Julie Boyer doesn’t know if she’ll ever watch “The Wizard of Oz” again.
She’s not ready to hear Dorothy shout “It’s a twister!” to Auntie Em, or to see a farmhouse swept up by a cyclone. Boyer is still getting used to the sounds of normal life.
“At first, the sound of the freezer’s ice maker scared me. It sounded like walls cracking before they fell,” said Boyer, a 1997 graduate of Snohomish High School.
Now 28, Boyer lives in Jackson, Tenn., in an apartment across the street from Union University, her college alma mater.
On Feb. 5, she was on campus, in a women’s dorm she visits often as part of her job running a church tutoring program for urban kids. Some of her volunteers were residents of Jelks Women’s Dormitory. For being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Boyer has a miraculous story to tell.
“The whole building came in on us,” she said Friday from Tennessee.
The Union campus was left largely in ruins Feb. 5 by a monster tornado. Part of a storm system that cut a killer swath across Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee, the twister destroyed most dorms on the Union campus. More than 50 people were killed in four states. Amazingly, no lives were lost at Union University, a Christian liberal arts college.
“It was a miracle nobody was killed at Union University,” said Kim Boyer, Julie’s mother, who lives near Snohomish.
Since moving to Jackson, Julie Boyer had experienced other twisters. “My sophomore year, in 1999, a tornado killed nine people,” Boyer said. “That was a wake-up call, for the city and for me.”
Boyer developed a healthy respect for a tornado’s destructive power. She learned the best places to take shelter, and to heed sirens that blare whenever twisters are spotted in Madison County, Tenn., not far from Memphis.
On Feb. 5, those sirens started at about 6:40 p.m. “The tornado hit at 7:01,” Boyer said.
When the warning came, she and the young women she was with made a smart choice. They piled into a bathtub — six of them. Two sat holding their knees. Boyer was jammed in with the others, her legs straight along the tub’s sides.
“If you look at pictures taken after tornadoes, tubs are still together. It’s one of the safest places,” Boyer said.
All that day, there had been forecasts of dangerous weather. The day before was very warm, with no breeze. Sometimes before a tornado, skies turn green or orange, Boyer said. When the twister hit, it was already dark. “There was unbelievable lightning. The hair was standing on the back of your neck,” she said.
Kim Boyer said a resident adviser shouted for Julie Boyer and the others to get to the bathroom. “They all leaped into the tub. Julie was so contorted, her mouth was on her chest. Her teeth were clenched. She knew she wasn’t getting air into her right lung,” her mother said. “She remembers hearing the entire bathroom wall blowing in on them. They heard the second floor as it fell on them, and then a cement wall. It broke the bathtub.”
Julie’s mother said her daughter was struggling for air and trying to pray. Another woman in the tub was telling Julie, “Don’t try to pray, just breathe,” Kim Boyer said.
The storm was quickly gone, but Julie Boyer and her friends were buried for more than 40 minutes under 15 feet of rubble. She couldn’t reach her cell phone, but other trapped students were able to use theirs to call for help.
In an article in The Jackson Sun newspaper, firefighter Bob Layman told of arriving on the scene. “In all the darkness, I saw one flashlight flickering,” Layman said. “We went in that direction and saw people coming down out of the rubble.” He likened the rescue to a big game of pick-up sticks. “You can’t just start taking things off. It’s a process,” Layman told Jackson Sun reporter Tracie Simer.
Layman, a member of the Evangelical Community Church where Julie Boyer runs the urban ministry program, rescued the women from the tub along with his partner, Bob Fluck. According to the newspaper account, Layman recognized Boyer from church as soon as he pulled away the rubble.
Julie Boyer, who majored in Christian and international studies, is back at work, but still feeling the effects of her terrifying ordeal. Tiny pieces of debris are imbedded in her skin and scalp. When she was treated for pain in her ears, bits of drywall were discovered deep inside them. A hairline fracture in her rib is healing. She’s seeing a chiropractor.
Within minutes of her rescue, Julie had called her parents. Kim and Brian Boyer were on a plane by the night of Feb. 5.
“We stayed down there for a week. The first night she slept alone, she slept with the light on. She’s a strong girl, a marathon runner, but her body was so contorted. She’s still in pain,” Kim Boyer said.
Julie Boyer has no thoughts of leaving the place that’s now home.
“I’ve fallen in love with the people of this community,” she said. And she has no doubts, “God had his hand over us.”
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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