My hometown was half destroyed by a tornado in 2005. I was already over here at the time. So, my dad's side of the family was going to have a big reunion...my dad's family has a colorful past, I guess you could say. My g-g-grandfather was kind of a jack of all trades....preacher, fur trapper, stone mason (he built 3 of the churches he preached in, and his own home) and he was also secretary of State of Kansas for a while. He had something like 13 children, 8 living to adulthood. When I moved over here, I started doing genealogical research into my family tree and found these distant cousins. My g-grandfather had been married (or maybe not) to my g-grandmother, and fathered a child (my grandfather), but apparently he never knew about his son. (I know, scandal, right? Especially in the late 1800s early 1900s) So my grandfather lived with his mother's parents for the first several years of a life, when one day, his mom shows up with a new husband and says they are moving to colorado. He had a half sister that he was very close to, and on their way to Colorado, she got some illness and his mother and the new husband belonged to some religious group that did not believe in doctors and medicine. The girl died. So my grandfather had been ripped out of the home with his grandparents and watched his sister die...he ran away as soon as he was old enough. He eventually homesteaded in Wyoming. But as an adult, he went and looked up his biological father who was shocked to meet him, not having known about him....couldn't deny him though as he was the spitting image of him, and it turned out he also had a half brother. I discovered all this from the family when I was doing the genealogy, on a website. We visited the family and saw the house my g-g-grandfather built (the cousins still live there on the farm), as well as one of the churches, and we visited his grave. They planned this big reunion for 2005 and invited my father, who they hadn't seen in decades. My father had talked about nothing but this reunion for months. He always called me a couple of times a week, and he made sure to remind me every time that he wouldn't be able to call for a couple of weeks in August because he'd be at the reunion. Fast forward to the tornado....it was half a mile long and there was only warning about a minute or 2 before it hit the town...most people didn't have time to take adequate cover. People in the trailer park didn't have time to get out and go to friends' houses with a basement. The trailer park was all but destroyed...very little was left of it. My dad lived on a ranch 20 miles out. So when I heard about the Tornado, I was SOOOOO relieved that dad was at this family reunion because that meant he was in Kansas, FAR away from the tornado in Wyoming. Then my cousin sends me an email...she's worried, because she heard about the tornado and my dad never showed up for the reunion. I panicked, started trying to call...phone lines were down. I emailed everyone I knew that knew dad....had they seen him, talked to him, did anyone know if he was ok. After 2 days, I finally got ahold of him....he had decided not to go to the reunion because the truck was due for an oil change, and well, he didn't want to take the time to get it done before he left but didn't want to make a long trip like that without changing the oil first, so he decided to take a nap instead. He woke up, and half the roof on his trailer was gone and all the windows had been knocked out by hail stones....he hadn't even woken up. He "guessed they had gotten quite a storm at some point" . He had no clue a tornado had totaled his house...he had it insured, so he was going to get a new one. That's all he said about it...oh yeah, we must have gotten quite a storm here, and it ripped the roof off the house and broke all the windows, but it's insured, so I'll get a new one. I'm like...REALLY, dad? You slept through a TORNADO because you didn't want to drive into town to get the oil changed??? It was just...so totally my dad. Now it's quite funny since he was obviously fine, so it's just an amusing anecdote about my dad. I can just shake my head. But at the time, I probably yelled at him...I don't remember actually, I was so worried, and then so relieved he was fine.