Repost: The Girl in the Window- Unbeliebably true- definitely not a story to ever be forgotten....

 The following story, no matter how unbelievable it is, is true. It was found on the following URL:
http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/article750838.ece
About this story

St. Petersburg Times reporter Lane DeGregory and Times photographer Melissa Lyttle met Danielle and her new family at their home in February. All of the scenes at their house and in speech therapy were witnessed by the journalists.

The opening scene and others were reconstructed from interviews with neighbors, the detective, Danielle's care manager, psychologist, teacher, legal guardian and the judge on her case. Additional information came from hundreds of pages of police reports, medical records and court documents.

Michelle Crockett was interviewed at home in Plant City.

In June, Danielle's new parents sold their Florida home and moved out of state. Bernie built Dani a treehouse. Last week, she began summer school.


Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
_______________________________________________________

Part One: The Feral Child

PLANT CITY — The family had lived in the rundown rental house for almost three years when someone first saw a child's face in the window.

A little girl, pale, with dark eyes, lifted a dirty blanket above the broken glass and peered out, one neighbor remembered.

Everyone knew a woman lived in the house with her boyfriend and two adult sons. But they had never seen a child there, had never noticed anyone playing in the overgrown yard.

The girl looked young, 5 or 6, and thin. Too thin. Her cheeks seemed sunken; her eyes were lost.

The child stared into the square of sunlight, then slipped away.

Months went by. The face never reappeared.

Just before noon on July 13, 2005, a Plant City police car pulled up outside that shattered window. Two officers went into the house — and one stumbled back out.

Clutching his stomach, the rookie retched in the weeds.

Plant City Detective Mark Holste had been on the force for 18 years when he and his young partner were sent to the house on Old Sydney Road to stand by during a child abuse investigation. Someone had finally called the police.

They found a car parked outside. The driver's door was open and a woman was slumped over in her seat, sobbing. She was an investigator for the Florida Department of Children and Families.

"Unbelievable," she told Holste. "The worst I've ever seen."

The police officers walked through the front door, into a cramped living room.

"I've been in rooms with bodies rotting there for a week and it never stunk that bad," Holste said later. "There's just no way to describe it. Urine and feces — dog, cat and human excrement — smeared on the walls, mashed into the carpet. Everything dank and rotting."

Tattered curtains, yellow with cigarette smoke, dangling from bent metal rods. Cardboard and old comforters stuffed into broken, grimy windows. Trash blanketing the stained couch, the sticky counters.

The floor, walls, even the ceiling seemed to sway beneath legions of scuttling roaches.

"It sounded like you were walking on eggshells. You couldn't take a step without crunching German cockroaches," the detective said. "They were in the lights, in the furniture. Even inside the freezer. The freezer!"

While Holste looked around, a stout woman in a faded housecoat demanded to know what was going on. Yes, she lived there. Yes, those were her two sons in the living room. Her daughter? Well, yes, she had a daughter . . .

The detective strode past her, down a narrow hall. He turned the handle on a door, which opened into a space the size of a walk-in closet. He squinted in the dark.

At his feet, something stirred.

• • •

First he saw the girl's eyes: dark and wide, unfocused, unblinking. She wasn't looking at him so much as through him.

She lay on a torn, moldy mattress on the floor. She was curled on her side, long legs tucked into her emaciated chest. Her ribs and collarbone jutted out; one skinny arm was slung over her face; her black hair was matted, crawling with lice. Insect bites, rashes and sores pocked her skin. Though she looked old enough to be in school, she was naked — except for a swollen diaper.

"The pile of dirty diapers in that room must have been 4 feet high," the detective said. "The glass in the window had been broken, and that child was just lying there, surrounded by her own excrement and bugs."

When he bent to lift her, she yelped like a lamb. "It felt like I was picking up a baby," Holste said. "I put her over my shoulder, and that diaper started leaking down my leg."

The girl didn't struggle. Holste asked, What's your name, honey? The girl didn't seem to hear.

He searched for clothes to dress her, but found only balled-up laundry, flecked with feces. He looked for a toy, a doll, a stuffed animal. "But the only ones I found were covered in maggots and roaches."

Choking back rage, he approached the mother. How could you let this happen?

"The mother's statement was: 'I'm doing the best I can,' " the detective said. "I told her, 'The best you can sucks!' "

He wanted to arrest the woman right then, but when he called his boss he was told to let DCF do its own investigation.

So the detective carried the girl down the dim hall, past her brothers, past her mother in the doorway, who was shrieking, "Don't take my baby!" He buckled the child into the state investigator's car. The investigator agreed: They had to get the girl out of there.

"Radio ahead to Tampa General," the detective remembers telling his partner. "If this child doesn't get to a hospital, she's not going to make it."

• • •

Her name, her mother had said, was Danielle. She was almost 7 years old.

She weighed 46 pounds. She was malnourished and anemic. In the pediatric intensive care unit they tried to feed the girl, but she couldn't chew or swallow solid food. So they put her on an IV and let her drink from a bottle.

Aides bathed her, scrubbed the sores on her face, trimmed her torn fingernails. They had to cut her tangled hair before they could comb out the lice.

Her caseworker determined that she had never been to school, never seen a doctor. She didn't know how to hold a doll, didn't understand peek-a-boo. "Due to the severe neglect," a doctor would write, "the child will be disabled for the rest of her life."

Hunched in an oversized crib, Danielle curled in on herself like a potato bug, then writhed angrily, kicking and thrashing. To calm herself, she batted at her toes and sucked her fists. "Like an infant," one doctor wrote.

She wouldn't make eye contact. She didn't react to heat or cold — or pain. The insertion of an IV needle elicited no reaction. She never cried. With a nurse holding her hands, she could stand and walk sideways on her toes, like a crab. She couldn't talk, didn't know how to nod yes or no. Once in a while she grunted.

She couldn't tell anyone what had happened, what was wrong, what hurt.

Dr. Kathleen Armstrong, director of pediatric psychology at the University of South Florida medical school, was the first psychologist to examine Danielle. She said medical tests, brain scans, and vision, hearing and genetics checks found nothing wrong with the child. She wasn't deaf, wasn't autistic, had no physical ailments such as cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy.

The doctors and social workers had no way of knowing all that had happened to Danielle. But the scene at the house, along with Danielle's almost comatose condition, led them to believe she had never been cared for beyond basic sustenance. Hard as it was to imagine, they doubted she had ever been taken out in the sun, sung to sleep, even hugged or held. She was fragile and beautiful, but whatever makes a person human seemed somehow missing.

Armstrong called the girl's condition "environmental autism." Danielle had been deprived of interaction for so long, the doctor believed, that she had withdrawn into herself.

The most extraordinary thing about Danielle, Armstrong said, was her lack of engagement with people, with anything. "There was no light in her eye, no response or recognition. . . . We saw a little girl who didn't even respond to hugs or affection. Even a child with the most severe autism responds to those."

Danielle's was "the most outrageous case of neglect I've ever seen."

• • •

The authorities had discovered the rarest and most pitiable of creatures: a feral child.

The term is not a diagnosis. It comes from historic accounts — some fictional, some true — of children raised by animals and therefore not exposed to human nurturing. Wolf boys and bird girls, Tarzan, Mowgli from The Jungle Book.

It's said that during the Holy Roman Empire, Frederick II gave a group of infants to some nuns. He told them to take care of the children but never to speak to them. He believed the babies would eventually reveal the true language of God. Instead, they died from the lack of interaction.

Then there was the Wild Boy of Aveyron, who wandered out of the woods near Paris in 1800, naked and grunting. He was about 12. A teacher took him in and named him Victor. He tried to socialize the child, teach him to talk. But after several years, he gave up on the teen and asked the housekeeper to care for him.

"In the first five years of life, 85 percent of the brain is developed," said Armstrong, the psychologist who examined Danielle. "Those early relationships, more than anything else, help wire the brain and provide children with the experience to trust, to develop language, to communicate. They need that system to relate to the world."

The importance of nurturing has been shown again and again. In the 1960s, psychologist Harry Harlow put groups of infant rhesus monkeys in a room with two artificial mothers. One, made of wire, dispensed food. The other, of terrycloth, extended cradled arms. Though they were starving, the baby monkeys all climbed into the warm cloth arms.

