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By Donna Walker
DR769-08
Regina Rebitz thought she was lost when she crested the
hill that led to her house in New Hartford, Iowa. A
short trip to Waterloo to secure a broken toilet flapper
was all that prevented her from being in the house when
the twister came through.
“We came up over the hill and you know how you feel when
you get hurt real bad you don’t know if you might puke?”
said Regina’s partner Bruce Recker.
Recker, Regina and her daughter Shonna, 15, were among
the first on the scene. Regina felt lost, thinking she
might have taken a wrong turn because the landmark grove
of pine trees next to the cemetery was gone. Bruce felt
sick. Shonna, Bruce said, “lost it.”
On that Sunday before Memorial Day 2008, the family had
watched as people came to decorate the graves in the
cemetery across the street from them. “It didn’t look
like a cemetery. It looked like a flower patch,” Recker
said.
What people had made progressively pretty throughout the
morning, nature changed in a moment.
“It was like a scary movie,” Regina said. The clouds
were dark. Everything was gone.” The tombstones were
flat.”
The pines were decimated but a red Chevy Impala sat
among their remains, ignition on. They searched for
people but found no one and later learned the trees had
held the car in place so that three children and their
mother could walk away.
The family found their way to the American Red Cross
Shelter at Aplington Middle School where they found help
more essential than food and shelter. Bruce experienced
a seizure that night, the side-affect of a previous car
accident, and Red Cross Health Services provided his
medicine.
“Red Cross has helped in every way, shape and form
possible from the time we wake up to the time we go to
bed,” Bruce said.
Regina agreed. “They just took a lot off my mind.” With
Red Cross help, she received money for necessities, a
hotel room following closure of the Red Cross shelter,
and counseling for her daughter.
“We used some money for gas so we could search for a
home,” Regina said and they found a mobile home that
will soon be ready.
“Red Cross got us over the first bit of tragedy and
beyond,” Bruce said. “They helped spiritually,
physically, mentally.”
As the family left home that last time, Bruce saw a
piece of metal on the lawn. He grabbed it and thought it
might be the screen door handle but a glance backward
told him it wasn’t. “I was talking to Shonna and thought
nothing of it. That evening in the shelter, I took it
out of my pocket.
“He always has stuff in his pocket,” Regina said, but
this was astounding.
The metal was a medal, a St. Christopher medal, that
read: “Behold St. Christopher and go your way in
safety.”
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Donna Walker is a volunteer with the Iowa Rivers
Chapter of the American Red Cross, Marshalltown, Iowa.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE
RED CROSS RESPONSE TO THIS DISASTER-click here
STORIES FROM THE FIELD:
RESTING IN THE RED
CROSS KITCHEN-click here
SURVIVOR DIRECTS DONATIONS
TO RED CROSS-click here
WATERLOO ISLAMIC CENTER
SUPPORTS LOCAL RED CROSS EFFORTS-click here
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