Family counts blessings, friends after tornado ravages community

By Derek Spellman
THE JOPLIN GLOBE (JOPLIN, Mo.)

RACINE, Mo. May 15, 2008 10:34 am

— They have found solace in numbers, even though the Peterson family could just as easily have found despair, if they chose to count only what they lost last weekend.
They lost one loved one - Rockie Peterson, 64, the family patriarch and one of 14 lives claimed in Newton County by Saturday’s tornado.
They lost two barns and maybe a house. They lost two Boer goats that they raise for a living. They lost several small goat shelters. They have lost time spent cleaning up property.
But Lori Peterson, Rockie Peterson’s daughter-in-law and business partner, says you can also find strength in the numbers, if you count what you still have.
The growing family still has each other, Lori Peterson said. The tornado that killed Rockie Peterson also could have killed the three people who were with him.
The Petersons still have the rest of their nearly 200 Boer goats. They still have a grain bin. They have 26 days until the American Boer Goat Association’s National Show in Tulsa, which the family has vowed to attend.
And they have lots of friends - who showed up this week to help them rebuild.
Just after he heard what happened to the Peterson family, Bill Ryals and his wife left their own Boer goat farm in Tylertown, Miss., and began the nearly 620-mile journey to Southwest Missouri.
Ryals got to know the Peterson family through the Boer goat industry and national shows. When the Ryals’ farm took a battering from Hurricane Katrina several years ago, the Petersons were among those who helped them clean up, he said.
“I love them,” he said of the family. “They are good people, and they needed help. They still need help.”
Ryals said that while the damage wrought by Katrina was wider in scope than Saturday’s tornado, the individual pockets of devastation in Southwest Missouri were worse.
“It was, I think, a lot worse,” he said.
Ryals said he and his wife were among “a bunch of people” from several states, including Texas and Oklahoma, who came to help the Petersons rebuild. One friend brought a tractor to help push away debris, while others brought supplies that included food, portable generators and chainsaws.
“They are special people,” Ryals said of the Peterson family.
Ryals described Rockie Peterson, the head of the family, as an affable man who was always willing to help someone else.
“He always had a smile on his face,” Ryals said. “He was just a good person.”
The help of friends is part of the coping process, Lori Peterson said.
There is something helpful about being humbled and allowing others to help at a vulnerable time.
“We couldn’t have gotten through it without our friends,” she said.
“You definitely have to count your blessings,” she said as she walked among the remnants of the family farmstead on Wednesday. “If you focus on what you have lost, you’ll get swallowed up.”
The land around Lori Peterson is scarred but slowly healing.
As a portable generator hums outside her home, coils of smoke twist upward from a pile of debris the family is burning. Wess Peterson and his brother are busy gathering downed limbs and brush and feeding them to the flames.
Three operations are actually contained in the Peterson farmsteads northeast of Racine. Two deal in the breeding and sale of goats. The third deals in equipment, such as pens, for goats and small stock.
The needs of the herd have been one source of help to the family, said Jan Smith, a family friend who drove down from Elkland, Mo., to help.
“This is still a working farm,” she said, and the daily rhythm of work have helped the family keep going.
The road that climbs to the Peterson farmsteads is now passable, although downed trees and branches have been piled into hillocks on the roadside. The remains of the barn where Rockie Peterson died have been largely cleared away. The herd is safely ensconced in rebuilt pens.
There were some solemn moments on Wednesday. There were also moments of robust laughter, like when family and friends joked about turning the hole in the roof of Lori and Wess Peterson’s house into a skylight, if it turns out the house is salvageable.
Until his death, Rockie Peterson, his wife and two of the couple’s three children lived in three dwellings around the farm properties. Lori and Wess Peterson live in one of the three. Carine Davis, the daughter of Rockie and Treva Peterson, lives in the third with her husband, Lael.
Of the three houses, the one inhabited by Rockie and Treva is sturdiest.
So when Lori Peterson heard the severe weather approaching early Saturday evening, she and her husband headed for their parents’ house a stone’s throw away. Rockie and Treva Peterson had been out doing chores by the barn between the two houses. Carine Davis and her husband were not at home.
The tornado hit before the four could reach the house, Lori Peterson recalled, and the couples fled into the barn amid roaring winds and whirling debris.
“The movie ‘Twister’ is fairly accurate,” she said when describing conditions.
Just after they were inside, the wind tore the metal door from its hinges and hurled it against Wess Peterson, striking him in the head. Lori and Treva Peterson fell to the ground.
A huge tree then came crashing through the barn and crushed Rockie Peterson, killing him instantly.
The loss has been “devastating”, said Lori Peterson, but the family has tried to push on. She points out that the tornado easily could have killed all four of them.
“It humbles you,” she said of the experience. “It’s like, ‘Well, God still has a plan for me.’”

Derek Spellman writes for The Joplin (Mo.) Globe.

Rockie Peterson
Rockie Peterson was a veteran of the U.S. Army, a a Green Beret during the Vietnam War who went on to spend 30 years as a systems engineer for IBM before he retired in 2006 and operated Petersons’ Farms full time.

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