"Primates need comfort even more than they need food," Armstrong said.

The most recent case of a feral child was in 1970, in California. A girl whom therapists came to call Genie had been strapped to a potty chair until she was 13. Like the Wild Boy, Genie was studied in hospitals and laboratories. She was in her 20s when doctors realized she'd never talk, never be able to take care of herself. She ended up in foster care, closed off from the world, utterly dependent.

Danielle's case — which unfolded out of the public spotlight, without a word in the media — raised disturbing questions for everyone trying to help her. How could this have happened? What kind of mother would sit by year after year while her daughter languished in her own filth, starving and crawling with bugs?

And why hadn't someone intervened? The neighbors, the authorities — where had they been?

"It's mind-boggling that in the 21st century we can still have a child who's just left in a room like a gerbil," said Tracy Sheehan, Danielle's guardian in the legal system and now a circuit court judge. "No food. No one talking to her or reading her a story. She can't even use her hands. How could this child be so invisible?"

But the most pressing questions were about her future.

When Danielle was discovered, she was younger by six years than the Wild Boy or Genie, giving hope that she might yet be teachable. Many of her caregivers had high hopes they could make her whole.

Danielle had probably missed the chance to learn speech, but maybe she could come to understand language, to communicate in other ways.

Still, doctors had only the most modest ambitions for her.

"My hope was that she would be able to sleep through the night, to be out of diapers and to feed herself," Armstrong said. If things went really well, she said, Danielle would end up "in a nice nursing home."

• • •

Danielle spent six weeks at Tampa General before she was well enough to leave. But where could she go? Not home; Judge Martha Cook, who oversaw her dependency hearing, ordered that Danielle be placed in foster care and that her mother not be allowed to call or visit her. The mother was being investigated on criminal child abuse charges.

"That child, she broke my heart," Cook said later. "We were so distraught over her condition, we agonized over what to do."

Eventually, Danielle was placed in a group home in Land O'Lakes. She had a bed with sheets and a pillow, clothes and food, and someone at least to change her diapers.

In October 2005, a couple of weeks after she turned 7, Danielle started school for the first time. She was placed in a special ed class at Sanders Elementary.

"Her behavior was different than any child I'd ever seen," said Kevin O'Keefe, Danielle's first teacher. "If you put food anywhere near her, she'd grab it" and mouth it like a baby, he said. "She had a lot of episodes of great agitation, yelling, flailing her arms, rolling into a fetal position. She'd curl up in a closet, just to be away from everyone. She didn't know how to climb a slide or swing on a swing. She didn't want to be touched."

It took her a year just to become consolable, he said.

By Thanksgiving 2006 — a year and a half after Danielle had gone into foster care — her caseworker was thinking about finding her a permanent home.

A nursing home, group home or medical foster care facility could take care of Danielle. But she needed more.

"In my entire career with the child welfare system, I don't ever remember a child like Danielle," said Luanne Panacek, executive director of the Children's Board of Hillsborough County. "It makes you think about what does quality of life mean? What's the best we can hope for her? After all she's been through, is it just being safe?"

That fall, Panacek decided to include Danielle in the Heart Gallery — a set of portraits depicting children available for adoption. The Children's Board displays the pictures in malls and on the Internet in hopes that people will fall in love with the children and take them home.

In Hillsborough alone, 600 kids are available for adoption. Who, Panacek wondered, would choose an 8-year-old who was still in diapers, who didn't know her own name and might not ever speak or let you hug her?

• • •

The day Danielle was supposed to have her picture taken for the Heart Gallery, she showed up with red Kool-Aid dribbled down her new blouse. She hadn't yet mastered a sippy cup.

Garet White, Danielle's care manager, scrubbed the girl's shirt and washed her face. She brushed Danielle's bangs from her forehead and begged the photographer to please be patient.

White stepped behind the photographer and waved at Danielle. She put her thumbs in her ears and wiggled her hands, stuck out her tongue and rolled her eyes. Danielle didn't even blink.

White was about to give up when she heard a sound she'd never heard from Danielle. The child's eyes were still dull, apparently unseeing. But her mouth was open. She looked like she was trying to laugh.

Click.


Part Two: Becoming Dani

Teenagers tore through the arcade, firing fake rifles. Sweaty boys hunched over air hockey tables. Girls squealed as they stomped on blinking squares.

Bernie and Diane Lierow remember standing silently inside GameWorks in Tampa, overwhelmed. They had driven three hours from their home in Fort Myers Beach, hoping to meet a child at this foster care event.

But all these kids seemed too wild, too big and, well, too worldly.

Bernie, 48, remodels houses. Diane, 45, cleans homes. They have four grown sons from previous marriages and one together. Diane couldn't have any more children, and Bernie had always wanted a daughter. So last year, when William was 9, they decided to adopt.

Their new daughter would have to be younger than William, they told foster workers. But she would have to be potty-trained and able to feed herself. They didn't want a child who might hurt their son, or who was profoundly disabled and unable to take care of herself.

On the Internet they had found a girl in Texas, another in Georgia. Each time they were told, "That one is dangerous. She can't be with other children."

That's why they were at this Heart Gallery gathering, scanning the crowd.

Bernie's head ached from all the jangling games; Diane's stomach hurt, seeing all the abandoned kids; and William was tired of shooting aliens.

Diane stepped out of the chaos, into an alcove beneath the stairs. That was when she saw it. A little girl's face on a flier, pale with sunken cheeks and dark hair chopped too short. Her brown eyes seemed to be searching for something.

Diane called Bernie over. He saw the same thing she did. "She just looked like she needed us."

• • •

Bernie and Diane are humble, unpretentious people who would rather picnic on their deck than eat out. They go to work, go to church, visit with their neighbors, walk their dogs. They don't travel or pursue exotic interests; a vacation for them is hanging out at home with the family. Shy and soft-spoken, they're both slow to anger and, they say, seldom argue.

They had everything they ever wanted, they said. Except for a daughter.

But the more they asked about Danielle, the more they didn't want to know.

She was 8, but functioned as a 2-year-old. She had been left alone in a dank room, ignored for most of her life.

No, she wasn't there at the video arcade; she was in a group home. She wore diapers, couldn't feed herself, couldn't talk. After more than a year in school, she still wouldn't make eye contact or play with other kids.

No one knew, really, what was wrong with her, or what she might be capable of.

"She was everything we didn't want," Bernie said.

But they couldn't forget those aching eyes.

• • •

When they met Danielle at her school, she was drooling. Her tongue hung from her mouth. Her head, which seemed too big for her thin neck, lolled side to side.

She looked at them for an instant, then loped away across the special ed classroom. She rolled onto her back, rocked for a while, then batted at her toes.

Diane walked over and spoke to her softly. Danielle didn't seem to notice. But when Bernie bent down, Danielle turned toward him and her eyes seemed to focus.

He held out his hand. She let him pull her to her feet. Danielle's teacher, Kevin O'Keefe, was amazed; he hadn't seen her warm up to anyone so quickly.

Bernie led Danielle to the playground, she pulling sideways and prancing on her tiptoes. She squinted in the sunlight but let him push her gently on the swing. When it was time for them to part, Bernie swore he saw Danielle wave.

That night, he had a dream. Two giant hands slid through his bedroom ceiling, the fingers laced together. Danielle was swinging on those hands, her dark eyes wide, thin arms reaching for him.

• • •

Everyone told them not to do it, neighbors, co-workers, friends. Everyone said they didn't know what they were getting into.

So what if Danielle is not everything we hoped for? Bernie and Diane answered. You can't pre-order your own kids. You take what God gives you.

They brought her home on Easter weekend 2007. It was supposed to be a rebirth, of sorts — a baptism into their family.

"It was a disaster," Bernie said.

They gave her a doll; she bit off its hands. They took her to the beach; she screamed and wouldn't put her feet in the sand. Back at her new home, she tore from room to room, her swim diaper spewing streams across the carpet.

