BY KATHI STEARNS

Staff Writer

PEACHTREE CORNERS--John Tarpley, a parishioner of All Saints Church, Dunwoody, had planned to attend Easter Mass with his family.

Instead he was at home waiting for his Allstate insurance agent to survey the damage caused by the tornado that swept through his neighborhood during the early hours of Holy Thursday.

"I know I need to go and say 'Thank you' to the Lord for protecting my family," Tarpley said as he fought back tears April 12. "But I also need to stay here and protect my house and meet with the insurance agent so we can start to put this thing behind us and get on with our lives. The Lord knows how thankful I really am."

Tarpley knows that this won't be easy for his wife Pamela, son Hamilton, 8, and four-month-old daughter Katherine. Tarpley and his family are trying to pick up the pieces after a tornado slammed into their Cedar Corners subdivision.

"Home has always been a place of comfort and security for my son," Tarpley said. "Now it is a place where my son has endured one of the most horrific experiences I hope he will ever have to endure."

The violent storm swept into parts of suburban Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties just after midnight April 9, four hours after taking the lives of 32 people and injuring 160 in Birmingham, Ala.

In Georgia, John Janisch, 72, a parishioner at All Saints Church and a resident of the Kingsley Estates subdivision was killed when a tree crushed his house. Janisch, whose funeral Mass was celebrated at the Dunwoody parish April 13, was the only fatality in the metropolitan Atlanta area. Authorities said the death toll would have been far greater if many people had not taken cover.

The human suffering and destruction to homes and neighborhoods in Dunwoody, Peachtree Corners and other areas is still being tallied.

All Saints Deacon Ray Egan estimated that 200 or more parishioners experienced significant damage to their homes and as many as 50 have very severe damage and may lose their homes. Five people on the All Saints parish staff alone were impacted.

Tarpley, who had gone to sleep at 11 p.m. April 8, was awakened at approximately 12:30 a.m.

"Suddenly I heard a loud noise that woke me up instantly," he said. "My son ran into our bedroom. My wife, who was caring for Katherine at the time, yelled, 'Come and get in the bathroom; there is a tornado.' We all met in the central bathroom and we got down on our knees and started praying. The noise was incredible. We tried to pray louder than the noise, but it just wasn't possible. It was the worst 10 minutes of my life. The house was shaking. We could hear the glass in the windows imploding, things flying and hitting the walls of the house and the trees falling and crushing the house."

After the storm had quieted, Tarpley left his family in the bathroom to check the security of the house.

He found himself trapped since the Sheetrock from the roof had fallen, blocking access to the front door. Pink insulation dangled silently from the ceiling, while rain poured steadily into the house through the holes which had been created by the eight trees that had torn through his roof.

Fearing that the house might collapse, Tarpley climbed through his daughter's bedroom window and slowly moved the family to his car.

"We sat in the car for two hours as it rained," he said. "Everything was pitch black, it was hailing and the wind was still blowing. At 4 a.m., Pam's cousin, who had heard of the tornado report, came by and took my kids and wife to my mother-in-law's house."

Tarpley stayed to wait for daybreak and begin the cleanup process.

"This experience cannot compare with anything else I have ever seen," he said. "Even though everyone in this neighborhood is horribly shaken and depressed, they realize that it is a miracle that no one in this neighborhood was killed."

Tarpley says that his faith has grown stronger as a result of this experience. "When you go through something like this, it is like tempering a piece of metal and turning it into steel---it makes you stronger, particularly in your relationship with God. I don't say, 'Why us? Why my family? Why my house?' The reality is that God is here to give us strength and to help us and sustain us in hard times just as much as in good times. You can't thank God for all the good things we have and then turn around and blast him when something bad happens. That is pointless. God loves and cares for us in all circumstances and for that I am grateful."

"We are the most thankful family in the world today," said Michael Govin, a parishioner at St. Patrick's Church, Norcross, whose wife, Sory, is the director of religious education for children in kindergarten through sixth grade. The tornado sliced through the Govin house, also in Cedar Corners, leaving only the frame of the downstairs.

Govin and his wife were in bed when the tornado hit. Their daughters Zulaine, 16, and Amanda, 12, ran toward their parents' room fearful of the high winds and relentless lightning.

"When they woke us up to tell us they were scared of the storm, the room literally exploded," Govin said. "I could hear pine trees snapping as if shotgun shells were going off. The walls of the room fell on me as I was thrown about the room. I landed on my wife and older daughter and tried to protect them from the Sheetrock. The force of the storm threw my younger daughter out of the room leaving her separated from the family. When I looked up, I realized that there was no roof, no walls and the floor we were on was collapsing."

