Were you here for that? 

I was, and as a young 25-year-old new homeowner, let me tell you, my husband and I became real, bonafide adults that day.

As I wrote on my then-active Facebook account, “At 25 years old, I do NOT feel old enough to deal with homeowners insurance claims or tornado damage or downed power lines. Isn’t this sort of stuff for middle-aged people? Thankful to be safe and to go through this with Peter.”

Of course, now I realize that things like this happen to just about everyone at some point or other in their lives, that middle age isn’t some mystical point of total capability for crisis management, and that my gratitude over weathering that storm (literally!) with my husband was not misplaced. 

It isn’t as if Mother Nature says, “Well, you know, I’d love to drop a gnarly storm on Calhoun County this month, but Erin Gentry isn’t old enough to navigate that yet, so I’ll hold off.” 

Can you imagine? Ha!

At any rate, on that fateful day, my husband and I had no idea that anything other than “a chance of rain” would be heading our way in the afternoon. 

We had decided earlier that day to pitch the tent that we had received as a wedding present in our backyard, with plans to camp out, as only city slickers can, once night fell. 

I look at the picture of that young woman smiling from inside of the tent and I think, Buckle up, Sally. You have no idea what is coming!

Dark clouds had begun to form on the horizon, and we -- so, so naively -- thought that we would test the tent’s waterproof claims and just leave it up during the “chance of rain” that was coming. 

We had pre-bought tickets for a movie. I’m sorry to say it was for the fourth installment of “Pirates of the Caribbean” titled “On Stranger Tides,” and it was just about time to leave as the wind began to pick up.

I was upstairs, curling my hair as one does when she is about to spend the next two or so hours in a darkened movie theater, when I heard the unmistakable sound of the tornado siren going off. 

“That’s weird,” my husband casually observed from the other room. “Are we supposed to get a bad storm or something?” 

I laugh now when I think of how wholly unbothered and unafraid we were and how relaxed his tone was.

At this point the wind began to get our attention as curtains billowed and the whooshing sound of leaves and branches whipping about intensified.

“Shut the windows!” my husband commanded, in a decidedly less-relaxed way, and I sprang into action with him, running around and slamming windows shut as fast as we could. 

Seconds later, many windows still open, Peter grabbed my hand and shouted over the noise outside, “Forget the windows. We need to get to the basement NOW!” 

As I ran, I saw large limbs and branches literally flying past the windows, in all directions. 

The last thing I saw before clambering down into the basement was our neighbor’s slender pine tree as it fell, smashing the fencing that connected to both of our homes. 

Not long after that, the power went out and the deafening roar had subsided, leaving brief and torrential rain in its wake. 

We made our way upstairs and struggled to understand what our eyes were seeing; every window along the back side of our home was completely darkened by wet plastered leaves and piled-up limbs thrown against the structure. 

We realized we were landlocked; enormous mature trees on either end of our block had fallen into the road way, rendering travel for us and those who lived between the nearest cross streets completely impossible. 

Aside from a heavy limb falling onto a section of roof, our home and the majority of our property was miraculously fine - albeit completely buried in limbs, branches and debris. 

My husband is 6’2” and when I say that the storm detritus in the yard was at least waist-high on him, I mean it. 

The rain was still tapering off as we timidly ventured outside to survey the damage to our neighborhood. 

We saw our wedding present tent in absolute shambles across the street. At that point, the tent had as much rigidity as a plastic shopping bag and was, as my husband remembers, “unrecognizable as a tent.” 

It was such an odd feeling to drive up Columbia Avenue later that day and see the power lines along the road by Taco Bell and Meijer leaning over the road at an angle, and if memory serves, the roof had blown off of Uncle Ed’s Oil Change, as well.

The impact of the storm in our area made national news at the time, and miraculously, despite homes and businesses sustaining incredible damage, no lives were lost that day. 

According to information provided by Todd Gerber, Department of Public Works Field Services superintendent, the City of Battle Creek spent just over $650,000 for cleanup related to the storm 10 years ago, with the bulk of the resources going to the Department of Public Works for labor and equipment costs.

Gerber also shared that more than 30 traffic signals were without power once the storm passed, and that more than 35 percent of the city’s sewer lift stations were running on generator power. (If you’re like me and didn’t know what a lift station does, they “pump wastewater up elevations in places where gravity can't move the wastewater through the pipe system,” which seems pretty important.) 

I was incredulous to later learn that the massive damage in Battle Creek wasn’t caused by tornados, but by straight-line winds that topped out at a brisk 100 miles per hour. (As it turns out, the line of storms that produced the winds that wreaked such havoc in Battle Creek did spawn two tornados: one near Coldwater and one in St. Joseph County, but none occurred here.)

Having heard the roar of “straight-line winds” I can now state with confidence that I have been cured of any residual excitement I had after watching the 1996 thriller “Twister.”

I now fervently hope to never weather an actual tornado.

When I think back on that time, I remember how it felt to wake up every morning to the smell of gasoline and hear nothing but chainsaws, ringing loudly from dawn until dusk. (The relentless pounding of roofing nails after the massive hail storm we had years later in 2019 were in that same genre of disaster cleanup background noise.)

We gained so much personal confidence as we navigated the slow process of working with insurance, doing the bulk of limb removal work ourselves, and accepting help from friends who allowed us to stay with them since our home was one of the tens of thousands without power.

So much of what Peter and I learned during the restoration period after what I shall always think of as The Great and Terrible Memorial Weekend Storm of 2011 has proven useful in many other areas of our lives -- not least of which is parenting, where (as many of you know) tornado-adjacent cleanup is de rigueur.   

“Your medal is in the mail,” my husband likes to joke with me when I’ve highlighted my own accomplishments or longsuffering a bit too keenly. But really, shouldn’t there be a sash or vest, á la Girl Scouts, where we can earn badges for enduring such things?