Harrisburg, Illinois: Three Months Later
By: Jordan Vandenberge
Updated: May 28, 2012
Around the corner, over the hill and through the rubble on Peachetree Place remains a house. But Harrisburg suburban life has become a lonelier place for Dan Fowler.
"We are now the first house on the left," Fowler said.
However, it didn't used to be this way.
"It's extremely bizarre because we lived here for 19 years and so you always walk out the door seeing the same scenery," said Fowler. "All the sudden I look out the door and there's an empty lot in front of me and there's an empty lot on the side of me. I don't know, maybe in time I'll get used to it but it's really difficult because you miss the people too."
Three months have passed and seasons have changed since the Leap Day tornado that tore through the heart of Harrisburg. The mail no longer comes to many of the houses here, houses that now feature nothing but scarred and sun-baked linoleum floors. For Fowler, sometimes, some wounds run deeper.
"This Memorial Day makes me think and pray for my co-worker that lost his daughter in the tornado," said Fowler. "It's the first thing I thought of when I woke up this morning."
One of the first people to rebuild, Fowler is also one of the first people to reflect. He knows healing is a matter of time but also a matter of opportunity.
Members of his family are fighting the aftermath of a tornado on two fronts.
I was fortunate enough not to hear it or feel it but I could definitely see it," said Hannah Fowler as she described the Tuscaloosa tornado. Hannah, Dan's daughter, is a junior at the University of Alabama. "To come back and have it happen to your home it definitely hits a different spot."
"It's hard to put into words that she lived through the Tuscaloosa tornado and she saw the destruction here," said Dan Fowler.
"I felt helpless thats for sure," said Hannah Fowler. "And for it to hit your hometown and for your hometown to be such a small developing town it's different from Tuscaloosa which can bounce back in no time."
It will take much more than three months to recover what was lost in less than 30 minutes. But for the time being, the Fowlers are just thankful to call themselves the first house on the left.
