By Melissa Dunson

mdunson@joplinglobe.com

Crawling into the bathtub, Joyce Cox heard the roof tear off her home.

“I thought, ‘It’s a good time to pray, I’m already on my knees,’ ” Cox said.

Seconds later, Cox opened her eyes. Her bathroom had fallen in around her. Through a small opening in the debris, she saw dark clouds swirling overhead.

“I know it’s strange, but I remember thinking, ‘I don’t want to be in a tornado,’” she said.

Cox and her neighbors were first in the line of fire a year ago today, after a tornado that touched down east of Welch, Okla., pounded through three counties.

When it was over, 21 people were dead from a single tornado. Hundreds were injured.

It flattened Cox’s home, killed her sister-in-law, Chizuri Cox, 80, also of Picher, and dealt what she considers the final blow to her hometown.

In all, 160 homes were destroyed in Picher and six people died.

A year later, Cox said she tries — without success — to forget May 10, 2008.

“You try not to think about it, but people keep bringing it back up,” she said.

In Missouri, Roy Seward, of Newtonia, was at the far end of that same tornado’s path. He said he can’t sleep recently. Every time it thunders, he looks up, half smiling, half wincing. It reminds him of the day a year ago when that tornado hit his house while he and his wife Dottie were inside.

“The wind never really bothered me before, but there’s got to be some type of trauma still there, because I just feel real alert right now,” Dottie said one day last week as more storm clouds were brewing in a bruised sky. “Everybody around here is real tense right now.”

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