Cordell making comeback six months after twister

Monday, April 8th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

CORDELL, Okla. (AP) _ Stan and Edie Brown remain in rental housing six months after a tornado destroyed their red-brick home. Like many in this western Oklahoma town of 3,300, they are rebuilding.

The school has been fixed, construction starts next month on a new apartment building and plans are being made to reconstruct a nursing home.

An insurance company payment allowed the Browns' to pay off the mortgage on the home that was destroyed, and they have taken out a new loan to rebuild. All that's left of the old house is a paneled hole in the ground that was their basement.

They visited the hole a month ago to clean out accumulated mud and water.

``It felt so good to be able to be there where it was ours, to know you're back in your own place,'' said Edie Brown, a secretary.

The tornado that blew through here on Oct. 9 destroyed more than 160 buildings and displaced 250 families. An elementary school and a nursing home were heavily damaged.

Nobody was injured. School was over for the day and the nursing home had been closed.

Some of the elementary students had been attending makeshift classes in a local church until repairs were finished last week. Mayor Phil Kliewer said plans are being made to build a new nursing home.

Scars still show. A church has been turned into a relief center. Plywood sheets lie across pews and clothing contributions lie on makeshift tables. Stained glass shadows fall on donated crates of chili and beans.

While damage can be repaired, the memory of the tornado is longer lasting.

Monty Proffitt, a city employee, had been installing an underground electrical system with a crew of workers when rain made them stop and wait out the weather in a convenience store.

That's when the tornado hit, starting in Cordell's southwest corner and churning diagonally across the town.

The Browns and their daughters, 11 and 13, were buried in debris.

Edie Brown said that when she emerged, she looked up and saw the sky.

``I could see daylight and my first thought was, 'I guess I'll have to patch the roof before it gets dark,' but I never dreamed of the devastation,'' she said.

Proffitt watched the tornado go through the Browns' neighborhood.

``What I remember seeing is the fair barn getting picked up and twisted and dropped,'' he said. The fairgrounds are across the street from the Browns' property.

The barn was destroyed and the appearance of the neighborhood was changed.

``I can see the school from my house and I never could before,'' Edie Brown said. ``It's sad that some of those places won't be rebuilt.''

Tax Assessor Janie Bellah estimates the tornado wiped out $5 million worth of property that would have contributed about $60,000 this year in taxes.

``Maybe this year'll be a little tough,'' she said, ``but I think next year'll be a better year.''

A total of $4.2 million in emergency aid went to Cordell, said David Passey, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A little more than half of that came in the form of loans to families and small businesses.

City officials are also attempting to get a federal business grant that could help entrepreneurs expand businesses in the town, which has also been hit by two ice storms and a wind storm since the tornado.

People in town continue to marvel at the power of the tornado. The wind picked up a circular saw blade and drove it deep into a tree trunk. A jacket belonging to one of Edie Brown's daughter was carried 25 miles from town and deposited in a drainage ditch. The jacket was not torn.

There was a strange kind of humor in town after the disaster.

Proffitt recalled one man looking at a flattened home and musing aloud about when the cable television would be turned back on.

Edie Brown says she still laughs at how she braved the looming cloud to park in the garage in hopes of protecting her car only to see the tornado drop the car at the top of the basement stairs and almost on top of her family.

The mayor says things could have been worse.

``I thought we would be looking at scores of funerals,'' he said. ``To this day, I still don't know why we didn't.''