Phil Campbell High School

Phil Campbell High School.

On April 27, 2011, an EF5 tornado tore through Franklin County and devastated the town of Phil Campbell. The old high school, a place generations of students had called their own, was destroyed.

But the story of Phil Campbell did not end that afternoon.

The school was rebuilt. Classrooms filled again. Students returned. Ballgames were played. Graduations were celebrated. A community that experienced unimaginable loss chose to rebuild and carry forward.

As I draw the new Phil Campbell High School for the Hometown Collection, I don’t want this piece to remember only what was rebuilt. I want it to remember those who could not be here to see it.

In memory of the lives lost in Franklin County on April 27, 2011

Donna Renee Berry, 52

Nila Black, 68

Zan Reese Black, 46

Jeffrey Dewight Cothan, 35

Jack Cox, 78

Charlene Denise Crochet, 41

Donnie Gentry, 63

Patricia Ann Gentry, 50

Donald Ray Heaps, 49

Lester William Hood, 81

James Robert Keller Jr., 33

Linda Faye Knight, 57

Rickey Ethan Knox, 10

Amy LeClere, 33

Jay W. LeClere, 45

Dagmar Leyden, 56

Claudia I. Mojica, 38

Edgar Mojica, 10

Kelli Thorn Morgan, 24

Mike Morgan, 32

Edna Lucille Bradley Nix, 89

Martha Lou Pace, 64

Georgia Scribner, 83

Jack E. Tenhaeff, 67

Sonya Collette Trapp, 48

Carroll Dean “C.D.” Waller, 76

Gerri Waller, 64

These were not simply names in a history book. They were parents and grandparents, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, siblings, friends and neighbors. They were part of Franklin County, and they remain part of its story.

This drawing is for the school that rose again, the community that carried on, and the people whose absence is still felt fifteen years later.

April 27, 2011

We remember.