She couldn't peel the wrapper from a chocolate egg, so she ate the shiny paper too. She couldn't sit still to watch TV or look at a book. She couldn't hold a crayon. When they tried to brush her teeth or comb her hair, she kicked and thrashed. She wouldn't lie in a bed, wouldn't go to sleep, just rolled on her back, side to side, for hours.

All night she kept popping up, creeping sideways on her toes into the kitchen. She would pull out the frozen food drawer and stand on the bags of vegetables so she could see into the refrigerator.

"She wouldn't take anything," Bernie said. "I guess she wanted to make sure the food was still there."

When Bernie tried to guide her back to bed, Danielle railed against him and bit her own hands.

In time, Danielle's new family learned what worked and what didn't. Her foster family had been giving her anti-psychotic drugs to mitigate her temper tantrums and help her sleep. When Bernie and Diane weaned her off the medication, she stopped drooling and started holding up her head. She let Bernie brush her teeth.

• • •

Bernie and Diane already thought of Danielle as their daughter, but legally she wasn't. Danielle's birth mother did not want to give her up even though she had been charged with child abuse and faced 20 years in prison. So prosecutors offered a deal: If she waived her parental rights, they wouldn't send her to jail.

She took the plea. She was given two years of house arrest, plus probation. And 100 hours of community service.

In October 2007, Bernie and Diane officially adopted Danielle. They call her Dani.

• • •

"Okay, let's put your shoes on. Do you need to go potty again?" Diane asks.

It's an overcast Monday morning in spring 2008 and Dani is late for school. Again. She keeps flitting around the living room, ducking behind chairs and sofas, pulling at her shorts.

After a year with her new family, Dani scarcely resembles the girl in the Heart Gallery photo. She has grown a foot and her weight has doubled.

All those years she was kept inside, her hair was as dark as the dirty room she lived in. But since she started going to the beach and swimming in their backyard pool, Dani's shoulder-length hair has turned a golden blond. She still shrieks when anyone tries to brush it.

The changes in her behavior are subtle, but Bernie and Diane see progress. They give an example: When Dani feels overwhelmed she retreats to her room, rolls onto her back, pulls one sock toward the end of her toes and bats it. For hours. Bernie and Diane tell her to stop.

Now, when Dani hears them coming, she peels off her sock and throws it into the closet to hide it.

She's learning right from wrong, they say. And she seems upset when she knows she has disappointed them. As if she cares how they feel.

Bernie and Diane were told to put Dani in school with profoundly disabled children, but they insisted on different classes because they believe she can do more. They take her to occupational and physical therapy, to church and the mall and the grocery store. They have her in speech classes and horseback riding lessons.

Once, when Dani was trying to climb onto her horse, the mother of a boy in the therapeutic class turned to Diane.

"You're so lucky," Diane remembers the woman saying.

"Lucky?" Diane asked.

The woman nodded. "I know my son will never stand on his own, will never be able to climb onto a horse. You have no idea what your daughter might be able to do."

Diane finds hope in that idea. She counts small steps to convince herself things are slowly improving. So what if Dani steals food off other people's trays at McDonald's? At least she can feed herself chicken nuggets now. So what if she already has been to the bathroom four times this morning? She's finally out of diapers.

It took months, but they taught her to hold a stuffed teddy on the toilet so she wouldn't be scared to be alone in the bathroom. They bribed her with M&M's.

"Dani, sit down and try to use the potty," Diane coaxes. "Pull down your shorts. That's a good girl."

• • •

Every weekday, for half an hour, speech therapist Leslie Goldenberg tries to teach Dani to talk. She sits her in front of a mirror at a Bonita Springs elementary school and shows her how to purse her lips to make puffing sounds.

"Puh-puh-puh," says the teacher. "Here, feel my mouth." She brings Dani's fingers to her lips, so she can feel the air.

Dani nods. She knows how to nod now. Goldenberg puffs again.

Leaning close to the mirror, Dani purses her lips, opens and closes them. No sound comes out. She can imitate the movement, but doesn't know she has to blow out air to make the noise.

She bends closer, scowls at her reflection. Her lips open and close again, then she leaps up and runs across the room. She grabs a Koosh ball and bounces it rapidly.

She's lost inside herself. Again.

But in many ways, Dani already has surpassed the teacher's expectations, and not just in terms of speech. She seems to be learning to listen, and she understands simple commands. She pulls at her pants to show she needs to go to the bathroom, taps a juice box when she wants more. She can sit at a table for five-minute stretches, and she's starting to scoop applesauce with a spoon. She's down to just a few temper tantrums a month. She is learning to push buttons on a speaking board, to use symbols to show when she wants a book or when she's angry. She's learning it's okay to be angry: You can deal with those feelings without biting your own hands.

"I'd like her to at least be able to master a sound board, so she can communicate her choices even if she never finds her voice," Goldenberg says. "I think she understands most of what we say. It's just that she doesn't always know how to — or want to — react."

Dani's teacher and family have heard her say only a few words, and all of them seemed accidental. Once she blurted "baaa," startling Goldenberg to tears. It was the first letter sound she had ever made.

She seems to talk most often when William is tickling her, as if something from her subconscious seeps out when she's too distracted to shut it off. Her brother has heard her say, "Stop!" and "No!" He thought he even heard her say his name.

Having a brother just one year older is invaluable for Dani's development, her teacher says. She has someone to practice language with, someone who will listen. "Even deaf infants will coo," Goldenberg said. "But if no one responds, they stop."

• • •

William says Dani frightened him at first. "She did weird things." But he always wanted someone to play with. He doesn't care that she can't ride bikes with him or play Monopoly. "I drive her around in my Jeep and she honks the horn," he says. "She's learning to match up cards and stuff."

He couldn't believe she had never walked a dog or licked an ice cream cone. He taught her how to play peek-a-boo, helped her squish Play-Doh through her fingers. He showed her it was safe to walk on sand and fun to blow bubbles and okay to cry; when you hurt, someone comes. He taught her how to open a present. How to pick up tater tots and dunk them into a mountain of ketchup.

William was used to living like an only child, but since Dani has moved in, she gets most of their parents' attention. "She needs them more than me," he says simply.

He gave her his old toys, his "kid movies," his board books. He even moved out of his bedroom so she could sleep upstairs. His parents painted his old walls pink and filled the closet with cotton-candy dresses.

They moved a daybed into the laundry room for William, squeezed it between the washing machine and Dani's rocking horse. Each night, the 10-year-old boy cuddles up with a walkie-talkie because "it's scary down here, all alone."

After a few minutes, while his parents are trying to get Dani to bed, William always sneaks into the living room and folds himself into the love seat.

He trades his walkie-talkie for a small stuffed Dalmatian and calls down the hall, "Good night, Mom and Dad. Good night, Dani."

Some day, he's sure, she will answer.

• • •

Even now, Dani won't sleep in a bed.

Bernie bought her a new trundle so she can slide out the bottom bunk and be at floor level. Diane found pink Hello Kitty sheets and a stuffed glow worm so Dani will never again be alone in the dark.

"You got your wormie? You ready to go to sleep?" Bernie asks, bending to pick up his daughter. She's turning slow circles beneath the window, holding her worm by his tail. Bernie lifts her to the glass and shows her the sun, slipping behind the neighbor's house.

He hopes, one day, she might be able to call him "Daddy," to get married or at least live on her own. But if that doesn't happen, he says, "That's okay too. For me, it's all about getting the kisses and the hugs."

For now, Bernie and Diane are content to give Dani what she never had before: comfort and stability, attention and affection. A trundle, a glow worm.

Now Bernie tips Dani into bed, smooths her golden hair across the pillow. "Night-night," he says, kissing her forehead.

"Good night, honey," Diane calls from the doorway.

Bernie lowers the shade. As he walks past Dani, she reaches out and grabs his ankles.


Part Three: The Mother

She's out there somewhere, looming over Danielle's story like a ghost. To Bernie and Diane, Danielle's birth mother is a cipher, almost never spoken of. The less said, the better. As far as they are concerned Danielle was born the day they found her. And yet this unimaginable woman is out there somewhere, most likely still on probation, permanently unburdened of her daughter, and thinking — what? What can she possibly say? Nothing. Not a thing. But none of this makes any sense without her.

