Oklahoma teachers who saved students called heroes

Daily News Article   —   Posted on May 22, 2013

(by Deborah Hastings, NYDailyNews) – The teachers of two devastated elementary schools went far beyond the call of duty when Oklahoma’s horrendous twister wiped out the suburban enclave of Moore. They threw themselves over their students, stayed with them for hours and carried them, bleeding, to safety.

Parents and authorities hailed them as heroes and credited them with saving the lives of students.

“I was in a (bathroom) stall with some kids and it just started coming down, so I laid on top of them,” said sixth-grade teacher Rhonda Crosswhite at Plaza Towers Elementary School, where seven students were confirmed dead Tuesday by the Oklahoma City Medical Examiner’s Office.

“One of my little boys just kept saying, ‘I love you, I love you, please don’t die with me.’ But we’re okay. We made it out,” Crosswhite told the “Today” show. All of the children with her are now safe.

“I never thought I was going to die,” she said. “The whole time I just kept screaming to them, ‘Quit worrying, we’re fine, we’re fine.’ And I’m very loud, so I just hoped they could hear me, because I could hear them screaming.

“One girl, she’s in my homeroom, was sobbing and I was like, ‘We’re going to be fine, we’re going to be fine, I’m protecting you.’ And then I said a few prayers. ‘God please take care of my kids.’ And we’re fine.”

At nearby Briarwood Elementary, teachers faced the same devastating chaos as the tornado touched down at 3 p.m. – when students should have been going home.

“We practice tornado drills and things like this, and I had to tell them: ‘This is not a drill and and we need to be safe,”’ Briarwood teacher Cindy Lowe said. Lowe ended up “just laying my body on top of as many kids as I could to help out,” she said Tuesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Fellow instructor Sherri Bittle said teachers carried out dozens of children at Briarwood, which suffered no fatalities. An unknown number of kids were hurt. She was on the verge of tears describing the emotional scenes of desperate parents searching for their children. “It was just heartbreaking to see the tears of joy, how happy they were that their child was safe,” said Bittle.

Because of closed roads and dangerous debris, parents were forced to walk miles to the evacuation center set up outside the school.

“They were out of breath and crying but so happy to see [their children] and just know that they were safe,” Bittle said.

Reprinted here for educational purposes only.  May not be reproduced on other websites without permission from the New York Daily News.

Watch an interview with the two first grade teachers:

Background

After hearing that the tornado was headed toward...Briarwood Elementary, David Wheeler left work and drove 100 mph through blinding rain and gusting wind to find his 8-year-old son, Gabriel. When he got to the school site, "it was like the earth was wiped clean, like the grass was just sheared off," Wheeler said.

Eventually, he found Gabriel, sitting with the teacher who had protected him. His back was cut and bruised and gravel was embedded in his head - but he was alive. As the tornado approached, students at Briarwood were initially sent to the halls, but a third-grade teacher - whom Wheeler identified as Julie Simon - thought it didn't look safe and so ushered the children into a closet, he said.

The teacher shielded Gabriel with her arms and held him down as the tornado collapsed the roof and starting lifting students upward with a pull so strong that it sucked the glasses off their faces, Wheeler said.

"She saved their lives by putting them in a closet and holding their heads down," Wheeler said. (from the New York Post)