When Lightning Struck

A lot goes on in our family in May. Our daughter’s birthday. Mother’s Day. And, in years past, there was often a graduation or First Communion or Confirmation thrown in as well. My parents tried to visit in May to celebrate one or more of these occasions—they preferred May travel to February travel when our son’s birthday occurs.

One May, while my parents were visiting, lightning struck our house. It knew it was a year when our daughter was in her teens, but I didn’t remember which year for certain. Recently, however, I found a reference to the event in my mother’s religious journals. Though she made very few personal comments in these journals, she did note on May 17, 1999, “KC lightning strike.” So, thanks to my mother, I can verify the year, as well as the occasion that my parents had come to celebrate. My daughter’s graduation from the 8th grade took place on May 19 of that year—twenty years ago this month—and Mother noted that happening as well.

May 17, 1999, was a Monday. It was a typical stormy spring day in Kansas City. Serious thunderstorms buffeted our neighborhood, though the weather wasn’t so bad that we went to the basement for protection against tornadoes. The next day was a work day for me, and after dinner with my parents and the rest of our family, I went to bed early, probably about 9:00pm. My dad was also an early-to-bed type, and he probably was asleep by 9:00pm also.

Shortly after I went to bed, as rain poured down outside, the loudest bang I’ve ever heard shook the house. Simultaneously, something hit the pillow beside my head. I turned on the light to investigate—the cracked switchplate cover from the light switch three feet away from my bed lay on the pillow. It had been blown off the wall. How strange, I thought.

I got out of bed and found everyone in the house milling around—my parents and daughter in the upstairs hall outside the master bedroom, and my husband and son downstairs.

“What happened?” my mother asked. As I’ve written before, she did not like Midwestern thunderstorms. She was a Western girl, through and through. In Klamath Falls, Oregon, where she grew up, it snowed in July but there was little lightning. In Eastern Washington, where she lived most of her married life, it rarely rained.

“Felt like lightning,” my father said. He was a Midwestern native, though he’d lived most of his life in the West. He remembered tornadoes and thunderstorms from his early childhood. One of his favorite stories was of the time a tornado dropped a tree in the next door neighbor’s bathroom so one could see their toilet through the hole. That happened when he was five or six—the age when little boys tend to remember toilets in odd places.

My father and husband donned rain gear and went outside in the downpour to inspect. They determined the house or a tree next to the house had probably been hit by lightning. My husband climbed into the attic to be sure there weren’t any flames. There were none, and after the excitement died down, we all went to bed.

The next morning we explored the extent of the damage. In the light of day, we could see a hole in a downspout outside the master bedroom. The metal was charred around the hole—that must have been where the lightning hit the house. Electricity had traveled all along that wall, frying an old television in the master bedroom and a computer in the upstairs den. Both machines had been plugged into circuits on that wall. The force of the electrical surge also blew the switchplate onto my pillow and cracked a few other plates.

We threw out the television, and a few days later I bought a new computer. But I took the old computer to a geek store, and for $52.00 they salvaged its hard drive. Within weeks, we installed a new downspout. So all in all, no serious damage done. We also installed a surge protector on the main circuit board to minimize future risks, though we were told frequently that lightning never strikes twice.

Meanwhile, we went on with the graduation festivities.

When she finished 8th grade, our daughter had more seniority at the school than all the other students and all but two teachers—she had been there for fourteen years, starting in the daycare when she was three months old. She pretty much ran the place—in her last year she was Student Body President and Safety Patrol Captain. But I didn’t think her departure from the school was so significant as to warrant an Act of God.

Have you ever witnessed a natural disaster?