Overview

Derwood Lane, a Balmorhea high school teacher, watched spellbound and horrified as a half-mile-wide tornado crashed down on the little town of Saragosa, Texas, just six miles away from where he was watching. Minutes later, the town was the scene of death and destruction. The time was 8:30 p.m. on Friday, May 22, 1987. Twenty-nine people were killed, and more than one hundred were injured. Some were students in Lane's high school art and English classes. Many of the others were personal friends or acquaintances. The author joined the volunteers and professionals who worked frantically through the long night of horrors. The nightmare of the storm as Lane and other survivors lived it throughout that night and for weeks afterward is described graphically in Saragosa: The Town Killed by a Tornado. As the Lanes met the victims, the caregivers, the witnesses, so will the reader. The author was able to record their stories with realism and detail, but also with empathy and love for those who were his friends and neighbors. In his epilogue, the author provides suggestions on how a community can prepare for such a tragedy and dispels several myths about tornadoes.

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9781681793979

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For eight and a half years, Derwood Lane served as a high school English teacher in the Balmorhea, Texas, public schools.Reared on a Central Texas cotton farm near Corsicana, he earned a bachelor's degree in English and Bible from John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, and a master's degree in vocational-technical education from North Texas State University.He pursued graduate studies in anthropology, education, psychology, music, art, and English at the University of Oklahoma (Norman), Central State College (Edmond, Oklahoma), the University of California at Riverside, Northern Arizona University (Flagstaff), and Texas A&M University.His sixteen-year teaching career included work with the Bureau of Indian Affairs on the Navajo Reservation, as well as positions in Texas public schools.Lane's varied career has also included ownership of an antiques business and a natural history museum, as well as service as president of a food industry company. He has additionally worked as an archaeologist at Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1943.He and his wife, Raquel, retired to Salida, Colorado.

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