Kerry, her husband Rob and their nine children, the youngest just 7 months old, rushed to get under the stairwell. Before she, Rob and their two daughters, Tori and Rebekah, could make it, the EF-4 tornado slammed into the house wiping it off of the foundation.
“I mean it hit so fast and was over in like seconds,” Kerry recalled.
Rob, 20-year-old Tori and 14-year-old Rebekah did not survive.
“It was gone. It was just all gone,” Kerry said. “I didn’t know what to do. I had crying children. I had a daughter that was going into shock. I was trying to get my wits about me to figure out what was going on.”
Noah Tittle was just nine years old when the tornado hit.
“I remember waking up and everything was just gone,” Noah said. “I went up to my dad and was shaking him wake up wake up and I realized he was gone.”
Kerry Tittle founded her organization “Refined Family,” and travels the country comforting others who are suffering.
Her son, Asa, wrote a book to help kids understand grief and Noah volunteers as a firefighter at the same station that came to his rescue all those years ago.
“It helps heal knowing that I am doing something that makes a big difference to people like the first responders and the community came and helped me,” Noah said.
Three of the Tittle daughters are now married, and Kerry’s first grandchild is expected any day.
For Kerry, these are moments that bring immense joy but also carry a heavy sadness.
“You feel like they should be here enjoying it with us,” she said.
The concrete slab where their home stood is a permanent marker of the tragedy that April day, but every step forward serves as a gentle reminder of the beauty that blooms through it all.
“That’s our hope, that’s the hope that’s within us,” Kerry said. “The promises that God has given us that this isn’t our home.”
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