LAUREL COUNTY, Ky. — When Judy Farris set about with her nephew to clean up the debris in her field on Farris Jones Road in East Bernstadt she expected to find pieces of drywall and insulation, and even the occasional bed linens and table cloths.  But amidst the 20 acres of debris left over by the March 2 tornado would be precious keepsakes of another East Bernstadt resident who lived just four miles away.

A trio of pictures held together by a paper backing caught Farris’ eye during the cleanup.  They were in nearly perfect condition, and, because they were held together, Farris surmised they were likely part of a framed collection.

“It’s unbelievable what you’ll find in those fields,” she said.

“My pictures mean something to me.  I’ve got hundreds of picture frames full of pictures.  I didn’t know the people but I figured it would mean something to them.”

Farris set about to find the owners, but had no luck.  She dropped the photos off at The Sentinel-Echo Thursday to see if the owner could be located by publishing the photos.

Farris also found a fourth photo, seemingly connected to the others because of one girl featured in both.

The girl was Teresa Chadwell, daughter of Randall and Bulah Chadwell, who used to live on Little Arthur Ridge Road.

But before the photos were printed in the paper, the owner was found.

Bulah Chadwell came into the newspaper office on West 5th Street Friday to buy a copy of the Monday, March 5 paper filled with tornado coverage. Bulah showed employees the location of her former home in an aerial photo in the March 5 edition.  Seeing she lived in the East Bernstadt community hardest hit by the tornado, Sentinel-Echo employees asked if she could identify anyone in the photographs.

“That’s my daughter,” she said.  

Two of the four photos are of her children when they were younger.  One is of her son, Kevin, and daughter, Teresa, at ages 3 and 1, respectively; another is of Teresa at age 11.  Teresa is now 18 and Kevin is 22.

The other two photographs are more recent, showing Teresa and her uncle, Phillip “Little Phillip” Jackson, and another showing Teresa, Bulah and her mother, Bertha Goins, together.

“Pictures is memories,” she said.  “We had a whole container of them.  We don’t know where they went.”

Although Farris and her family suffered some damage to their barn and roof, the Chadwells lost it all.

Thankfully, the family was not home at the time the tornado hit.  They had left for safety earlier that evening.

“The night of the tornado, I had a feeling we needed to leave,” Bulah said.  “It was about 6 p.m. and I felt like we needed to get out.”

The family was going to meet up at Goins’ home on the Clay County line.  Bulah and her daughter, Teresa, drove to Corbin to run an errand or two.

It wasn’t long though before Bulah started receiving phone calls from friends and neighbors.

“The first call was that the tornado hit East Bernstadt, the second was that it hit Little Arthur Ridge. The third call was to tell us our trailer was gone.”

It was devastating for the family, but at least they had their lives. The Chadwells were next door neighbors to Sherman Dewayne and Debbie Allen, who died in the tornado.  

“They were very good next door neighbors,” she said.

“It still hard. It’s going to take time.”

Bulah Chadwell takes solace she and her family came out of it with their lives.

“My daughter said to me, ‘Mommy, we don’t have nothing.’  But I told her God just gave us those things for a little bit. I told her it means a lot just to be alive.”

The family stayed in motels for a short period of time after the tornado before a family friend donated them the use of a little country house on Grimes Road near Pittsburg.

It’s hard to think that your home is gone, Bulah said, especially for her children.

“It’s all they’ve known. Since Kevin was three and Teresa one, that was home,” Bulah said.

The trio of photos found by Farris were actually in an album, Bulah said.  She knew this discovery would make her daughter smile.

“She won’t know what to think.  She’ll be happy,” she said.

A little shocked to come in for a paper and leave with photos you’d never thought you’d see again, Bulah said, “They say God works in mysterious ways. He does, doesn’t He?”



editor@sentinel-echo.com