Michelle Crockett lives in a mobile home in Plant City with her two 20-something sons, three cats and a closet full of kittens. The trailer is just down the road from the little house where she lived with Danielle.

On a steamy afternoon a few weeks ago, Michelle opens the door wearing a long T-shirt. When she sees two strangers, she ducks inside and pulls on a housecoat. She's tall and stout, with broad shoulders and the sallow skin of a smoker. She looks tired, older than her 51 years.

"My daughter?" she asks. "You want to talk about my daughter?" Her voice catches. Tears pool in her glasses.

The inside of the trailer is modest but clean: dishes drying on the counter, silk flowers on the table. Sitting in her kitchen, chain-smoking 305s, she starts at the end: the day the detective took Danielle.

"Part of me died that day," she says.

• • •

Michelle says she was a student at the University of Tampa when she met a man named Bernie at a bar. It was 1976. He was a Vietnam vet, 10 years her senior. They got married and moved to Las Vegas, where he drove a taxi.

Right away they had two sons, Bernard and Grant. The younger boy wasn't potty-trained until he was 4, didn't talk until he was 5. "He was sort of slow," Michelle says. In school, they put him in special ed.

Her sons were teenagers when her husband got sick. Agent Orange, the doctors said. When he died in August 1997, Michelle filed for bankruptcy.

Six months later, she met a man in a casino. He was in Vegas on business. She went back to his hotel room with him.

"His name was Ron," she says. She shakes her head. "No, it was Bob. I think it was Bob."

• • •

For hours Michelle Crockett spins out her story, tapping ashes into a plastic ashtray. Everything she says sounds like a plea, but for what? Understanding? Sympathy? She doesn't apologize. Far from it. She feels wronged.

Danielle, she says, was born in a hospital in Las Vegas, a healthy baby who weighed 7 pounds, 6 ounces. Her Apgar score measuring her health was a 9, nearly perfect.

"She screamed a lot," Michelle says. "I just thought she was spoiled."

When Danielle was 18 months old, Michelle's mobile home burned down, so she loaded her two sons and baby daughter onto a Greyhound bus and headed to Florida, to bunk with a cousin.

They lost their suitcases along the way, she says. The cousin couldn't take the kids. After a week, Michelle moved into a Brandon apartment with no furniture, no clothes, no dishes. She got hired as a cashier at Publix. But it was okay: “The boys were with her,” she says. She says she has the paperwork to prove it.

• • •

She goes to the boys’ bathroom, returns with a box full of documents and hands it over.

The earliest documents are from Feb. 11, 2002. That was when someone called the child abuse hotline on her. The caller reported that a child, about 3, was “left unattended for days with a retarded older brother, never seen wearing anything but a diaper.”

This is Michelle’s proof that her sons were watching Danielle.

The caller continued:

“The home is filthy. There are clothes everywhere. There are feces on the child’s seat and the counter is covered with trash.”

It’s not clear what investigators found at the house, but they left Danielle with her mother that day.

Nine months later, another call to authorities. A person who knew Michelle from the Moose Lodge said she was always there playing bingo with her new boyfriend, leaving her children alone overnight.

“Not fit to be a mother,” the caller said.

The hotline operator took these notes: The 4-year-old girl “is still wearing a diaper and drinking from a baby bottle. On-going situation, worse since last August. Mom leaves Grant and Danielle at home for several days in a row while she goes to work and spends the night with a new paramour. Danielle . . . is never seen outside the home.”

Again the child abuse investigators went out. They offered Michelle free day care for Danielle. She refused. And they left Danielle there.

Why? Didn’t they worry about two separate calls to the hotline, months apart, citing the same concerns?

“It’s not automatic that because the home is dirty we’d remove the child,” said Nick Cox, regional director of the Florida Department of Children and Families. “And what they found in 2002 was not like the scene they walked into in 2005.”

The aim, he said, is to keep the child with the parent, and try to help the parent get whatever services he or she might need. But Michelle refused help. And investigators might have felt they didn’t have enough evidence to take Danielle, Cox said.

“I’m concerned, though, that no effort was made to interview the child,” he said.

“If you have a 4-year-old who is unable to speak, that would raise a red flag to me. “I’m not going to tell you this was okay. I don’t know how it could have happened.”

• • •

Michelle insists Danielle was fine.

“I tried to potty-train her, she wouldn’t train. I tried to get her into schools, no one would take her,” she says in the kitchen of her trailer. The only thing she ever noticed was wrong, she says, “was that she didn’t speak much. She talked in a soft tone. She’d say, ‘Let’s go eat.’ But no one could hear her except me.”

She says she took Danielle to the library and the park. “I took her out for pizza. Once.” But she can’t remember which library, which park or where they went for pizza.

“She liked this song I’d sing her,” Michelle says. “Miss Polly had a dolly, she was sick, sick, sick . . .”

Michelle’s older son, Bernard, told a judge that he once asked his mom why she never took Danielle to the doctor. Something’s wrong with her, he remembered telling her. He said she answered, “If they see her, they might take her away.”

• • •

A few months after the second abuse call, Michelle and her kids moved in with her boyfriend in the rundown rental house in Plant City. The day the cops came, Michelle says, she didn’t know what was wrong.

The detective found Danielle in the back, sleeping. The only window in the small space was broken. Michelle had tacked a blanket across the shattered glass, but flies and beetles and roaches had crept in anyway.

“My house was a mess,” she says. “I’d been sick and it got away from me. But I never knew a dirty house was against the law.”

The cop walked past her, carrying Danielle.

“He said she was starving. I told him me and my sisters were all skinny till we were 13.

“I begged him, ‘Please, don’t take my baby! Please!’ ”

She says she put socks on her daughter before he took her to the car, but couldn’t find any shoes.

• • •

A judge ordered Michelle to have a psychological evaluation. That’s among the documents, too.

Danielle’s IQ, the report says, is below 50, indicating “severe mental retardation.” Michelle’s is 77, “borderline range of intellectual ability.”

“She tended to blame her difficulties on circumstances while rationalizing her own actions,” wrote psychologist Richard Enrico Spana. She “is more concerned with herself than most other adults, and this could lead her to neglect paying adequate attention to people around her.”

She wanted to fight for her daughter, she says, but didn’t want to go to jail and didn’t have enough money for a lawyer.

“I tried to get people to help me,” Michelle says. “They say I made her autistic. But how do you make a kid autistic? They say I didn’t put clothes on her — but she just tore them off.”

After Danielle was taken away, Michelle says, she tripped over a box at Wal-Mart and got in a car accident and couldn’t work anymore. In February, she went back to court and a judge waived her community service hours.

She’s on probation until 2012.

She spends her days with her sons, doing crossword puzzles and watching movies. Sometimes they talk about Danielle.

• • •

When Danielle was in the hospital, Michelle says, she and her sons sneaked in to see her. Michelle took a picture from the file: Danielle, drowning in a hospital gown, slumped in a bed that folded into a wheelchair.

“That’s the last picture I have of her,” Michelle says. In her kitchen, she snubs out her cigarette. She crosses to the living room, where Danielle’s image looks down from the wall.

She reaches up and, with her finger, traces her daughter’s face. “When I moved here,” she says, “that was the first thing I hung.”

She says she misses Danielle.

“Have you seen her?” Michelle asks. “Is she okay?”

• • •

Is she okay?

Danielle is better than anyone dared hope. She has learned to look at people and let herself be held. She can chew ham. She can swim. She’s tall and blond and has a little belly. She knows her name is Dani.

In her new room, she has a window she can look out of. When she wants to see outside, all she has to do is raise her arms and her dad is right behind her, waiting to pick her up.

