On May 16, as an EF3 tornado roared across north St. Louis, 81-year-old Ernest Curry pulled his pickup truck in front of his home on Newstead Avenue. He looked down the street and saw the tornado coming straight at him.
“I ran to my front door, got it open, shut it behind me and tried to make it into the basement," he said. "Before I could, it hit the side window — sounded like an atom bomb. I just doubled up on the floor and let it pass.”
This story was commissioned by the River City Journalism Fund, which seeks to advance local journalism in St. Louis. See rcjf.org for more info.
He demonstrates how he dropped to his knees and hands in the hallway. “If I hadn’t got down like that, I’d have caught all that glass when the windows blew out," he added. "It missed me.”
The storm ripped the roof and porch rails off his home of 14 years, shattered windows and disabled his truck — his only vehicle.
“That’s how I got groceries," he said. "That’s how I went fishing. Now it’s gone.”
Inside, the damage is everywhere. The ceilings are falling in. A sink hangs crooked against the wall. Water drips through tarps with each rainfall. Only his bedroom, he said, is “decent enough to use.”
“I’m so upset,” he said. “But here I am, still kicking around, trying to pull back up.”
Curry is far from alone. The May 16 tornado left hundreds of St. Louis families displaced or living in damaged homes. FEMA and insurance checks often fall far short of what’s needed to rebuild. For older residents on fixed incomes, the gap can feel insurmountable.
I met Curry in an unusual way as I was doing something usual. I had taken a bus to his neighborhood in the Greater Ville to look for tornado survivors as part of a project undertaken by the River City Journalism Fund to follow families over time in serial fashion for as long as two years.
In most instances, I approached families first through a friend or relative. But in Ernest Curry’s case, he called out to me, a stranger, as he was sitting on his porch and I was walking to a bus stop.
He wondered if I was the guy he had seen a while ago passing through on a motorcycle. At 73, I am not at all fit to ride a motorcycle. Still, it was a conversation starter, and he invited me up to sit with him on his front stoop. I told him about the project, and after hearing his story about the tornado, I invited him to participate.
I took some photographs, and we got to know each other better over the course of three visits. He agreed to also participate in a side project under the auspices of Humans of St. Louis. Photos of him and a brief description of his plight appeared in an exhibition called “What’s Their Story?” that closed last week at Webster Arts.
Across north St. Louis, churches, nonprofits and volunteer crews have stepped in to patch roofs, clear debris and provide food and water. Curry explained he was not entirely without resources.
FEMA sent him a $9,000 check, but he said, “that ain’t enough to get started.” His niece Doris is helping with the paperwork. A nephew, Nick, who is a contractor, drove from Tennessee to Curry’s home with supplies donated by a lumberyard. “He brought me a thousand-dollar door, three or four windows,” Curry said. “He put them in for me.”
But the work is far from finished. “The outside still needs fixing. My roof needs to be put on. My kitchen needs a window. My ceilings are falling. My house needs decorating all over again.”
Neighbors cut his grass for a little money. A woman donated plywood, which sits stacked in his backyard under a blue tarp. “Maybe I’ll use it for the porch roof,” he said. “What I need most is my roof. Bad.”
Curry has lived at this residence since his wife, Dora, moved to Texas years ago. Two of his daughters are deceased. His grandson, Maurice, also lives in Texas. He worries about his cats and the kittens born in his cabinet. “I was planning to take them to the Humane Society,” he said. “I don’t want to throw them out in the street. That’d be worse than me getting out in the street.”
He is proud of his family, pointing to framed portraits: his daughters, his grandson and his brother. His late mother, Luvenia, gave birth to 16 children. “I was number 15,” he said. “Only two of us left.” She lived to 100. He hopes to keep going but admits, “Ain’t that much longer here, I don’t guess.”
Curry never had formal schooling — “I can’t read and write real good, we had to work back in the '50s.” He made a living as a handyman, raising his family with odd jobs and repair work. Now he can’t do the work himself. He can’t buy another car. He doesn’t have a computer. He is not adept at using his new cellphone, a gift from a niece so his family can check in.
What he misses most is fishing. “I used to go to the park, catch catfish, bluegill. Always gave most of it away. That’s what I liked to do.”
Still, he guards what he has. He doesn’t want casual workers coming inside his house.
“Too many objects I don’t want them to touch,” he said.
The tornado left him shaken but grateful to be alive. “I never saw anything like that storm, not in all my 80 years. I was so scared. I thought I was a goner. But here I am.”
Curry doesn’t want sympathy as much as he wants practical help. “If I just had my roof,” he said, “I could take care of the rest.”
We will stay in touch with Curry for at least the next two years as he weathers the storm. And we'll cover additional families, including the family of Daje Shelton. A story about her family can be found at the RCJF website.
Richard H. Weiss, a former editor and reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, is chair of the River City Journalism Fund.
RCJF produces stories that address marginalized communities in St. Louis. RCJF then shares those stories at no cost to media partners in St. Louis, including St. Louis Public Radio, to supplement their coverage.
