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By Christine S. Weerts
Special to the Selma Times-Journal

Ola Lee Parker, 82, was sitting in her favorite chair in her living room in Beloit on Jan. 12, 2023 when her granddaughter ran in, telling her a tornado was coming.

They grabbed hands and hurried into the hallway just as the sky turned black. The tornado hit hard, tearing off the roof like it was crepe paper and shaking the ground so hard they could barely stand.

“All we could do is ask the Lord to save us,” Ola recalled as the storm tore her house apart.

About eight miles away, Ola’s daughter Salister Hope heard the sound of a freight train as the monster storm roared through east Selma, yanking towering trees out of the ground and throwing them against houses like the one that smashed through her roof.

Then it was over.

Ola walked outside and couldn’t believe her eyes.

“I had no idea it did that much damage,” she said.

All four houses on the small two-lane rural road she lived on had been destroyed. Her roof was up in the trees. But thankfully, no one was hurt.

Her neighbor was sitting on a couch inside his house and then he was sitting on the couch in his front yard, no idea how it happened. He walked to their house to tell them. At her home, where she lived for the past 40 years, Ola saw that the ceiling had caved in and all the debris fell on the chair she had been sitting in minutes before.

While she lost everything she owned, Ola said, “It’s just material things. You can always get another place to live, but you can’t get another life.”

It took her son-in-law Derrick Gayle over four hours to cut back trees on the road to reach Ola and her granddaughter and get them to safety.

Today a big black cow grazes free from its pasture along the roadside where the tornado tore through the now quiet countryside. The four damaged homes – one was turned sideways – still stand, alongside unnaturally twisted trees, testament to the power of the tornado that ripped and roared through Beloit.

Slabs of a century old three-story pecan tree lie next to the road; thankfully it fell away from the house. Last month, Old Order Mennonite volunteers from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, replaced the roof on Salister’s home in Selma. With federal funds, Ola purchased a used trailer to live in Beloit.

Salister Hope, who co-pastors Second Baptist Church in Selma with her husband Clinton, will be in church Sunday, the second anniversary of the tornado, thanking the Lord for sparing Selma lives. And Ola, who isn’t sure she can get out in the cold, will be thanking Him, too. Actually, she said, “I thank the good Lord every day for sparing our lives.”