Govin searched for Amanda, who had been blown out of the room.

"I kept calling her and she would respond," he said. "I knew she was alive, but I had to dig her out of the rubble. As soon as I got her out of the house, I realized we had to vacate our home because the whole upstairs was gone and the water was seeping into the house."

Govin, whose leg had been ripped open, gathered his family and their pets, a dog and two parakeets, and headed for safety. "We made the decision to leave our three fish behind; we thought they'd be right at home with all that water." The family took refuge at the home of a neighbor who is an orthopedic surgeon.

"She got out her flashlight and stitched the five-inch gash in my leg," he said. "Our neighbor also checked out my daughter and made sure she was okay. My wife had called 911 on her cell phone, but they told us because of the downed power lines that they could not access the area immediately."

The family has returned to their home periodically to meet with insurance agents and salvage anything that was not ruined by the tornado and rain that followed.

"I was able to get out most of my china and the family photo albums," Sory said. "I can't tell you how much it meant to get those pictures out safely."

Parishioners at St. Patrick's have rallied around the family who have relocated to a nearby hotel. "People have been calling and saying, 'You know we're praying for you, what else can we do.'" Govin said. "All day Saturday and Sunday they helped us pack up our house and move our possessions into storage. Without their prayers and support we would be lost."

Diane Ricker, an All Saints parishioner, says that the Cedar Corners neighborhood has really come together as the community tries to re-establish a feeling of normalcy.

"My husband and some of the other neighbors have spent the last three days pulling downed trees out of the roads and driveways so that people can get in and out of their homes," she said.

The Rickers' house sustained minimal damage despite the loss of 23 trees.

"The few people in the neighborhood who weren't hit as hard have tried to be a resource to those families whose lives were turned upside down overnight," she said. "People have been trying to check on the elderly members of the community whose homes were devastated by the tornado. Since insurance companies will only cover the trees that hit the house, we are trying to help our neighbors with that burden. We have also tried to protect people's property from looters."

Ricker said that the community has received incredible support from numerous county organizations as well as from prisoners who helped clear surrounding roads.

"There are many people who are the unsung heroes of this tragedy," she said. "At 4 a.m. on Thursday four men in yellow slickers came through the neighborhood and went house to house making sure that everyone was okay. Another man stayed up all night sharpening the blades of the men's chainsaws so they could continue to cut down the trees. These are the people to whom we will be forever grateful."

Ricker said the frustrating part of the ordeal has been the gawkers. "So many people have come into the neighborhood just to look," she said. "It has been so frustrating that people are making an afternoon outing of someone else's tragedy. It is such an emotional and personal thing. You want to say to these people, 'If you're not here to help, please leave.'"

David Donahue, adult enrichment coordinator at All Saints Church who works with the archdiocesan pastoral ministry formation program, lives in the "miracle house" in the subdivision because in spite of devastating damage, no one was hurt. Seven trees ripped through the roof of his house, one falling on his 13-year-old son Patrick's room and two on his daughter Amy's room.

"Patrick was up past his bedtime playing games on the computer. If my son had been lying in his bed he would have been crushed," Donahue said. "The tree came down through the side wall and split his bed in half. Everytime I walk by his room, I cry. I see where my son should have been. It is so overwhelming."

Donahue said that as the tornado howled through his house, he and his family prayed. The experience helped them grasp the concept of how frail life is.

"We understood the concept of mortality in a way that we had never experienced in life," he said. "We realized that we are God's creatures and that we aren't in control."

Donahue said throughout the ordeal he and his family prayed at an intensity level that was unique for them.

"You pray at such depth because you realize that you may be saying 'hello' to your Creator at any second," he said. "But throughout it all you feel the loving touch of God. Even though I have lost my house and so many of my possessions, I cannot help but say 'Thank you' because I still have my family. I have every reason to be grateful and every minute of every day I should be saying, 'Thank you, Lord.'"

Donahue has moved his family out of their home. Even though the trees have been removed from the roof, the damage caused by the heavy rains is insurmountable for the family to overcome.

"After our Easter brunch we are going to come back home and pack up our stuff and move into the hotel," he said. "Even though my house looks pretty bad today, it looks a lot better than it did Thursday. In two or three years when someone comes to visit me there will be no evidence of the storm. There will be a resurrection here. It's something we can hold onto and believe in because it is what our faith teaches and what we celebrate today."