Rye Cove Virginia's 1929 Tornado

Various accounts of the 1929 tornado that struck Rye Cove Virginia deep in Appalachia and took 13 lives.
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School Ripped Apart In Twinkling of Eye

Rye Cove, Va., May 3 (AP) – Grief stricken parents searched the debris of the Rye Cove Consolidated school today, fearful of finding additional victims of the tornado that yesterday claimed the lives of 12 children and one teacher in the greatest disaster ever known to this Western Virginia mountain village.
Several children were reported missing early today, and because of the wide area from which the school drew its students, no complete check was possible.
Caught without warning as they were re-entering the two story frame school house after the noon recess, some of the children were blown 100 yards and others buried in the wreckage when the building was demolished by the storm.
Great confusion followed the tornado. Anxious fathers worked feverishly in the ruins, their anxiety for the safety of their offspring was intensified because many injured children had been hurriedly taken to hospitals, before the parents arrived.
MRS. MARY DARNELL, mother of two girls, could not learn the fate of her children for more than four hours after the storm. She broke down when told that one of the children, BERTHA MAE DARNELL, was dead and the other, HATTIE could not be found.
The body of MISS AVA CARTER, a teacher, was found 75 yards from the school. The body of POLLY CARTER, 14, was carried 50 yards.
A. S. NOBLIN, principal of the school, estimated that about 155 pupils were in attendance, in addition to the eight teachers. NOBLIN lost consciousness when hurled to the ground by the wind but was not seriously injured.
About 15 children, the most seriously injured, were taken in ambulances to Bristol and Kingsport while others were sent by automobiles, trucks and wagons to the nearest railroad station at Clinchport where a train was converted into a movable hospital to take them to Bristol. Twenty-seven children were transported to Bristol on this train.
The scene on the train was pathetic, many small boys and girls suffered in silence and bore with stoical calm their broken arms and legs. Some feebly attempted to carry on conversations with their attendants and one small girl fainted from the pain of a broken leg when placed in an ambulance. Identification tags were pinned to the children.
The Red Cross had taken over relief work today and the unit at Bristol was being reinforced from Washington and Cincinnati. Tetanus anti-toxin sent from Knoxville and nearby cities was administered to those suffering from laceration. All available physicians and nurses at Bristol and Kingsport were called into service. The list of known dead at Rye Cove follows:
CALLIE BISHOP, 10 years old, Rye Cove.
MONNIE BISHOP, 8 years old, Rye Cove.
AVA CARTER, teacher, 24 years old, Rye Cove.
JAMES CARTER, 12 years old, Rye Cove.
POLLY CARTER, 18 years old, Rye Cove.
LILLIE LEE CARTER, 12 years old, Clinchport.
BRUCE COX, 16 years old, Gate City.
BERTHA MAE DARNELL, 15 years old, Rye Cove.
GUY DAVIDSON, 18 years old, Rye Cove.
BERNICE FLETCHER, 8 years old, Rye Cove.
MONNIE FLETCHER, 14 years old, Rye Cove.
EMMA LANE, 6 years old, Rye Cove.
MILLIE STONE, 12 years old, Rye Cove.

The Syracuse Herald New York 1929-05-03
__________________

Researched and Transcribed by Stu Beitler.
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The Rye Cove Cyclone is the deadliest tornado in Virginia history. Part of an unusual outbreak of tornadoes across the eastern United States on May 2, 1929, it hit the Rye Cove School in the Appalachian highlands of Scott County in the southwestern part of the state, killing twelve students and one teacher and injuring fifty-four. Tornadoes also hit two school houses in Bath County later that day, but both schools had already dismissed students for the day. Scott County native A. P. Carter, of the singing group the Carter Family, volunteered to help in the wake of the tragedy, and the group recorded "The Cyclone of Rye Cove" later that year. The school's 1929–1930 term was canceled, and a memorial school dedicated in 1930.

The unusually violent storm roared up the narrow valley and struck the Rye Cove community at one o'clock in the afternoon on May 2, 1929. The schoolhouse, a seven-room, two-story building, was directly in its path. The principal, Floyd Noblin, told a reporter for the Scott County Herald-Virginian that it all happened without warning. "I was walking through the hall when I saw what looked like a whirlwind coming up the hollow," Noblin said. "Trees were swaying. As it neared the school building it became a black cloud … I think I yelled. It struck the building. The next thing I remembered I was standing knee deep in a pond 75 feet from where the building stood before it was demolished."


Title: Ruins of Rye Cove
School
Source: the Library of Virginia
More information
The cyclone hit just after the midday recess, and more than 150 students and teachers were inside. The wooden building was completely destroyed. The storm uprooted trees, lifted the roofs from buildings, destroyed a spring house and a flour mill, and emptied J. B. Stone's store—located just down the street from the school—of its contents, sweeping the shelves clean of groceries, tools, thread, and candy. A lumber pile near the school was picked up by the wind, and furniture from a nearby house was blown four miles away. Debris was scattered over an area a quarter-mile wide and more than three miles long. William D. Smith, the superintendent of Scott County schools, arrived at Rye Cove an hour after the twister struck. He soon discovered that the only copy of the roll of the school had been destroyed, so there was no systematic way to account for the missing, injured, and dead students as the rain fell and frantic parents arrived at the school.

High school teacher Elizabeth Richmond told the Kingsport Times that "the building collapsed with a smash" just a few seconds after the wind started to howl. There was no opportunity to take cover. Afterward, those who were able carried the dead and injured to nearby houses and barns, but the wind and rain made their task a difficult one. Twelve students, ranging in age from six to eighteen, were killed, along with one instructor, Mary Ava Carter, a twenty-four-year-old first-grade teacher and a recent graduate of Radford State Teachers College. Her body was found seventy-five yards from the school.

After the disaster, a relief train took some of the injured to Clinchport for treatment. Others were taken by ambulance to Bristol and Kingsport, Tennessee. The road out of Rye Cove was narrow and twisting, and only partly paved, so getting survivors out and relief workers in was difficult. Among those who rushed to Rye Cove to help was Scott County native A. P. Carter, a member of the country music trio the Carter Family and a prolific songwriter. He was in the next valley on the day of the storm. Carter was touched by the horror of what he saw and soon composed a song, "The Cyclone of Rye Cove." The Carter Family recorded the tune that same year for RCA Victor.

The Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction for 1928–1929 included a few facts about the school: fifty students were enrolled in the high school (twenty-eight boys, twenty-two girls; six of the graduating seniors went to college). There were three high school teachers, with an average monthly salary of $123. One hundred students were enrolled in the elementary grades, and there were four elementary school teachers, with an average monthly salary of $70. There were three hundred books in the school library. The rest of the columns in the report for that year are blank, except for the words, "School and records destroyed by storm." The State Department of Education dispatched a photographer a week after the cyclone to document the school's destruction. The Rye Cove Memorial High School opened in the autumn of 1930, and a memorial plaque naming the thirteen storm victims was placed on the building.
Time Line
May 2, 1929 - The Rye Cove Cyclone strikes the Rye Cove School in the Appalachian highlands of Scott County, killing twelve students and one teacher and injuring fifty-four. As a result, the school's 1929–1930 term is canceled. Later that year, the singing trio the Carter Family will record "The Cyclone of Rye Cove" for RCA Victor.
Autumn 1930 - The Rye Cove Memorial High School opens. A memorial plaque naming the thirteen storm victims is placed on the building.
Further Reading
Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the Commonwealth of Virginia, School Year 1928–1929. Richmond, Va.: State Board of Education, 1929.
Addington, Robert M. History of Scott County, Virginia. Kingsport, Tenn.: Kingsport Press, 1932.
"19 Children Killed as Virginia School is Ripped to Debris by Cyclonic Storm," The Washington Post, May 3, 1929.
"Red Cross Starts Relief at Rye Cove," The Washington Post, May 5, 1929.
"History Proves Tornadoes Can Hit Here," The Roanoke Times, May 3, 2006.

Contributed by Jennifer Davis McDaid, a local records appraisal archivist at the Library of Virginia and deputy coordinator of the State Historical Records Advisory Board.
Encyclopedia Virginia- Rye Cove Story

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There was no warning. One minute the trees near Rye Cove Consolidated School swayed violently -- the next, the two-story wooden school house disappeared in a cloud of debris. Today, over 70 years later, when the sky darkens and a storm threatens, parents habitually appear at both Rye Cove schools to collect their children and whisk them home to safety. They are determined that such a disaster will never happen again.


The saga of the Rye Cove tornado began on May 2, 1929. The day dawned unseasonably cool. A light rain fell. In the morning students shivered at their desks. Rye Cove Consolidated School had no central heating so individual coal-fired pot-bellied stoves were lit to beat the unseasonable chill. There was no electricity either so carbide lamps -- much like miner’s lamps -- hung at the windows to provide light.



