As she drove home last Saturday evening, Shawn Leverett saw what appeared to be a storm with lightning and heavy rain ahead to the east of her.
Then she pulled in her long driveway.
“Trees were down, and then I saw something dark in the headlights,” she said. “And it turned out to be red clay stuck under the roots of a tree that was down on top of my house, and another tree also was down, and it was holding up that tree. I sat there in tears, scared to go into the house. So, I pulled around back and could see the rafters where the tree was literally pulling the house apart.”
A total of six trees were uprooted by the storm that passed over Leverett’s home on the 700 block of Oconee Springs Road on June 8. Leverett said she knew of at least three of her neighbors who also had trees down in their yards and one on their roof.
Because the tree was on the very end of the house, Leverett was able to go inside the home she’d lived in for 31 years.
“Limbs were poking down through the ceiling like a bow had shot arrows; it’s crazy,” she described.
A set of her grandmother’s china coffee cups was still sitting on a shelf, but Leverett was surprised to see one of the cups lying on the floor, unbroken. Some mirrors were knocked off the wall and onto the floor, but they also weren’t broken.
Leverett and her late husband, Glynn, built the house and moved into it in 1994, two years after they married. She said Johnny Million framed it for them.
“And he built it strong,” she said. “So many of the others who helped build it are now gone. I love it here. There’s a path to the creek, it’s called Turkey Creek, that my kids used to swim in. That tree that’s on my house was a good, healthy pecan tree. It was bearing pecans and has always been a nice shade tree in my front yard.”
The storm happened around 8:30 p.m., and the heavy rainfall continued throughout the night, soaking much of the interior of the house where the tree had fallen.
“But all that’s just materialistic,” Leverett said. “I see some blessings from it because I was already doing some upgrades, and now the insurance will help. Something good comes out of every adversity that happens, and it always makes you stronger; I believe that.”
Leverett said her homeowners' insurance company, State Farm, has been very helpful, and tree removal was already in progress over the weekend, and “huge” tarps covered the roof. So, it looks like many more memories will be made at the homeplace.