May 26, 1999
Baptist leaders help DeKalb grieve
___By Ken Camp
___Texas Baptist Communications
___DEKALB--Life in DeKalb changed forever when the clocks stopped at 3:02 p.m. May 4, Milfred Minatrea told residents of the small Northeast Texas town.
___That's when a tornado took the roof off an elementary school, severely damaged thehigh school next door and decimated downtown businesses.
MILFRED MINATREA (right), talks with DeKalb area residents prior to a town hall meeting where storm victims told their stories, listened to their neighbors and prayed with each other. (Photo by Ken Camp)
___"DeKalb will never be just like it was before," said Minatrea, church ministries director for the Baptist General Convention of Texas. "As a community, you are rewriting the story of what 'normal' is. Things are not the way the were before, but you are moving toward a 'new normal.'"
___One week after the storm hit, Minatrea worked with a group in counseling school children at DeKalb. Many of the children had survived by huddling together in the school hallway, and it was their first time to return to school since the tornado.
___Using a group crisis intervention technique developed by the National Organization for Victim Assistance, he and others conducted small support group crisis counseling sessions.
___Through a series of gently probing questions about their memories of the disaster, reactions since that time and predictions about their future, the facilitators helped the children put into words the impressions and emotions they had carried around for days.
___"Every child in the community is rewriting his family story, weaving in what happened when the tornado hit," Minatrea said. He and the other counselors assured the children their fears were natural.
___Minatrea asked one group of fourth graders if any of them had wanted to sleep in their parents' bed since the tornado. Before he could say, "You don't have to answer that out loud," one boy raised his hand and spoke up. The youngster said he had been scared to go to bed alone for the past week. Rather than ridicule him, many of his classmates added they had the same feelings.
___The experience with school children was so beneficial, town leaders asked Minatrea to lead a similar event for adults.
___The American Red Cross helped organize and publicize the town hall meeting for Thursday evening, May 13, at the town's middle school.
DEKALB ELEMENTARY lost its roof and some outside classroom walls when a tornado hit. Mildred Minatrea of the BGCT helped lead a group of crisis counselors who worked with the children in the storm’s aftermath. (Photo by Ken Camp)
___The meeting was scheduled one evening prior to a session sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency regarding grants, loans and other assistance for rebuilding.
___"Before talking about boards and nails, we wanted to talk about soul and spirit," Minatrea said. "This was a time when people of faith came together to say, 'As bad as the disaster may have been, God was so good.'"
___As the marquee on one local business said: "Seventy-five percent of our town destroyed. One hundred percent of our people safe."
___David Warren, director of missions for Bowie Baptist Association, secured the counseling services of ministers, and Minatrea trained them in the basics of group crisis intervention. He told them that victims of trauma need "safety and security, ventilation and validation," and they need an opportunity to "predict and prepare."
___Ronald Carroll, pastor of Temple Baptist Church in New Boston, led a support-group session for those who neither had children at the hard-hit schools nor lost a home to the tornado.
___Even so, the storm left its impact on them, he noted. One woman described the guilt she felt because her neighbors lost their homes and she escaped any serious damage.
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