Willie Quinn walks through the frames of her new home. Volunteers from Southern Adventist University and the Apison area continue work on Marvin and Willie Quinn’s new home in Apison. The Quinns, whose home was destroyed in an April tornado, are currently living in a small travel trailer on the same property.Willie and Marvin Quinn are smiling again.
And on Friday – Day No. 72 after one of nine tornadoes swept through Hamilton County in late April, tearing their house down around them – being able to smile easily is almost like coming home again.
“For weeks I felt like I was somewhere else and the people who were supposed to be here, weren’t here,” Willie Quinn, 75, said as she stood between the elderly couple’s borrowed travel trailer and their new house, watching a crew from Sequatchie Cement Co. pour a garage floor.
Over a period of months 42 years ago, while her husband, now 80, was at work, Willie Quinn and her father-in-law built the house in Apison that an EF4 tornado demolished in seconds as the couple huddled and prayed inside.
The new house is going up with volunteer builders, the generosity of friends and strangers and about $30,000 in disaster assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.