Now it was almost one p.m. Principal A.S. Noblin hurried back to the school from his boarding house. He was apprehensive. A bad storm was roaring up the valley at his back. He had just reached the front door when his school began to splinter around him.


On a nearby mountainside, J.M. Johnson was grubbing brush. At first he watched the approaching tornado with fascination. When he realized that the rain-shrouded funnel was whirling directly for the school, Johnson started running toward town.


Jim Morrison’s Model-A truck was rattling around the sharp curve entering Rye Cove when he saw J.B. Stone’s store roof churn into the air. A torrent of wind-lashed hail clattered against Morrison’s windshield. Seconds later it cleared enough for him to see. The schoolhouse was gone. Three of the Morrison children had been in the building!


Teacher Elizabeth Richmond was on the second floor, ready to begin class. A few moments before she glanced out the window and had noticed the sky growing dark. Richmond remembered a howling wind and feeling the building shudder -- then a sharp pain seized her as she was clobbered by her own flying desk.


The schoolhouse was a cacophony of roaring wind, smashing lumber, and terrified screams. The air was thick with shrapnel -- shards of broken glass, splintered wood, desks, pens and pencils, books, pieces of slate backboards, hot glowing coals, and heavy iron stoves. Twelfth-grader Roy Osborne dove for the doorway of a first story classroom. From the corner of his eye he saw Principal Noblin, at the front door, disappear in a avalanche of wooden beams. Then Osborne felt himself being lifted up. The next thing he knew, he was outside the building.


Fires from overturned stoves flared in the wreckage. Osborne heard the muffled screams of trapped children and teachers. He scrambled to his feet. Severe pain shot up his left arm and nearly took his breath away. Blood soaked his shirt sleeve. In spite of the pain Osborne rushed to the pond, an empty bucket in his good hand. Morrison’s truck sputtered across the field and slid to a stop in front of him.


“The building’s on fire!” Osborne shouted.


Morrison bounded from the vehicle. Huge raindrops slapped his face. “Form a bucket brigade,” he ordered.


Parents from nearby houses rushed to the shattered schoolhouse, desperately calling out the names of their children as they picked through the wreckage. Some joined the bucket brigade.


Heavy rain in the wake of the tornado helped keep the fires from spreading. Morrison and another man used two nearby tractors, left by road workers, to pull debris away from the flames. Between the rain and the bucket brigade, the fires were extinguished in short order.


Then came another problem. One dirt road connected Rye Cove to the nearest town. The downpour had turned the rutted roadbed into a gummy bog. The storm had also knocked out the few telephones in town. Two men volunteered to go to Clinchport, eight miles away, for help. One jumped on a horse. The other climbed into his automobile. The man on the horse made it to Clinchport first.


The injured, the dead, and the dying, were carried to surrounding houses and barns. A preliminary tally was made of those already dead -- six-year-old Bernice Fletcher, ten-year-old Callie Bishop, and about eight others. Residents did what they could for the injured, but without medical help the task was overwhelming. Simple cuts and fractures were one thing, but some of the injuries were dreadful. A few of the men began discussing how they could get the injured -- more than 50 at last count -- to a hospital. They didn’t know it at the time, but help was on the way.


As soon as word of the disaster reached Bristol, Virginia., the Southern Railway dispatched a special train to Clinchport to evacuate the injured. At Rye Cove, farmers hitched up wagons and carefully loaded the injured aboard. Then the pitiful, waterlogged caravan slogged its way to Clinchport.


By 5:30 p.m., the last of the injured were loaded aboard the train. King’s Mountain Memorial Hospital’s corridors were jammed with anxious parents. Frenzied journalists, desperate for the story, reported anything they heard without first checking the facts. Some newspaper accounts, Knoxville’s for instance, reported the number of the dead as 50. Scott County Sheriff H.S. Culbertson finally sorted out the numbers. There was a total of 13 deaths and 54 injuries.


When word of the catastrophe at Rye Cove got out, donations poured in from around the world. The American Red Cross even built a permanent log cabin near the ruined school to render aid to families touched by the storm. That cabin still stands today, the painted red cross still visible on the front door.


There was no school term in Rye Cove during 1929-1930. The new Rye Cove Memorial High School opened in the fall of 1930 with A.S. Noblin, who had been pulled from the wreckage of the old school, as principal. A bronze plaque, naming the thirteen victims -- 12 students and one teacher -- was placed on the new building. The old bell from Rye Cove Consolidated School and the original bronze table, now stand just outside Rye Cove Middle School in a new memorial as a reminder of those terrible events almost 70 years ago.
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On May 2, 1929, an unusually violent storm struck the little community of Rye Cove, located in the mountains of Scott County.

During the storm the local two-story schoolhouse, with over 150 children and teachers inside, was struck directly by a tornado. The building was completely leveled, and the debris caught fire from an overturned stove. Thirteen were killed. The dozens of injured were rushed by special train to the hospital in Bristol.

A. P. Carter--leader of the famous country music group, the Carter Family, and a prolific songwriter--was in the next valley on the day of the storm. He rushed to Rye Cove to help with the rescue efforts. Carter was touched by the horror of what he saw and soon composed "The Cyclone of Rye Cove." The Carter Family recorded the song that same year for RCA Victor. "The Cyclone of Rye Cove" easily became a part of the musical traditions of Southwest Virginia.
Kingsport Times

Kingsport, Tennessee, Thursday, May 2, 1929--8 pages

12 CHILDREN KNOWN KILLED

Twister Wrecks Rye Cove School

MORTALITY MAY REACH 25; INJURED ESTIMATED AT 90

A howling black cloud took the lives of over twenty children and one teacher and seriously injured as many more at Rye Cove High School, six miles northeast of Clinchport, Va., at 1 o'clock central time today when the building in which they were attending school was completely demolished.

The Rye Cove High School, which had a total enrollment of 250 students, was a seven room frame, two story structure on a limestone foundation and was located in an open field at the widening of a narrow valley. The storm which was seen approaching by several living witnesses was not unlike any other severe shower and windstorm. Floyd Noblin, principal of the school and one of the injured, stated that he had just entered the building when the entire structure collapsed. He said that he could not describe what happened, but that he saw the storm approaching and hurried to the building to escape it. Soon after he entered he heard a crash and knew no more until he found himself being pulled from the debris.

WINDSTORM UP VALLEY
Beginning about half-mile away down the valley from the school building, the storm began to demolish everything in its path. It uprooted many trees and carried away the roofs of several buildings. It grew more severe as it reached the open space. It grew by several dwellings, a store, and a church and the buildings in which the children and one teacher met their death. The home of J. D. Hill, which stood near the school was also completely blown away, but luckily all of the family were away from home and no lives were lost. The community store which was situated several hundred yards from the school and run by J. B. Stone had its roof torn off and its entire stock flooded by the rain which followed the first blow.

A lumber pile near the school building was picked up as a whole, and pieces could be seen scattered for several hundred yards. Many of these were suspended in the branches of the few trees left standing.

Miss Elizabeth Richmond, a teacher in the high school grades in the school and herself injured, gave her version of the tragedy to a representative of The Times while waiting for an ambulance to take her to the relief train which was being filled with the injured children at Clinchport. She said "We had only started school after the mid-day recess when I noticed that a bad storm was coming up. It alarmed me, but I did not say anything to the children. The wind increased to a very high degree with a loud howling noise and then the building collapsed with a smash. It was probably only a few seconds between the time when I thought the building was in danger and the time it collapsed. I was on the second floor."

DEAD AND INJURED IN SURROUNDING BUILDINGS
The dead and injured children were carried to surrounding houses and barns as shortly after the collapse of the building as possible but the severe wind continued and the rain hampered the workers in their grim task. A tentative check-up of the dead and injured show the following dead as positively identified with several bodies yet to be claimed:

Bruce Cox, about 16 years old and the son of Beverly Cox of Gate City.

Alva Carter, a teacher in the primary department.

Polly Carter, about 17 year old, daughter of Miles Carter of near Gate City.

Callie Bishop, about 10 years old.

Avis Runyon, 16 years old of Hill, Va.

