I remember on Sunday, November 22, 1992, the day before Dad's birthday, Dad asked me to go with him shopping for his and Mom's anniversary, which was coming up on the 25th. So, he and I headed to Martinsville (we lived in Paragon at the time) to go to KMart. I remember it was especially warm for being towards the end of November, like in the upper 60's or so. As we were getting out of his van to go into the store, Dad jokingly told me "This is perfect tornado weather." And my reply to him was "Awesome, I've never seen a real live tornado before!" And that was that. We went in, spent some time shopping, and he got several things for mom. As we're checking out, we look outside, and the sky had a greenish tint to it. So Dad says again "Perfect tornado weather." After we got done checking out, I talked Dad into stopping at the snack bar to get subs, so we did. We sat out in the van and ate them before heading back home. If we hadn't taken that 15 minutes to eat those subs, we would've been fine. As luck would have it, we were on our way home, on 39 Bypass, and all of a sudden we watched a funnel cloud form and come down, but didn't touch down...then it disipated. I was going "Oh that was cool!!" And then another one did the same thing, and I'm going "Ok so I've seen it, it's not so cool anymore." We turned onto 67 South and we saw yet another one form, and this one touched down then kind of "bounced" back up and disipated. At that point I was crying and Dad told me "If I pull off, you get out and get in the ditch, no questions asked." Well the next one touched down and stayed on the ground. Dad hollered at me to get out as he was pulling over. I got out but couldn't move. That is the only time ever that I have been "clotheslined" by anyone. My Dad saved my life that day. He knocked me down then landed on top of me, sheltering me as much as he could from debris. When it was all over, we got in the van, and he drove slowly home. We got in the house and his first words were "is everyone here ok?" Mom comes out of the kitchen to find out what on earth he was talking about (they knew nothing about the tornado touchdown) and saw dad and me soaked to the skin and covered in mud and leaves. That was when Dad broke down. I was so thankful that he knew what to do in that situation, and of course HIS first priority was to make sure his little girl was safe.
The following year, on our "anniversary," dad bought me an "anniversary" gift; a ceramic unicorn with an artificial rose in it, and it says "I Love You" on it. I still have that. It is something that I will always treasure.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story. I encourage anyone and everyone to write their own stories of memorable times with Dad. I want to put them al together and write a memoir about his life.