MAYFIELD, Ky. — Reverend Joey Reed is the pastor at Mayfield First United Methodist Church. When the December 10 tornado roared through, he and his wife took shelter in the massive steel and stone structure.
Reed said, “We hunkered down in a small closet in that Sunday school classroom. We heard lumps and bumps that we thought might have been furniture being thrown around.”
Remembering that night is hard enough, but coming to see what’s left of the church is also traumatic for Reverend Reed.
“What we did not understand was that the south wall and the north wall had both fallen away towards the Baptist Church. The roof was gone.” He added, “The pews, the floor of the sanctuary, everything had fallen into the fellowship hall.”
He told Spectrum News 1, “It is harder every time to come back because there’s some little piece in the wreckage, some little bit of the rubble, that reminds me of something else that I’m grieving something else that I’m mourning.”
Reed says it’s not just the loss of the building that’s hard, but all the memories made inside including weddings and baptisms.
The reverend said, “This building was designed in somewhere around 1916 or 1917 and was completed in 1919. We just had the 100th celebration 100 anniversary of the sanctuaries’ construction.”
Hearing the storm sirens go off Tuesday, just a little over two months, since the horrific tornado wasn’t easy for him.
“I grabbed a pillow that was going to protect my head just hunker down in the hallway this time, and I could tell my heart was beating a little harder than it used to,” Reed said.
Mayfield is years from making a full recovery. The effects of this tornado will last a lifetime.
Reed added, “I’m not nearly as nonchalant about those storm warnings as I used to be.”
Reverend Reed says it’s hard to put a timeframe on when the church could be back up.
“Mayfield first was a landmark with those six columns out front. You knew where you were in Mayfield.”
For the meantime, Rev. Reed is having services at Christ United Methodist Church.
“The resilience of this town is unmistakable. The difficulties that we’ve experienced with this is not our first tornado. We’ve been through ice storms. We have seen trouble throughout pandemic.”
Reed says Mayfield is dedicated to rebuilding . “The logo represents who we are and who we were. We got to figure out who we’re going to. At this point.”