Monnie Fletcher, age about 14 and her sister, Bernice, about 8 years old.

James Carter, age about 14.

Lillian Lane, age 7.

Bertha Mae Darnell, age 12 years died on the way to the hospital on the relief train.

Bill Carter, one of the high school pupils and about 18 years of age was not expected to live nor was Evelyn Runyon whose sister was killed outright. Many others whose names could not be determined were seriously injured and were taken either in ambulances to Kingsport or Bristol. The Kings Mountain Hospital in Bristol was instructed to prepare for twenty-seven injured who were on the relief train. Many were taken to private homes in the vicinity.

Immediately the great twister had gone its way, leaving dead, wounded and desolation in its wake, and those in the vicinity of the school who were left alive and uninjured had recovered from the first shock, the relief work began. The dead and dying children, some of them terribly mangled, and those less seriously injured were dragged from the debris, while automobiles carried the message of death to the outside world.

Doctors, nurses and ambulances were rushed in from Kingsport, a distance of 29 miles away, Gate City and Bristol. Among the first from Kingsport to reach the scene of the tragedy were undertakers and two ambulances from the local undertaking establishments of Hamlett and Dobson and J. Frank Nelson Funeral Home. Later ambulances arrived from Bristol.

In the meantime the small stores and frame residences of Rye Cove which had been left standing by the twister were converted into emergency hospitals and morgues. Makeshift beds were erected, bedclothes were provided and soon all the surrounding buildings were filled with the dead and injured children.

At Rye Cove the scene was one of utter wretchedness and desolation. Mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters were crowding about the emergency morgues, looking over the dead, still uncertain as to whether or not their own loved ones were numbered among the dead. Mothers were wringing their hands and crying out in their grief, while added to this were the pitiful wails of the little sufferers. Occasionally there would be the poignant cry of grief from a mother as she would recognize among the dead a son or daughter.

The road from Rye Cove to Clinchport, a distance of eight miles, and on into Gate City and Kingsport, became lined with vehicles bearing their gruesome burden of dead and injured children.

The relief work was terribly handicapped by the isolated location of Rye Cove. Most of the road from that place to Clinchport, eight miles away, the nearest point on the way to the hospitals and morgues of Bristol and Kingsport, is mud road, and the remainder is a narrow, twisting and very rough macadam construction. The mud became churned up by the stream of vehicles and ruts were ploughed. All of the cars were ploughing through this mud, attempting to pass each other, and hurrying to get the wounded to places where they could be given medical attention.

At the little village of Clinchport, a relief hospital train was held to receive injured. As fast as they could be rushed there they were placed on board and put in the hands of physicians. Shortly before six o'clock, this train pulled out for Bristol to take its pitiful freightage of little sufferers to the King's Mountain Memorial Hospital.

Seventeen boys and girls, some of whom were badly injured, were placed aboard the hospital train at Clinchport. Several of them were so badly injured that they were expected to die before reaching the hospital in Bristol.

One boy, of about 10 years of age, suffered a broken back, but the little fellow possessed a lot of nerve, saying "I am not hurt bad." Another boy had a leg cut off, while numerous other children were badly cut by the flying pieces of the structure as it crashed.

An ambulance also took a load of injured to Bristol. A girl was not too badly injured, but a boy was in a very bad state. He was unconscious when found and was bleeding profusely.

The scene at the station in Clinchport was very pathetic. Mothers crowded around as their children were loaded aboard the train. Cars and ambulances transported the injured down from the mountain location.

First aid was applied and several doctors were on hand to make the trip to Bristol as to provide adequate attention for the injured. Rescue workers were busy making the injured comfortable.
Some of the bodies were brought to Kingsport for burial preparation. Some of the injured were also brought to this city.

DEATH LIST
Avis Runyon.
Kelly Carter, age 14.
Alva Carter, age 17.
Two Bishop girls.
Bruce Cox, age 18.
Della Bishop.
Monnie Fletcher, age 14.
Bernice Fletcher, age 8.
James Carter, age 14.
Lillian Lane, age 7.
Bertha Mae Darnell, age 12.





Scott County Herald-Virginia

Gate City, Virginia, Thursday, May 9, 1929

THIRTEEN KILLED WHEN TORNADO DESTROYS
RYE COVE HIGH SCHOOL BUILDING THURSDAY AFTERNOON

More Than Fifty Seriously Injured; 40 Taken to Kings Mountain Memorial Hospital on Special Train. Without Warning Twister Swoops Down and Leaves Death, Sorrow And Desolation in Its Path Of Four Miles.

Forming suddenly from what appeared to be an ordinary thunder cloud, and moving with great velocity, a tornado swooped down upon the beautiful Rye Cove section of Scott County Thursday at one o’clock, completely demolishing the High School building in which were about 150 pupils and teachers, killing twelve children and one teacher and wounding seriously more than fifty others. The tornado after leaving wreck and ruin at this point continued in a northeasternly direction, razing dwellings, barns, mills and all else in its path for a distance of about four miles, the average width of its path being about one quarter of a mile.

THE DEAD ARE:
Ava Carter, 24, teacher, daughter of Hughey Carter of Cove Creek.
Bruce Cox, 18, son of Mr. and Mrs. B.B. Cox of Gate City.
Polly Carter, age 18, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Miles Carter of Rye Cove.
Monnie Fletcher, 14, and Bernice, 8, daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Issac Fletcher of Rye Cove.
James Carter, 14, son if Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd Carter of Rye Cove.
Bertha Mae Darnell, 12, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Trigg Darnell of Rye Cove.
Emma Lane, 6, daughter of Mr. And Mrs. A. C. Lane of Rye Cove.
Callie Bishop, 10, Monnie, age 8, daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Grant Bishop of Cove Creek.
Lillie Lee Carter, daughter of J.E. Carter.
Millie Stone, 18, daughter of Mr. And Mrs. E. H. Stone.
Guy Davidson, son of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Davidson.

Those who received severe injuries and were rushed to hospitals by special trains and ambulances were the following:
To Kings Mountain Memorial Hospital at Bristol, Virginia: Janie Taylor, Willa Jessee, Vane Hill, Mable McDavid, Lucy Jones, Dorthy Carter, Myrtle Morrison, Hannah Darnell, Sallie Freeman, Rufus Rollins, Maurice Clendenen, Henry Mitchell, Della Bishop, Bernice Taylor, Myrtle Taylor, May Freeman, Ethel Lane, Majorie Carter, Belvia Rhoton, Garland Stone, Jackson Freeman, Ray Stone, Roy Jessee, Willard Taylor, Clint Green, J. E. Fugate, Claude Carter, Elizabeth Richmond, Evelyn Runyon, Parce Lee Hill, Margaret Mitchell, Nannie Owen, Millie Carter, Raymond Carter, James Morrison, Hayte Lane, Charlie Morrison, and Charles Flanery.

To Kingsport Hospital: Ray Osborne, Birgill Carter, Bernice Taylor, Ryland McDavid, 10, son of Robert McDavid of Rye Cove; Leonard Green, 14, son of H. C. Greene of Rye Cove; Kyle Morrison, son of Lonnie Morrison of Rye Cove; Rosa Lee Darnell, daughter of Hugh Darnell, of Rye Cove; Effie Flanary, 22, daughter of Creed Flanary of Clinchport; Bill Carter, 17, son of George Carter of Clinchport.

In addition to those named above who were either killed or severely injured fully one hundred other children suffered minor injuries, and were cared for in their homes by local doctors and the Red Cross.

A short distance from the school building, and within the tornado's path stood a heavy log dwelling with double stack stone chimney that was erected more than three quarters of a century ago. The terrific force of the storm swept it away as completely, as if it had been built of straw, carrying some of the furniture four miles away. The family of Haskel Hill who occupied the building were away from home at the time it occurred.

A stone spring-house was torn to pieces as if it were made of sticks. Rocks that weighed more than a thousand pounds were overturned.

As described by W. J. Rollins, who witnessed the destruction of the school house from his home about a mile away, the tornado formed from another storm cloud moving northward, and suddenly developing great force and traveling with a speed that made the elements tremble, it began to move directly up the valley in which the school house was located. He said that it appeared to be a great funnel hurling itself though the air and bearing in front a kind of headlight.

