Category: As Told By My Mother

As told by my mother, Betty Burton Rizzo

I was a little girl of only five years old. I had not started school yet. I had a father and a mother and twin brothers who were seven months old. I was happy with my family and loved them very much, and they loved me.

My parents had been Christians all my life. I never knew any kind of life except going to church regularly with my parents and grandparents. All my life my parents taught me the Word of God. The first book I ever owned was a Bible storybook. My parents read me stories from the book and every night had family prayer. My mother or father would say, “It’s your time to pray.” 

And then I would begin to pray: “Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”  This was something I was accustomed to doing every night before I went to bed. 

My dad purchased forty acres of a farm in 1945. This was during World War II. The property was surrounded by woods on every side. He built a house on the property in the middle of the woods and moved our family into it. It was not a large house. But there was room for our family in it. Because the house was far off in the woods, it did not have a paved road that came to it, only a dusty dirt road. During the war, materials like copper that were needed for electrical wires were not available. So it would be several years before the house would have electricity. 

Even though it was the middle of the 20th century, the family lived like pioneers from the 1800s. Mother cooked on a wood-burning stove and washed clothes by hand. At night, the house was lit by kerosine lamps and heated by a fireplace. 

One day in March, I was having breakfast. Wearing a nightgown and little cloth house shoes, I sat at the kitchen table. Mother had mixed together butter and syrup, and I was sopping it up with a homemade biscuit. One little brother was sitting beside me in a highchair. The other little brother had spent the night at my grandmother’s house. I noticed that my mother kept going to the doors and windows and looking out. But that did not disturb me. I was just having breakfast. 

Suddenly, one of the doors blew backward and outward. I wondered what made the door do that. But I was not worried. I continued to eat breakfast while my mother closed the door and locked it as tightly as possible. Next, I heard a roar from outside. But I was still not worried. Mother was there.

Then Mother began to hurry back toward me and my little brother. She walked past a bed when suddenly the house jolted as strong winds hit it. Mother fell over on the bed flat on her back with her feet hanging off the edge and touching the floor. I felt the house shake and then lift upward. I started to feel frightened for the first time. 

Across from her in the kitchen was a window facing the outside of the house. She saw the window panes break and fly out. On the table by the window was a large basket of fresh eggs. It flew out the window. The next thing I knew, I was on the floor with my chair turned over beside me. 

I reached out and grabbed the bottom of my little brother’s highchair to keep it upright. Mother was still on the bed and could not stand up because of the motion of the house. The rain was horrific. It kept raining and raining and raining. The house lifted up and off its supporting pillars of blocks and large stones and moved as the pillars gave way. The house moved to the side about three feet and landed on the corner where the kitchen was, driving it deep into the wet ground. 

My mother finally made her way to me. I still did not know what was happening, but I was frightened. Mother helped me up and picked up my little brother. She held me close by her side with one hand and my little brother cradled with the other and began to pray “Lord, help us. Save us from destruction.” 

Standing by my mother as the rain poured in on us, I began to pray too. I looked up toward the ceiling and imagined Jesus in Heaven looking down on us. This was the first time in my life that I prayed without someone telling me it was my time to pray. For the first time in my heart and my life I felt a need and a prompt to pray without someone telling me “it’s your time to pray.” I prayed to God for safety and to take care of my family. 

When the strong wind passed, everything in the house was covered in grit from the wind and rain and broken glass and wood. The house was heavily damaged. It looked like it could fall on us any minute, so my mother put a coat on me and wrapped up my little brother. Then Mother put on something to keep dry and headed out the door with me and my baby brother. 

The house was at the bottom of a long, sloping hillside that was covered in trees. Water from the rain was flowing down the hill. As we stepped out of the house, the water was already deep. Debris was floating in the water and rushing by us. Boards with nails and broken tree branches brushed up against us. As we walked, the water got deeper and deeper until it was up to my waist. Finally, Mother said, “We can’t do this. We’ve got to go back.”

They could not go any farther, so my mother and little brother and I headed back toward the damaged home. We took shelter in what was left of our home. The windows were out, the doors were gone. It was a terrible situation. 

Then help arrived. 

We saw a teenage boy on horseback. His family lived at the top of the hill. Joe Bob looked at my mother and said, “Let me take the little girl first. Then I’ll come back for you and the baby.” 

He took me to his house. His house was half gone as well. In one room his father lay sick in a broken bed inside a bedroom with three walls missing. His mother took me. Then he left. He returned with my little brother, still wrapped in the quilt Mother had put around him. After another trip, Joe Bob returned with my mother. 

The Brazeals, the family at the top of the hill, was kind to us. They found dry clothes for Mother and took care of my little brother and me. 

My Daddy had an uncle who lived nearby. Soon, he found us. Uncle George had been concerned after the storm passed through and had set out looking for us. Later my father returned from work. His factory was miles away, so he did not know about the storm until he returned from work. 

Over the next several weeks while my little brothers and I stayed with my grandparents, my mother and father camped at their small farm to repair the damage from the storm. Their clothes and sheets were all wet and nasty. My mother worked hard to clean them. Some of the furniture was broken and damaged. Over the next several weeks, my father had to completely tear the house down. His uncle and cousins helped him rebuild it. This was hard, heartbreaking work. But finally the house was rebuilt and our family could move back in it. 

The house still did not have electricity. It would be several years before it did. We still only had a dirt road that sometimes turned to mud and had deep ruts that caused the bottoms of cars to drag. We still lived the life of a pioneer in the middle of the 20th century. But this was okay. My family was safe. 

Almost eighty years later, I am a grown woman, not a little girl. But I still reminisce about this day.  The most important thing about that day is that God listened and that God had allowed me to have the privilege to be taught that He is always listening. I learned that when I am is in trouble, I can cry out to God, which is something I lived with all of life from that time to now.