The Shorts show their strength

Good humor and strong family bonds help Kevin and Kerry Short overcome whatever adversity they face, including the destruction of their home.

MAYFLOWER, Ark. — You can’t help but gawk, even today, at the destruction caused six months ago by the tornado that tore through this area of central Arkansas. But if your former home is the subject of the stares, the gawking gets old — quickly.

So Kevin Short expressed his frustration with a simple, two-word sign that he stuck on a stake in front of what used to be his home: “Gawkers suck.” It proved to be a cheap form of entertainment.

Kevin and Kerry Short haven’t had much time to sit around since their home was destroyed on the evening of April 27. The red cloth folding chairs they use for an occasional break are stacked in their backyard, which overlooks Lake Conway, a 6,700-acre lake made by the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission in 1948.

Rather than the beautiful lake view from the back of their property, the Shorts have enjoyed the scenes from the other side, as people drive along Dam Road, which runs in front of their house and leads to the Lake Conway earthen dam.

“We’ve sat back and watched people slowly driving along, looking at all the damage,” Kerry said. “Then they’d see that sign, and they’d get the funniest looks on their faces. We’d just laugh and laugh.”

The sign is gone now. This is a construction, rather than a destruction, site now. Kevin and Kerry weren’t sitting at 10 a.m. on the first Sunday in November. Kevin was chipping native stone and sweeping sand for a walkway to his father’s house. Kerry pulled into the driveway on a Kubota tractor. Kevin’s 88-year-old father, Louie, was attending church services.

If you remember the story, Louie has much to be thankful for. He wedged himself between a freezer and a gun safe in one corner of his house before the tornado blew away everything but Louie. The gun safe was found in Lake Conway.

Louie’s new house is finished now. The new furniture and a washer and dryer were moved in last week.

Kevin and Kerry’s new home is located one house down the street. The roof is on and the drywall is up. They hope to be moved in by New Year’s Day. The Shorts travel together on the Bassmaster Elite Series tour, pulling a 34-foot camper, which has served as their living quarters, both home and away, since April.

“That thing gets a little smaller every single day,” said Kevin.

Even though it had been built in the 1960s, the Shorts had a nice, comfortable house here, before the tornado.

“We’d do a home improvement project every fall,” Kevin said. “We were going to put in all new windows this year.”

Looking on the bright side, they’ve got all new windows now. And that’s the way Kevin and Kerry choose to look at this — on the bright side.

“We’re going to have a brand new house, laid out just like we want it,” Kevin said. “The process hasn’t been fun, but the end product is great.”

And, as a friend reminded Kerry, “Just think, you don’t have one junk drawer to clean out before you move into that new house.”

Kevin and Kerry were at Toledo Bend Reservoir on the Sunday evening when the storm struck. Monday was scheduled to be the first day of practice for the Elite Series tournament there. They’d been watching the storm on weather radar and called Louie to warn him. In the aftermath, with so many cell towers down, it took 20 minutes to reach Louie by phone and find out that he was okay.

His message to them was simple and direct: “It’s bad. It’s all gone. You need to come home.”

So they headed back to Arkansas immediately. They reached the University of Arkansas Medical Center in Little Rock at 3 a.m. Monday and picked up Louie. He’d been taken there by Kevin’s brother, David, for treatment of scrapes and cuts incurred when his house was blown to bits.

Louie was lucky. His across-the-street neighbor was killed in the tornado. It was one of 16 deaths in Arkansas from the EF4 rated twister (winds of 166 to 200 mph). It stayed on the ground for almost 25 miles and destroyed an estimated 400 to 500 homes from Mayflower to Vilonia, Arkansas.

Most of the new houses on Dam Road are being constructed with “safe rooms” – closet-size interior spaces with no windows, just 8-inch-thick concrete and rebar reinforced walls, ceiling and floor.

It took a lot of work to reach the point where construction could begin. Few people, thankfully, realize what goes on in the weeks and months that pass in the aftermath of a tornado. The Shorts are all too familiar with the massive cleanup operation that must be completed first.

“All down this road on both sides, piles of debris were stacked so high we couldn’t see the road from our camper,” Kevin said. “There were trees, stumps, building materials, dumped refrigerators, garbage. It was one stinking mess. It was three weeks before that was hauled off, then it was piled up again. It took two months to haul all the debris away.”

The Arkansas Game & Fish Commission dredged 627 tons of debris from Lake Conway.

The tornado also took a toll on Short’s Elite Series season. By not competing, Short took a zero at Toledo Bend – 107th place and no points. The next event was at nearby Lake Dandanelle, considered Short’s home water.

“I thought Kevin would win that tournament,” Kerry said. “But there was still so much going on here. I was doing stuff every day, driving back and forth.”

Kevin not only didn’t win, he didn’t make the Day 2 cut, finishing 63rd. He’d started the season with a fifth-place finish at Georgia’s Lake Seminole. But with his withdrawal at Toledo Bend included, Lake Dardanelle marked the fourth tournament in a row for Short to miss the Top 50.

The next event, BASSfest at Lake Chickamauga, didn’t go any better. He finished 70th. To add insult to injury, he was the first man out in the Second Chance event that week, finishing 11th when only the Top 10 advanced. But every Elite Series angler was awarded the same number of points for competing in that tournament, which also included anglers from the Bassmaster Open divisions.

By the time of the next tournament on the Delaware River in Philadelphia, it was August and things had settled down at home. Debris had been removed. What could be repaired had been repaired. Floor plans had been chosen, Louie’s house was under construction, and work was starting on the Shorts’ home.

“We couldn’t do anything else here besides watch the construction,” Kevin said. “There was nothing to worry about. I decided to just go fishing.”

Added Kerry, “We were ready to get out of here. A drive to Philadelphia sounded like fun.”

Kevin added to the fun by finishing fourth at Philly. Then he finished ninth at New York’s Cayuga Lake. And suddenly Short was ranked among the Top 50 in the Elite Series standings with a chance to earn a Bassmaster Classic berth at Lake Michigan’s Bays de Noc. Short capped what has to be the most up-and-down-and-up season in Elite Series history by finishing 27th there and qualifying for the 2015 Classic.

“We’ve never been real materialistic people anyway,” Kevin said. “But something like this (tornado) kind of centers you. It makes you realize it’s not the stuff that’s important.”

Cool weather and shorter days have put fall colors on the leaves in Arkansas. But there are no fall colors on Dam Road in Mayflower. The trees left here are mostly just tall stumps with few branches and no leaves.

Again, Kevin and Kerry Short have chosen to look at the bright side.

“It used to be a non-stop chore from October through January, keeping the leaves picked up,” said Kerry, who smiled and added, “I haven’t picked up a single leaf this fall.”

Kevin, if prompted, can take a philosophical view of the last six months. These days he’s fond of quoting a line from the song “Like A Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan: “When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.”

And he’s learned something about the character of both himself and his wife.

“Never underestimate the power of sheer determination,” Kevin said.