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Couple's new start dashed; a family of 5 becomes 2

By JACOB FRIES AND BEN MONTGOMERY
Published February 4, 2007

LAKE MACK - Bryan McKiness wouldn't wait for the sun to come up on Saturday. He had to see the spot now.

His uncle led him through the darkness to a small clearing on the edge of the rubble. This was where his mother and her fiance were found dead, feet from each other.

McKiness took two shards of wood, fashioned a cross and planted it in the ground. He found one of his mother's Bibles among the wreckage and began reading. McKiness hasn't been one for going to church, but standing there, with the sun rising, he said he felt his mother's presence.

"I think God's plucking the good souls from this earth and I think doomsday is on the rise," said McKiness, 31.

Otherwise, he wondered, why would Friday's tornado take Jamie Wright and Donald Scott Lamond?

Wright, 55, never had it easy. She divorced her first husband, becoming a single mother of five. She remarried, but her second husband died of cancer. Homestead, where she lived since childhood, never felt the same after Hurricane Andrew.

So two years ago, she got a fresh start in Lake County. She and Lamond, 49, decided to open a produce business together. They worked on their new house and grew close to the neighbors.

"She was so happy to be here," McKiness said. "She loved the lake, the fish, the wilderness and the wildlife."

On Saturday, as McKiness dug through splintered wood and shattered glass, he thought of rebuilding. The house could be whole again. It could be a place for the entire family to be near Mom.

"I know she would want us close by," he said.

* * *

Becky Nolan stood in stocking feet in the parking lot of the Forest Hills Country Store. She wore hospital scrubs. Her arm was in a sling. Her left eye was black and puffy. She seemed lost.

She said she was home asleep when the storm blew through. She woke to her husband, Billy, telling her to get out. She grabbed her 11-year-old son, ran outside and tried to start the truck, but it wouldn't crank.

So she ran.

That's all she said she remembered.

Someone found her wandering after the storm. She was treated at the hospital and returned to find her home destroyed. A deputy told her that her husband and 7-year-old, Jacob, were crushed by rubble.

A friend brought her to the store.

"I want my baby back," she said. "I want my baby back."

* * *

Triplets Heather and Kayla Downing, 15, went to bed Thursday knowing they had a mother, a father and a brother. By Friday, they only had each other.

Father Donald, 46, mother Carla, 35, and brother Doug, 15, perished when a tornado demolished their home in rural Lake County. Heather suffered unknown injuries, but Kayla escaped the storm because she was staying with her aunt. All three children were students at Umatilla High School.

* * *

Brittany May, 17, died when a tree fell on her as she slept. The slender teenager hadn't lived in Lady Lake long, just recently moving from her father's home in the Clermont area to live with her mother.

The Leesburg High sophomore was making new friends but kept in touch with old ones from South Lake High, where she had participated in ROTC.

* * *

Among the others who died in Friday's tornado were:

- Emily Elizabeth Halvorson, 77, of Lady Lake, a retired cosmetologist from Gaylord, Mich. Halvorson lived in the Sunshine Mobile Home Park in Lady Lake and was killed when a tree fell on her home.

- Bernice Marshall, 87, who also lived in the Sunshine Mobile Home Park. Marshall, formerly of Whitefield, N.H., was found in a ditch.

Information from the Orlando Sentinel was used in this report.

[Last modified February 4, 2007, 00:49:06]