Greensburg teacher becomes a beacon in the night for scared, lost first grader

By David Myers

Southwest Kansas Register

It’s difficult to imagine a time when a first grader would be happier to set eyes on his teacher.

The little boy, dressed only in pajama bottoms, was having a sleepover on the night of May 4 when a tornado ripped the house out from around him.

“We went out on the roof,” the first grader would later exclaim, not quite understanding that the “roof” he referred to was actually the main floor of the house with an open view of the night sky.

One can only guess what happened next, but at some point in the confusion, he may have wandered off into the night, probably trying to reach home.

Lost, barefoot and shirtless in the destroyed town, he was taken by a kind stranger to Laura Prosser, his then homeless first grade teacher, sitting with her daughter in the back of a pickup truck.

“I said to people, if you see his mom, please let her know we have him,” Prosser said. While others were being brought to shelters, Prosser chose to wait until she got word of the boy’s mother. But eventually, Prosser, her daughter, Heidee, 11, and the boy headed off to a shelter in Haviland.

“I was really afraid about finding his mom,” Prosser said. “He knew that his mother didn’t have a basement.”

Two days later, Prosser was informed that the little boy in the pajama bottoms had found his mom.

“That was the story with a lot of people,” she said. “It was Friday night and a lot of kids were staying at other people’s houses.” Her 13-year-old son, Keith, was staying with his grandparents in Pratt when the storm hit.

“It was just before 9:30 when the alarms went off,” said Prosser, whose husband, Rod, was at Ft. Riley conducting military exercises on the night of May 4. “I was talking to Keith on the phone and he said he was watching TV and that I needed to go into the basement.”

Grabbing some candles, Prosser, Heidee and their Golden Retriever, Lady, adjourned to the basement where a storm chaser reported on TV that the tornado “was a mile wide and heading toward Greensburg.”

“In the middle of all this we got pillows and blankets and put them in the shower in the basement. We went in and shut the door, and it was less than five minutes [when it hit].

“The other day I went to an automatic car wash,” she explained, “and when the sound hit me as I drove through, I realized it was the exact same sound I heard that night -- the whooshing of the water, that really loud white noise. The pressure was so tight. Heidee was huddled in the corner. I told her it would pass, it would go east, that it would miss us. I couldn’t hear all the crashing and violence through the white noise. I told her that I think it’s going to go by us, but I was ignorant to the fact that it was right on top of us.

“When I stepped out of the bathroom, I noticed that there were pots and pans on the floor of the basement. The kitchen had come down the stairs. I looked up the stairs and I could see the night sky and the lightening flashing.”

Eventually, a neighbor helped the trio squeeze through a basement window – not an easy task for a Golden Retriever.

“Then it was just really upsetting,” she said. “I turned around to look at the house and the walls were all gone. As the lighting flashed I got a good picture of what was left. Neighbors from across the street gathered on the corner. Some of the ladies had pictures in their hands that they had saved.”

Eventually, the four, including the little boy, were taken in the back of a pickup truck to the Dillons store, where rescue vehicles lighting up the otherwise black night forced them to park about 100 yards away. From bullhorns barked orders: “Go to the east side if injured, the west side if not.”

As the four sat on the curb waiting for word of the boy’s mom, Prosser’s husband, Rod, miles away, had heard preliminary reports of a terrible tornado that had flattened “60 percent” of Greensburg. “Do you think my house was in the other 40 percent?” he asked another soldier, hopefully.

“A friend of Rod’s whose mother works at Dodge City dispatch called him and said they’re sending 10 counties of EMS’s to Greensburg,” Prosser noted. “He also heard from my mom in Cullison. Shortly after that I did get hold of him just long enough to tell him we were okay. On his way back, he stopped in Hutchinson where a storm chaser told him what he had just seen in Greensburg. It made him really nervous. He met us in Pratt 30 minutes after we arrived. We were so glad to see each other. It was very emotional.”

Today the couple is staying at Rod’s parents’ house in Pratt where “They’re taking good care of us and helping us a lot.” The couple plans to rebuild their home on the same site, she said, and both are working to help clean up the town.

She wished to offer thanks to several organizations, including FEMA, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, American Family Insurance, and to the many kind souls who helped them that night, including Don Voss, who parked on the east side of town and ran through the night to their home to see if the family was okay.

“I’m so thankful,” she said.