Jarrell teachers look back on the day an F-5 tornado devastated the town

Two longtime educators spoke to KVUE about their experiences and the resiliency of their community.

JARRELL, Texas — Twenty-five years after a deadly tornado tore through Jarrell, Texas, the emotions are still raw.

“The tornado came right down here,” said Drew Sumner, an athletic coach at Jarrell High School. “The weird thing was they show all this tornado damage on the TV … and there’s houses, you can see some kind of wreck. These were everything was down to the slab. Everything was gone.”

But the memory of that day and what Sumner witnessed has stayed implanted in his mind.

“I was working on some schoolwork in another building and they say there’s a tornado and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I left my son in the 1916 building.’ So I run upstairs in the 1916 building and I get him,” Sumner said.

With one son in tow, Sumner jumped in his car and raced to grab his other child, who was at day care a few miles away.

“We could look in the rearview mirror and saw this little skinny tornado behind us. All the roads on I-35 going to Jarrell, all the cars on I-35 were stopped,” Sumner said.

In the minutes it took for him to get his second son, the tornado had intensified.

“I looked back to where it was and I said, ‘What the hell is that? That’s like the rain cloud from hell. It’s like two miles wide!,'” Sumner said.

Nearby, pre-K teacher Jackie Puska and her three-month-old son, Cole, rode out the storm in her bedroom closet.

“He doesn’t know anything happened. He was just hanging out in his little car seat carrier,” Puska said. “I grabbed formula, water, diapers, wipes, some clothes and my cellphone.”

Puska and her son had been on the same Jarrell campus as Sumner that day. It was a teacher work day and afterwards, some staff members had met up for a baby shower.

“Someone came in and said, ‘The weather looks like it’s going to start getting bad so you guys might want to start finishing up,'” Puska said.

Puska and Sumner survived, but it’s not lost on them how the story had a different ending for some friends and loved ones.

“I went to a lot of funerals. Entire families passed, and there were quite a bit of stories about people that survived, but horrible stories about people that passed,” Sumner said. “The saddest thing about it is that they didn’t get to grow up, they didn’t get to graduate, didn’t get to get married, have kids. “

“I think there was definitely disbelief and shock. But then also the community of Jarrell started doing what they’ve always done, which is they start helping others. We kind of call it ‘the Jarrell way,'” Puska said.

For months, there were countless donation drives offering food, water and clothes to those who lost their belongings. Schools stepped up in a big way and became hubs for kids and their parents to get help.

That sense of community, neighbors always coming together, remains a huge reason why Puska has never left the district.

“I’ll be finishing up my 28th year this year,” Puska said.

The same sentiment rings true for Sumner, who is going on his 33rd year with the Jarrell Independent School District.

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