoped would keep them safe. They made a cocoon around Mason's 19-month-old daughter Isabella. The space was so tight that two of them had one leg in and one leg out of the tub. They huddled close and waited.
"Our bathtub started to yank up like it was going to rip out of the floor," Erin said. "Then it kind of went back down. Then a second yank went up and that's when we went flying up into the tornado and our house was just gone around us."
As all of them grasped the tub they saw treetops and cars flying around their heads.
They were in the twister. It lasted for a mind-blowing 45 seconds. They thudded down in a neighbor's backyard several houses away. Miraculously, no one was hurt. Had Mason known her Aunt Sally was in the theatre, she said she'd have brushed off and rushed there.
On the other side of town, Mason's sister Faith was at a wedding. If she hadn't been there, she said she would have been at the theatre with Sally Moulton.
When she saw the storm approaching, Faith Mason jumped in her car. She knew she had to get away. But could she outrun it? And which way would she go? She drove blindly, only stopping when her car stalled. She sat inside, looked outside and knew she had to move.
"I didn't know that I was going into it," Faith Mason said. "I was just trying to get to shelter. I was just praying to God to let me get to shelter. It was getting dark."
Suddenly her car started and she raced around fallen trees and debris en route to the closest family she knew. She made it, waited out the storm and then called to say she was all right.
REMEMBERING HER MOTHER
Today, Moulton, who has returned to classes at UB, remembers her mother as a prankster and someone who loved a good laugh. One of Sally Moulton's favorite pranks was the time she and her mother Eunice "Marilyn" Harris put an ad in the local newspaper advertising a mansion for sale. They had written a lengthy description of the dignified address. The joke was that the address included in the ad was that of a local junior college.
But Moulton also remembers the hard times, the depression her mother fell into after Marilyn's death five years ago. It caused her to lose her job, her house and her confidence in herself. At one point she was afraid to go outside. Her fear brought Sally Moulton to Joplin, where two years ago, she got a new start living close to her sister, Kathy.
"When she moved to Joplin she really found hope, she really found life, and she flourished," said Jessica Mason, Erin and Faith Mason's sister who survived the tornado in her mother's house. "Joplin is good for that. It's a good, Christian-based city…We support each other in everything we do."
Moulton said she was glad her mom had found happiness before she died.
"The people at the theatre couldn't even believe she had social anxiety," Moulton said. "She was really back to her old self by the end and I thank them for being a part of that."
Faith Mason noticed the effect the theatre had had on Sally.
"She was doing what she loved," Faith Mason said. "She just changed so much over the past couple of months…She had so many problems when she was younger but that last couple months, she was just so happy."
HOW DO YOU SAY GOODBYE?
For Moulton now, the hardest part is not having much to hold onto or grieve over. Sally's body was so damaged that dental records weren't sufficient to identify the body and police asked her to supply DNA. Family urged her not to come to Joplin right away. The city was a mess. It was dangerous. They needed time to clean up a little.
Moulton gave them several days and arrived in Joplin close to a week after the storm.
She was stunned by what she saw.
"I remember standing where my cousin's house used to be and I could taste drywall in the back of my throat," she said. "There were people just in tears. I'm amazed my cousins are alive."
It'd been two years since Sunday had seen her mother. With her busy school schedule and no airport within an hour of Joplin, it was difficult for the two to visit each other.
So Moulton had never seen the theatre that had changed her mother's life. When she got there, nothing was left.
"It was gone. It was just a pile of rubble where there had been a building," Moulton said. "My uncle was in the rubble and they were showing him around. I looked up at one point and he was pointing somewhere, and I knew that was where my mom had died. And I didn't want to know it."
Over the course of the next 10 days, Moulton cleared out her mother's rental house, which, eerily, was left intact. More than 8,000 people were not so lucky and Moulton wanted to clear out the house fast so someone who needed it could move in.
"I felt like a looter in my mom's house," Moulton said. "I'm going through her treasures; it felt so wrong and it took me a little while before I could get to the point of [acceptance]. It felt like I was dismantling my mom's life."
Coming Back to UB
After 40 days in Joplin, Moulton arrived back at UB to discover her own personal tornado: her academic and financial future was in limbo. Changes to financial aid meant she had much less money than she had anticipated. Today, she's saving everywhere she can – even on car brakes – if possible.
"I'm already in counseling to help make sure stress because of what happened this summer and the stress of grad school, doesn't cause a complete collapse and stop me from going to school," she said. "Any added stress, I can not handle."
She says she lives in a state of "mild panic" and is struggling to focus on her work.
She is also struggling with the legacy of her mother. On the one hand, Moulton remembers Sally Moulton's depression and inability to function in the years after her own mother died. And yet, in the last two years, her mother had found new purpose. She died a hero. Those who knew her or were with her at the end say she left a permanent mark on them and on Joplin.
"So much of my life I spent trying not to be like my mom as far as the anxiety and the depression, and trying to find a purpose for myself without falling into one of those traps," Moulton said. "But I didn't take the time to realize the amazing parts about her, or that I was just like her."
Email: news@ubspectrum.com
Those looking to help rebuild Joplin, Mo. and the families that were torn apart by the disaster can visit http://rebuildjoplin.org/ The site has several ways to help, from assisting with construction and clean up to donating money and food to those in need. In addition, anyone affected by the tornado can head to the site for a list of where to go to for shelter, food and supplies.
