One of my earliest memories is of a tornado roaring through my neighborhood in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I was less than four years old, but I vividly remember sitting in the linen closet cradling my infant brother, as I heard the enormous roar of wind and listened to the trees in our yard be torn from the ground like giant toothpicks and tossed on top of our house. The house was damaged, but remained intact, and we were uninjured. But only our neighbors at the end of the street had a working phone after the storm. So they went out into the devastation and invited other neighbors, including my mom, to come in and use the phone to let people know we were okay.

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