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Thursday, October 29, 2026Oct 29

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Wiedmer: Weekend’s deadly tornadoes another reason why we all need each other

A family photo lays among the debris inside of a house after a tornado in Dawson Springs, Ky., Sunday, Dec. 12, 2021. A monstrous tornado, carving a track that could rival the longest on record, ripped across the middle of the U.S. on Friday. (AP Photo/Michael Clubb)
A family photo lays among the debris inside of a house after a tornado in Dawson Springs, Ky., Sunday, Dec. 12, 2021. A monstrous tornado, carving a track that could rival the longest on record, ripped across the middle of the U.S. on Friday. (AP Photo/Michael Clubb) A family photo lays among the debris inside of a house after a tornado in Dawson Springs, Ky., Sunday, Dec. 12, 2021. A monstrous tornado, carving a track that could rival the longest on record, ripped across the middle of the U.S. on Friday. (AP Photo/Michael Clubb)

Family.

Friends.

Hopefully, we all have them.

And if there’s much truth to the old adage that you can’t choose your family, we can at least hope that when either or both of our family and friends are in need, we’ll choose to help them.

And so it was that when Chattanooga native and longtime basketball officiating great Curtis Shaw woke up Saturday morning in his Jasper, Indiana, home, he quickly learned that his relatives and friends in Princeton, Kentucky, had been devastated by Friday night’s terrifying tornadoes.