Husband, tornado survivor recounts last moments with childhood sweetheart
1:41 p.m. Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Norm Volz came back home on Monday to his Greensburg house that was destroyed on Friday.
As the tornado approached he and his wife huddled in a hallway in the house that had no basement. But then, a huge rusty girder flew through the air and hit Beverly Volz in the head.
"I knew she was hurt bad; but unfortunately, I couldn't do much about it," Norm said.
Beverly was in bad shape. She suffered and bled as she and her husband remained trapped by rubble. His kneecap was broken. He was petrified for his wife.
Greensburg tornado fatalities
A list of the people killed by the Greensburg tornado:
- Robert Tim Buckman, 46, a police officer from nearby Macksville
- Claude Hopkins, 79, of Greensburg
- Larry Hoskins, 51, of Greensburg
- David Lyon, 48, of Greensburg
- Colleen Panzer, 77, of Greensburg
- Ron Rediger, 57, of Greensburg
- Evelyn Kelly, 75, of Greensburg
- Sarah Thackett, 71, of Greensburg
- Beverly Volz, 52, of Greensburg
- Richard J. Fry, 62, of Albuquerque, N.M.
"She said she was hurt. I tried to get her out. I just didn't have the strength. We just talked like a couple would talk after they had been married 30 years," he said.
Beverly was pronounced dead in the hospital.
Norm was able to find his wedding album in the rubble of their home. Bev -- as he calls her -- was 19, and he was 21 when they married in 1973.
As Norm plans Bev's funeral, he is just starting to come to terms with the reality that she's gone.
"She was just like me. She enjoyed work. She was a homebody. She loved to weave, loved to knit, and her yard was her pride and joy."
All over this tiny Southern Kansas town, people were coming to terms with their new realities.
It is not exaggeration. Almost all of this town is gone, but most here are able to count their blessings that their loved ones escaped unscathed.
Norm, who in the midst of all this didn't know what happened to his father, reunited with him on Monday.
As it turns out, the elderly man had gone out of town before the twister came.
The town is now little more than a street-grid, with block after block of rubble where homes used to be. At least 10 people died in the storms.
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