A friend lived through that devastating tornado

Steve Beverly and I have been friends for more years than I'd care to admit.

I met him when he was a reporter for WTVM 9. Back in those days, I was the editor of the Green Sheet, which later became the TV Book. I also covered local media.

Steve, for many years, also wrote a wrestling column for me, first in Arts & Leisure and later in To Do.

I see him about once a year when he and his family come to Columbus to visit.

He's in Jackson, Tenn., teaching broadcast journalism at Union University. If you've watched the news or read our newspaper, you know that his town was hit hard.

I tried to call him, but the lines were always busy. Duh! They must be down and probably won't be back up for a while.

So I e-mailed him, not knowing if he had Wi-Fi available somewhere.

I was elated to find this e-mail from Steve this morning.

I thought I'd share it with you.

"I can't tell you how much I appreciate hearing from you. So many of our
Columbus news family have been so kind to just check in and be certain my
family and I are okay.

"Rebecca and Holly and I live 10 miles from campus ... and we rode out the
rather harrowing evening in our neighbor's basement that is as large as a
living room. We had battery powered TV and a police scanner, so we knew
everything that was going on. Our neighborhood, up in the country, was
spared, thankfully. But we were in our neighbor's shelter until about 2 a.m.
Wednesday morning.

"The moment the police radio sounded, "UNION UNIVERSITY HAS BEEN HIT!," my
heart sank because we'd been told how powerful this storm was (as it turns
out, it was an EF-4).

"How we avoided any deaths, much less 200 or more, is only by divine
providence. If you saw what I've seen the last two days up close, the modern
miracle is that no lives were lost.

"It will be a long road back. I don't think my classroom building will be
inhabitable until probably January at the earliest. They could fool me and we
may be able to get in it by fall semester, but we are going to have to do some
extreme makeshift things for this semester. They may even be bringing in
either a portable classroom or a small house trailer to allow us to have a
makeshift studio. You can't just put a broadcasting class in a standard
classroom and say, "Teach." But I'm not worried. This is a day-at-a-time
situation and I've learned a lot of patience. These are not normal times. We
do what we have to do to keep going and try to be of good cheer in the
process.

"We have had a pretty tough setback but our university is resilient and a
wonderful sense of community exists here. Slowly and patiently, we will forge
our way back, hopefully, stronger than before.

"Thank you again, my friend! I'll keep in touch, and also on TVgameshows.net,
I am keeping a daily blog ... I've had about 900 e-mails."

So if you remember Steve, go to his blog and check out what's going on in Jackson, Tenn.