WEATHERING THE STORM IN GORDONVILLE

Larry and Barbara Whitlock are busy rebuilding near the site of their old home and say they can't wait to return to Gordonville.

You might say Larry and Barbara Whitlock found a silver lining in a storm cloud.

During a freak storm just after Labor Day last year, violent winds ripped a portion of the roof from the Whitlocks' house trailer. Although the accident left them homeless and their possessions in danger of being ruined by rain, they say they couldn't help but be impressed with the generosity and concern shown them by many of their Gordonville neighbors.

"We were at my in-laws' house [in Cape Girardeau] that evening when we got a call from the sheriff's office and they told us our home had been damaged," Barbara Whitlock recalled. "So we got in our car and were speeding down Route K and I saw three telephone poles that had been clipped off at the top because of the storm.

"When I saw those telephone poles, it was hard for me to try and imagine what our house was going to look like."

Once Larry and Barbara arrived the actual scene was equally hard to believe as a large portion of the trailer's top had been ripped off and a heavy rain was falling into the home.

One of the Whitlocks' neighbors, Paul Seabaugh, who lives about 80 yards away from where the Whitlocks' home sat, said the sound of the roof being ripped from the trailer was loud enough that he believed his own home had been damaged.

"It was a spooky night that night," recalled Seabaugh. "My wife and I were here at home and we saw the clouds blow up and my wife said that we better go to the basement. We got down in the basement and that's when I heard the awfullest noise and I thought, 'Oh, boy. A big tree limb has hit my roof!'

"Then I came outside and saw that roof blown off and laying on the ground out there."

But just as the destruction of their home was heart-rending, the sight of the Whitlocks' neighbors was equally as heart-warming. Many of those who lived near the Whitlocks had beat the couple to the scene and had already begun work to protect the trailer's contents from the pouring rain. While some helped place plastic sheeting over the open spot in the roof, others helped the Whitlocks' carry their furniture and other belongings to safety.

"When we got here, the neighbors were already out and the neighbor's son across the street got a big piece of plastic and a ladder and he pulled that over the top of the trailer," explained Barbara Whitlock.

"The girl from across the street, [Paul's daughter] Theresa Seabaugh, came over and helped me moved everything out of the rain and into our shop," she added. "It was pouring rain and everything was getting wet and we had to make a lot of trips back and forth to get everything inside.

"Then she brought some boxes over to put stuff in and helped me get some things together for the night," said Mrs. Whitlock. "When something like that happens, you're pretty much left with nothing."

Whitlock said that as she and her husband and their neighbors began work to safeguard everything, members of the Gordonville Volunteer Fire Department turned out to ensure that everything was safe.

"The firemen here are all volunteers and in the pouring-down rain, they turned out and shined their light on things and made sure the gas had been turned off to the trailer."

Paul Seabaugh, a 30-year resident of Gordonville, said that the scene of neighbor helping neighbor was impressive to him.

"There were a lot of good neighbors out here that night," he said. "Just about the whole neighborhood was out here.

"It's odd how a little town will work together when something like that happens."

Once the Whitlocks got their possession squared away, they found that their troubles were not over.

"Once I got over the shock of losing my home, I thought, 'Well, we'll just find an apartment or something in Cape and live but that was at the height of all the flooding last year and when we started looking, there wasn't anything open in Cape or Jackson. You had to get on a waiting list for an apartment because so many people had been displaced by the flooding," said Barbara Whitlock.

"Finally, a friend of ours, Bob Ervin, called and said we could live upstairs at his house. We lived there six weeks before we were able to find an apartment," she explained.

Now, the Whitlocks are rebuilding on a site only a few yards from the former site of their trailer and near the body shop Larry Whitlock operates in Gordonville.

"We wanted to move back out here as soon as we could," she explained. "It's quiet and the people here are nice and this is home out here.

"There's probably so much more camaraderie in small towns than in the city and that's probably because in a small town, everyone knows you," added Mrs. Whitlock. "In the city, there's so much public service to take care of things that people don't have to get involved the way they do here."