A Tourist in Mayberry

5/4) Hero: Tommy

Before he was Pastor Tommy, youth director at the Baptist Church and the person who helped convince Dr. Brook to hire William, he was a high school student who played tuba in the band. He was with his band teacher, Mr. Lawrence, when a freak accident changed William Lawrence's life forever.

It was snowing. Snowing so hard in Wilkes County that school was released before lunch on Friday. The band performance would have been canceled for the next morning at South Wilkes High School, except the weather forecast predicted sunshine and warmer temps the next day.

The band competition would go ahead as scheduled.

Band Director, Mr. William Lawrence, and a few of his students including Tommy, another boy, Gilbert, called Gibby by his friends, and a young girl named Shelley were riding in a large box truck with William's wife, Raynie, and baby daughter, Bethany. Since the snow had stopped and the sun was shining, they set off in the band truck Friday afternoon to head up to Wilkes County to unload some of the equipment they would need for the band competition the next day. The plan was to unload the equipment and head back by way of Elkin and stop at the Pizza Inn for all the pizza they could eat for supper.

Tommy sat in the back seat sandwiched between Shelley (Yahoo, he thought) and three year old Bethany. He tried to play it cool on the trip up, but it was nearly impossible when Bethany was having a tea party that included him and her polar bear and a baby that cried like a real baby when she flipped it upside down. Tommy guessed he didn't mind the tea party because Shelley was drinking tea also and baby Bethany was a part of the band anyway.

Bethany was the official mascot of the band. She marched in the hot summer practices and blew a tiny flute. She would throw her knees into the air and strut as the band marched and played. She danced with the cheerleaders at the game when the band played the fight song. Bethany wore her own little t-shirt that stated, "I'm with the Band".

Last fall, when the band's main show used the themes from famous Sci-fi movies, little Bethany dressed up as an astronaut and was a part of the show. "I'm an astronaut," she said, "Watch me, I can moonwalk." She was the star of the show and probably the reason the band placed 1st in a trio of band competitions that year.

As they neared the high school, it was obvious the weather forecast was wrong. After reaching the gym and unloading, the temperature dropped quickly and it began to sleet. William decided they needed to hurry up and get home, they might have to skip the pizza. By now, it was sleeting so hard with snow mixed in and blowing sideways, that William walked carefully across the lot. He told Raynie to stay put with the baby under the sidewalk shelter, and they would ride up to the front of the school and pick them up. All the teenagers opted to go with William because they were teenagers, and they wanted to skate across the parking lot.

This is where bad luck, worsening weather conditions, and a succession of unfortunate events combined to create a catastrophe that made volunteer first responders in the area wish they never answered the call. Many would not sleep that night.

An activity bus was parked near the entrance. It was abandoned there earlier when it returned from bringing students back early from a field trip because of the snow. Students were unloaded at the front of the school so they could get to the yellow buses quickly and beat the slick roads home. The field trip driver was a teaching assistant who was recruited as quickly as he arrived to drive the yellow bus home because the real driver, in un-anticipation of the bad weather, went to his doctor appointment in North Wilkesboro and could not make it back on time. When the teaching assistant, who was the field trip driver, and now the yellow bus driver returned to school after running the route, the principal told him to not worry about the bus out front since he was now in overtime. The principal told him: Get on home before it gets too dangerous to leave. We can move it Monday morning.