When it struck, the building seemed to rise into the air and then explode, declared the witness, scattering debris, lumber, benches over the surrounding country. After the explosion, he said, the elements seemed to settle down over the scene and it became dark as night. Beneath the mass of ruins lay more than a dozen dead, while the shrieks of the dying and wounded added horror to the already horrible scene.

The body of Miss Ava Carter, 24, school teacher, was found 75 yards from where the school stood. She was inside the building then the twister struck. Miss Carter's home was at Cove Creek. She graduated from Radford, Va., State Teachers College.

Body of Polly Carter, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Miles Carter of Rye Cove was carried fifty yards.
Eight other bodies were recovered from the ruins of the building within an hour after the twister struck.

The school served a radius of approximately seven miles and was the fourth largest in the county. W.D. Smith, superintendent of schools of Scott county, Va., was at the scene within an hour after the twister struck. He was grief-stricken over the tragedy and was rendering all possible aid. Roll of the school was destroyed, Professor Smith said. Because many of the children live such a distance the final check of injured will necessarily have to be made from queries that will come from parents of the children.

The whole scene was one of pitiful desolation. Anxious fathers worked feverishly in the ruins, fearful of what they might discover. Anxiety of parents was intense because nearly all the injured children were started by automobile to hospitals before the parents arrived. Sobbing mothers, frantic with fear, sought information.

Mrs. Mary Darnell, mother of two girls who were in the building, could not learn of her children until more than four hours after the building was demolished. She broke down when she was told that Bertha Mae Darnell had died enroute to Clinchport, and that her other daughter, Hattie could not be found.

Strong shouldered mountain residents plied at the wreckage, seeking traces of those known to be missing.

Doctors were summoned from Bristol, Kingsport, Gate City, Appalachia, Big Stone Gap, and other communities. A passenger train was held at Clinchport, seven miles away, to take the injured to Bristol. Automobiles rushed the injured to Clinchport where doctors began their work. It was 5:30 o'clock before the last known injured child was taken to Clinchport and the train started toward Bristol. Approximately 15 of the more seriously injured were rushed to Kingsport and Bristol by ambulance before the train started. Forty injured was sent by train to Bristol. Nine were in the hospitals at Kingsport.

Doctors W. R. Rogers, E. D. Rollins and three ambulances and five nurses from King's Mountain Memorial Hospital went to Clinchport.

The tornado spent itself about four miles farther up the valley after destroying a flour mill belonging to George Carter, in which both himself and his son, John Edgar, were seriously injured, a dwelling house owned by Henry Johnson, and one belonging to Barb Starnes, and two barns belonging to Ballard Carter.

SCHOOL PRINCIPAL RYE COVE TELLS OF DISASTER
A. S. Noblin Was Carried From Hall of Building 75 Feet Away.
A vivid word picture of the tornado that last Thursday killed at least 13 and injured upwards of 100 when it demolished the Rye Cove school in Scott County, Va., and leveled houses and buildings in its four-mile path through the mountain country, was told by A. S. Noblin, principal of the school, and others.

"I was walking through the hall when I saw what looked like a whirlwind coming up the hollow," Noblin declared. "Trees were swaying. As it neared the school building it became a black cloud, it appearing as though a tremendous amount of dirt had been gathered."

YELLED!
"I think I yelled. It struck the building. The next thing I remembered I was standing knee deep in a pond 75 feet from where the building stood before it was demolished.

155 CHILDREN
"There were about 155 children in the school which serves a radius of approximately seven miles."

Noblin is a graduate of William and Mary and a nephew of W. D. Smith, Scott County superintendent of schools. Noblin was painfully bruised and lacerated.

John Runyon, 17, a student, said he saw the trees swaying while he was standing with a teacher, Elizabeth Richmond, in one of the classrooms. "It just picked up the school house," he declared. "The next thing I knew I had about half of it on me and was trying to dig out." Runyon's head was badly lacerated.

BRISTOL PEOPLE OFFER TO HELP RYE COVE DISASTER
A genuine desire to help those in distress has been portrayed in the recent Rye Cove disaster by the people generally of Bristol. When havoc was wrought by the recent tornado that completely destroyed high school building at that place, killing 13 children and seriously injuring more than fifty others, Bristol city turned with a united effort to help relieve the suffering that resulted from the terrible calamity. Throwing open her Hospital for the relief of the suffering, sending her doctors and nurses immediately to the scene of sorrow, and giving an urgent invitation to dozens of sufferers to come to private homes where they would receive the best possible care, the people of Bristol have forever endeared themselves in the hearts of the citizens of Rye Cove and the entire community. Unsolicited financial assistance amounting to several thousand dollars was offered by voluntary contributors to those in distress as a result of the storm. Food, clothing, and every comfort possible has been provided without limit to all who would accept it.

Hotel Bristol threw open all available space, and invited any and all who would to share their hospitality free of charge. For this act of sympathy shown, the manager, Mr. Barnhill, will be remembered with gratitude by the surrounding country. Calamities like this provide an opportunity for individuals, for cities, and even larger areas to show their regard for humanity in times of distress and it must be said to credit of Bristol city that she has made haste to take advantage of the opportunity to show that above any pecuniary gain stood the welfare of mankind.

MEMORIAL SERVICES
To Be Held at the Court House Sunday Afternoon At 2:30 O'clock
Memorial service will be held at the court house Sunday afternoon, May 12, at 2:30 o'clock, for those who lost their lives in the Rye Cove disaster, and to make prayer for the recovery of the injured. Special arrangements made for good singing. Some voices from Bristol and Kingsport will be added to our local choirs. A prominent Bristol pastor will be one of the speakers. It is hoped that all the families who are bereaved can come.

Mr. and Mrs. J. D. Bledsoe and Miss Kate Gillenwater attended the funeral of Miss Millie Stone Sunday.

DOUBLE FUNERAL TORNADO VICTIMS
Impressive Funeral Services Held For Bruce Cox and Polly Carter Saturday at Baptist Church

An impressive double funeral service was held at the Baptist Church in Gate City Saturday morning a eleven o'clock for Bruce Cox, son of Mr. and Mrs. B. B. Cox of this city, and Polly Carter, daughter of Miles Carter of Rye Cove, both of whom were Rye Cove high school students who lost their lives in the tornado disaster that swept the section last Thursday at one o'clock.

The large crowd of sorrowing friends filled the church to overflowing, more than one half the crowd being unable to gain entrance who sought to pay respect to the unfortunate victims of the terrible tragedy. The services were conducted by Rev. J. B. Craft assisted by Revs. King and Winslow, after which interment was held for Polly Carter in the cemetery near the home of Mrs. Creed Frazier, and for Bruce Cox at the Rye Cove cemetery near the home of his grand parents.

SUPERVISORS MAKE APPROPRIATIONS
$3,000.00 Appropriated By Scott County Board To Be Used In Rye Cove Disaster

The Scott County Board of Supervisors met at the court house in Gate City Monday. The first thing taken up was the catastrophe that took place at Rye Cove, Scott County, Virginia, on May 2nd, in which the Rye Cove High School building was completely demolished by a furious tornado, and many homes were destroyed. Twelve children and one teacher lost their lives and fifty were seriously injured.

The Board made an appropriation of $3,000.00 to be used in connection with relief work and appointed the following committee to supervise the expenditure of the money, make reports to the Board and solicit, or accept donations from any people living within or outside of the county or state who may wish to aid in the relief work.
The committee appointed was:
Judge E. T. Carter
Prof. W. D. Smith
Mr. I. P. Kane.

We wish to commend the Board for the action taken and express our approval both of the committee appointed and the further order of the Board that proper resolutions be prepared expressing the deep appreciation of the people of Scott County to those people without and within the county who have so worthily aided at the scene of the disaster and elsewhere.

Physicians and nurses, ambulance owners and automobile owners, and the Southern Railway Co., all aided in a wonderful way to care for the injured and transport them to hospitals for treatment.

The King's Mountain Memorial Hospital of Bristol deserves special mention for the liberal and efficient services rendered. Both the General Hospital and Marsh Clinic of Kingsport rendered timely and serviceable. . .