May 19, 1999

Families met on mission trip,
then were reunited in tragedy
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___TUTTLE, Okla.--It's a long way from Tuttle, Okla., to Cimarron, N.M., but the wrath of a deadly tornado and the love of a Christian couple have made it seem no distance at all.
___Just two months before a massive tornado leveled much of the Bridge Creek community between Tuttle and Newcastle, Okla., Bob and Ollie Johnson of Bridge Creek traveled to Cimarron, N.M., to help build a church. Last week, fellow Baptists they met in Cimarron traveled to their Oklahoma home to help bury two members of their family.
___The Johnsons, members of Snow Hill Baptist Church in Tuttle, helped out on the church-building project organized by Del Norte Baptist Church of Albuquerque, N.M. The Johnsons were members of the Albuquerque church before retiring to rural Oklahoma just over three years ago.
___On that trip, they worked alongside Del Norte members Pat and Margaret Soule, who had joined the church after the Johnsons left. They formed a friendship neither couple could have imagined would be rekindled so soon or so dramatically.
___When a tornado tore across the Bridge Creek community May 3, it killed Pat Soule's sister, Lucille Darnell, and her 3-week-old grandson, Asheton. Their deaths were widely reported because of the dramatic story of the baby being blown from his mother's arms by the tornado while seven members of the family huddled underneath a staircase in their home.
___In addition to the two who were killed, the remaining five family members all were hospitalized with serious injuries and remained in a rehabilitation center last week.
___But before their fate was known, the Soules were calling from Albuquerque, trying to find what had happened. They knew some of the family members were in a hospital, and they thought Lucille Darnell was alive in a hospital.
___So they called their friends from the mission trip, who live about a mile away from the Darnell residence and just down the street from Ridgecrest Baptist Church, which was leveled by the tornado. Miraculously, the Johnsons' house escaped the storm unscathed, though just a few feet away the ground was scraped clean by the tornado.
___Ollie Johnson knew where to call for information, since the local skating rink had been turned into a command center for emergency workers. With one call there, she learned that Lucille Darnell was at the morgue, where family members were needed to identify the body.
___Johnson had the sad task of relaying that news to Pat Soule, who already was en route to search for his sister.
___In the days that followed, the Johnsons opened their home to the Soules and various members of the Darnell family, all of whom needed a place to stay.
___For a short time, they even cared for 2-year-old Wyatt, the grandson of Lucille and Blayne Darnell who had been released from the hospital but had no family to care for him. His mother, Michelle, lay in one hospital, while his grandfather lay in another and his grandmother lay dead.
___The toddler, bruised from head to toe, later went to stay with a local nurse while others in his family recuperated.
___Opening their home and their lives to care for someone in need was just a natural response, the Johnsons said. "They needed a place they could sit down among friends. And there's so many people displaced, if they went to look for a hotel, they couldn't find one."
___This is the kind of response everyone around them has given in the aftermath of the storm, the Johnsons said, noting they had drawn strength from working together with neighbors to clean up debris and then sitting down to a home-cooked meal prepared by Ollie Johnson.
___Most of all, the Johnsons and others around them realize they have much for which to be thankful.
___The Johnsons feel like that was driven home to them in an especially powerful way.
___After the tornado, they found many things in their yard that didn't belong to them or their neighbors. One such item was a large wooden cut-out in the shape of an apple with two words painted on it: "Give thanks."
___That sign now adorns the front drive of the couple's home, partly in hopes that someone who lost it might see it and partly as a testimony to God's grace in the midst of a storm.

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