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Latest Update: A Producer from the series "It Could Happen Tomorrow" contacted Marypat to do a segment on "What if an F5 Tornado hit the City of Chicago?" We taped in the summer of 2006 and it has ran numerous times in the past year. This new series from The Weather Channel, takes a close look at unbelievable acts of nature that, if they occur, could spell disaster in cities across America. The Storm Stories segment from the Spring of 2005 can be seen here.

 The following was written by Marypat in response to a family member's questions for a school project:

I never knew anything about tornadoes before the Plainfield Tornado hit. I ignored what I now recognize are signs. All four of the children, Austin age 6 weeks, Chase age 2, Clayton age 4 and Nicholas age 5 1/2 were down for afternoon naps. For the past 6 weeks I had been laying down for a nap as well, but today I decided to stay up and work on household bills. It was a terribly hot and humid afternoon. About 3 pm or so, it began to hail outside. My next-door neighbor called and asked if I heard any weather reports. While we were talking the phones went dead. The sound of hail woke up the 2 oldest boys who began to cry and ask why it was so dark and loud outside. I brought them to the front door and showed them the hail. I explained that it was just ice balls and that it could not hurt them, I looked at it as a learning experience. I told them to stop crying so that they wouldn't wake up the other 2 children. 

Suddenly, the trees began to twist and the skies turned a pea soup green. I thought we were in for a really bad storm. The baby's bed was next to a bank of windows near some large trees. I was concerned that a branch might swing too far and hit a window. I told the 2 older boys, Nicholas and Clayton to stay where they were and not to move. I went down the hall into my room and scooped the baby up out of his crib. I began beginning to turn so that I could go by the older boys and only remember hearing the loudest sound of crashing glass you could imagine. The next thing I knew was when I opened my eyes and I was 22 feet away from where I had been a second ago. I couldn't begin to tell you how I got there. I looked up and saw my neighbor's house instead of the wall in front of my 2-year old son's room. My baby son, Austin's eyes, nose and mouth were sealed shut with insulation. I sucked the insulation out of Austin's eyes, nose and mouth and began to nurse him to clear out his breathing passages. When I was sure he was breathing, I looked around.  I imagine I was in shock. I took me a minute to realize that I didn't know where 3 of my children were. Just as the horrendous thought that my kids were not anywhere to be seen went through my head, I heard my 2 oldest boys begin to scream. We yelled back and forth and I heard their voices get closer. Suddenly, they came scrambling out of a pile of debris (my home). When they got to me, they were hysterical. My oldest son, Nick, was screaming, "Where's Chase, where's Chase???!!!" I tried to get them to calm down so that I could give Nick the baby to hold. I climbed into the area where Chase's room USED to be and began pushing and pulling away debris to find Chase (the 2-year old). His head just popped up through a opening that a shattered window had left behind - - the wall had fallen over him in such a fashion that it landed over his sleeping body in the PERFECT position to keep him from being crushed ... He was ok, but sucking on his little pacifier furiously.... eyes wide.... I carried him back the few feet away to where his brothers were. We all huddled together. We couldn't get off the property because of all the seriousness of the damage. We sat there, buried in the house crying. The rain began again and there was a powerful smell of gas . . . I pulled a blanket that was in a pile of debris nest to us over our heads and the kids and I started to say bedtime prayers; I was certain that we were going to die. Suddenly we could hear a neighbor, Derrick Beggs, yelling to us. He was yelling that we had to get out of the house because of the smell of gas. I yelled back that we couldn't get out. He suddenly appeared through the wreckage and climbed in and took my sons out one by one. I climbed over the debris with Austin. We walked up the street and never looked back. It was not until later - - after my husband, Terry, found us that we walked back and saw the total destruction.

Afterwards we went to a relative's house and stayed. We needed to purchase everything you could imagine ... clothing, shoes, socks, toothbrushes ... We went to the doctor and was told that 6-week old Austin had cuts on his eyes from the insulation and my back was black and blue.... I didn't even remember getting hit with anything. The insurance company moved us into a hotel for about 4 weeks and then into a rental home until my husband, Terry, rebuilt our home. We were able to move in about 9 months after the tornado.

It took our oldest son, Nicholas, about 5 years to stop being afraid when there was bad weather. We had a family bed for months after the tornado, as well. Clayton, the 4 year old, would gather all of his toys for years and drag them into the crawlspace if there was bad weather. His birthday was 3 weeks before the tornado hit and he lost all his gifts - - that fear of loosing all his "things" stayed with him for years. As for me, to this day I will get up in the middle of the night and get dressed and put my purse next to the bed if it's bad weather outside - - or, we will move into the crawlspace.

I have a tendency to get a very sad feeling when I hear about a tragedy anywhere in the world. It get a crushing feeling in my chest because I KNOW how the people involved must feel. When the tornado sirens have gone off around home, I MUST have all my children around me. I have been known to jump into the car and grab my children from their school, a dentist appointment, the park - - I can't seem to let go of the feeling that if ANYTHING is going to happen to any of us, we are going to be together. When Nine-11 hit, I was so overwhelmed when the 2nd plane was still "missing", that I drove to all the kids' schools and took them out to be at home with me. I felt incredibly sad over the next month following 911. It brought back so many thoughts of "what-if"... I have found that the experience we lived through has made my children and I incredibly close. We are known as the family that all the friends seem to gravitate to. There is not a single weekend that we don't have "the cast of thousands" spend the night. Our kids prefer to be at home than at friend's homes, so we end up with everyone at our house. Of course I am happy with it that way because then I know where they are at all times. The only one that hasn't been left with this feeling is our daughter, Alexis. She spends the night with friends and they spend the night here. This picture was taken 2 weeks before the tornado in August of 1990.

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Our Story from The Enterprise Newspaper....Under Here....     
View Photos from the tornado here.

Marypat Gabor had just enough time to scoop up her 6-week-old son Austin before the windows blew in on his crib and she and the baby were thrown 22 feet to land in the only hall left standing in their home. "I opened my eyes and the walls were gone," she said. Her other three children, Nick, 5, Clayton, 4 and Chase, 2, were nowhere to be seen. "There was a period of time, except for the baby I had in my arms, that I believed they were all dead," Gabor said.  But, she found the three boys uninjured. Nick and Clayton were huddling under a painting of the Last Supper. By digging around, Chase, who had been napping, was found lying under a fallen wall in the rectangular space where a window had been. By now, rain and hail were pouring down and Gabor could smell gas. She knew she could not maneuver with four small children over the scraps of wood and metal to safety. "I just pulled the blanket over our heads and we started to pray," Gabor said. "I thought, if we're going to die, then we're all going to die together." It was then that the high school age neighbor, Derrick Beggs, came to the rescue, carrying them one by one out to the street. The families at the end of the cul du sac, those whose houses were not as badly damaged, took them, cleaned them up and gave them dry clothing to wear. For the next nine months, the Gabor family lived in a rented house in Lisle while Terry Gabor designed and rebuilt their home in Lily Cache. The new house included a cemented area in the crawl space, a storm shelter.

Marypat and the children attended months of counseling sessions to ease their fears of storms and calm anxieties about being separated from one another.

The youngest Gabor child, Alexis, 6, wasn't born when the tornado hit; but she knows the stories and has seen the pictures. Her brothers, even Nick, the oldest, remember very little. But the family has been drawn closer because of the experience, preferring to stay close to home, Marypat said.  Looking back, the family's survival seems a miracle, Marypat believes. "Some people have asked me, with all that has happened, "How can you believe in God?' Gabor said. "I say, how can you not?"

 

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