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HERE’S THE SCOOP Nancy Butts critical after being struck by train A Barnesville woman is recovering after being struck by a train while on her morning walk down town April 22. Nancy C. Butts, 66, was struck in the Elm Street crossing just before 8 a.m. SEE PAGE 2A Abreu off ventilator and jailed without bond Former Barnesville municipal court judge Henry Abreu was arrest ed April 23 after checking himself out of Harbor- view Nursing Home in Thomaston. SEE PAGE 3A National Day of Prayer set for May 6 The annual National Day of Prayer observance is set for Thursday, May 6 at 12:10 p.m. at the gym at First Baptist Church. The event is sponsored by the Lamar County Ministerial Association. Multiple pastors and others are on the pro gram. Lunch will be available for a donation to the min isterial associations help the needy fund. For more information, cal 770.358.2353. Subscribe. Your name goes on the label in this box EF3 Tornado: Ten years after WALTER GEIGER news@barnesville.com Wednesday marks the 10 year anniversary of the killer tornado that ripped through the community in the wee hours of April 28, 2011. The tornado and the great flood of 1994 are the two biggest disasters in Lamar County’s modern history. The twister swooped in just before 1:30 a.m. not long after TV weather reports indicated the threat was over. It passed over a lake off McCard Lake Road in Pike County then touched down near the inter section of Piedmont and Turner Bridge roads, cutting a path of devastation before lifting back off around High Falls Lake in southeast Butts County. The squall line spawned a second twister that caused heavy dam age in the Sunnyside area of Spalding County. Later classified as an EF3, the tornado left behind prop erty damage in the hundreds of millions of dollars. On Grove Street, Paul and Ellen Gunter were killed. Their seven-year- old daughter Chloe was spared (see related story below). The tornado, like the flood 17 years earlier, proved just how close-knit our community is. Trees were still falling and power lines dangling when vol unteers arrived in droves with chain saws, trucks and heavy equipment to help their neigh bors in need. What was then a fledgling B-LC Community Foundation developed an assistance fund that raised considerable funds to aid in the rebuilding process. Ten years removed from that tragic night, trees and vegeta tion along the twister’s route have grown back. Most home- owners have rebuilt though there are several sites were only foundations remain. For those who lived through it and those who helped in the recovery, the memories of the 2011 tornado will always remain vivid. Note: Those of us at The Her ald Gazette and barnesville.com worked tirelessly to cover the tornado, the rescue effort and the recovery. For that coverage, your newspaper was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. 2011 tornado survivor Chloe Gunter remembers ‘that night’ Chloe Gunter revisits the Gunter compound on Grove Street which was wiped out by a tornado that devastated the area 10 years ago. She was with her parents when the twister struck. They were both killed but young Chloe was spared. She will graduate from LCHS next month. KAY S. PEDR0TTI kayspedrotti@gmail.com Though she has been plagued by few nightmares in the last 10 years, Chloe Gunter, now 18, said she “can still see it all in my mind.” Her description is terse and moving as she describes how her parents, Paul and Ellen Gunter, disappeared in the howling darkness of Barnes- ville’s EF3 tornado in late April of 2011. They were the only fa talities of the storm, but many were injured. “I woke up to what I thought was thunder,” she began. “Ev erything was pitch black and 1 went to my parents’ bedroom. The windows blew in. I felt like something was holding me, something in the air, and I pushed it away. I knew they should be there, but 1 couldn’t see. All 1 knew to do was to start yelling for my brother (Marty Gunter). “1 started walking and yell ing to where 1 heard Marty and (his wife) Patti yelling for me. It was so painful - there was glass and metal everywhere. 1 could not tell where anything was; 1 had my eyes shut tight. 1 remember tripping over some kind of board. 1 finally got close enough that Marty picked me up - that was painful. He car ried me across the street to a house that was still standing. 1 was cold and shaking and somebody covered me with a crocheted blanket; that hurt too because the threads kept getting caught in my cuts. Then another person in a yel low jacket picked me up again - that hurt very bad too - and we all three got into an ambu lance and went to the hospital (Griffin-Spalding).” She had multiple lacerations and carries two deep scars on her face now, but had no broken bones. “I love Marty and Patti,” who became Chloe’s guardians after it was determined that Paul and Ellen had perished in the mael strom. “1 do miss my parents. 1 think about them sometimes; 1 remember my mother made this wonderful broccoli cas serole with cheese in it,” Chloe continued. Soon after the tornado, Marty and Patti painted Chloe’s bedroom in their former home on Bush Road with washable white paint, so that she and her friends could draw, write and scribble whatever they wanted to. Chloe said that was one way of “relieving some of the stress.” Chloe also remembers that she swore she would never go to bed without socks on again, be cause “if something happened 1 could get to my shoes and my feet would be okay.” She also re members “sleeping a lot then.” When she returned to school, Chloe’s best friend Willow Wel don was her “bodyguard” and would not let the other children ask her a bunch of questions. Her recovery has been slow but certain; the Gunters are a family of faith, attending Church of the Nazarene in Griffin, and that has helped. Chloe goes to church camps and events with the youth group and sings with the praise band. Chloe Marie Gunter is now an honor graduate at Lamar County High School. She plans to attend the College of the Ozarks in Missouri to study criminal justice, hoping to become a police officer. She is working now at the Barnesville Dairy Queen. “1 could not do a kind of of fice job or something that’s the same day after day. 1 want SEE TORNADO SURVIVOR 2A Saffron Abreu KAY S. PEDR0TTI kayspedrotti@gmail.com Senior Saffron Abreu said that being named STAR stu dent was “surprising, since 1 had been away from the core courses and was a little out of practice” when she took the SAT that earned her this year’s STAR title. Her choice as STAR teacher, counselor and former teacher LeslieAnne Williams, was not surprised at all. She believes Saffron to be “brilliant, full of creativity and a person of integrity.” This is the fifth time Williams has been chosen, but she says it must be her last because she has changed over to counseling. She is dedicated to helping students successfully navigate what could be “the worst four years of their lives, or the best.” The 18-year-old is the daugh ter of Brian and April Abreu and has a brother, Bryce, who is a freshman at LCHS. Saffron has been dual-enrolled at Gordon State College and will start is 2021 STAR Student at Lamar County High there in the fall as a sophomore. She is undecided on a career path, so she would like to get “a general studies degree and then go on somewhere after that.” While at LCHS, she has sung in Honor Choir, competed and placed in several Literary com petitions, won the Rotary Laws of Life Essay contest, and has been on the Academic Team since eighth grade, among other accomplishments. Saffron says she likes to read, especially online but not social media. She draws exceptionally well, Wil liams said, and was her intern in the counseling office recently - “very, very good at organiz ing,” the counselor added. “I am just very happy about the honor, and 1 love Mrs. Wil liams,” said Saffron. She was in several of Williams’ classes such as gifted and AP language arts, since ninth grade. Williams commented, “Saffron is loved by all her teachers and will find her way into some creative endeavor that will give her a lifetime of joy. She deserves it.” Shooting STARs LC STAR teacher LeslieAnne Williams (left) and STAR student Saffron Abreu. ©2021 THE HERALD GAZETTE, BARNESVILLE, LAMAR COUNTY, GA 30204, 770.358.NEWS