CAMERON, MO. ? The highlight of his day is walking.

Most every day, John Stith heads out to his land near town. He’s building a house there, close to the spot where his former house stood.

The 60-year-old strolls up the slope, down the slope, alongside the construction site, whatever his formerly crushed pelvis and broken ribs can stand. He moves slowly and gingerly.

That’s what a tornado will do to you. Even six months later. It takes time to get back to normal after terrifying whirlwinds lifted you and your family out of your home and flung you a couple of hundred feet in the air.

So Stith is trying to build his muscles. That’s his highlight now.

This time of year, the retired assembly-line worker used to relish hunting season. Not anymore. He used to worry about chores. Not now. He’s taking it easy, just appreciating living and trying to move on from his life-changing experience.

“It makes a lot of things seem small,” Stith said.

Weather report

It was the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. John’s daughter, Kristina Sharp, was over at the house with her two young children. She brought steaks. John’s wife, Patricia, had gotten the kids some swimming trunks, and they splashed around in the hot tub outside. Patricia’s mother, 79-year-old Marie Riley, stayed put in a hydraulic chair. She was brittle from several strokes and couldn’t walk.

After dark, the adults watched TV inside the 1950s-era suburban ranch. Occasionally, weather news scrolled across the bottom of the screen — tornado warning. Patricia and Kristina wondered about Marie. The storm cellar was outside, across the yard from the back door. If there was an emergency, Marie wouldn’t be able to get there.

But then the news out of St. Joseph came on at 10 p.m. It seemed like the warning expired at 10:15. John got ready for bed, in a T-shirt and running shorts. Kristina’s 5-year-old daughter was already asleep. John walked through the living room to go tell Kristina’s 7-year-old boy it was time for bed. He walked around a corner by the front door. And he heard it.

‘I knew it was close’

A roar like a jet plane going right over your head when it’s landing.

“I knew what it was, and I knew it was close,” John remembers.

He yelled out for everyone to get in the bedroom where Kristina’s daughter was sleeping. Everyone ran in but Marie. They didn’t have time to go get her.

They huddled on the floor, on their knees. Kristina cradled her 5-year-old. For a moment, she thought they were safe — low to the ground, next to a wall, seemingly protected by the bed. John, a smallish man with firm features, closed the door to the room and turned to join them.

Then it hit. It was later determined to be an F4 tornado with winds approaching 260 mph.

John and everyone else were slowly lifted up, then dropped back to the floor, like being on an elevator that was quickly descending. The lights flickered out. Wind whipped around the room. Clothes and toys started flying. Then pieces of wood from who knows where. John was hit in the head by something. Kristina felt the air being sucked out of her. The side of the house croaked. It started splitting apart.

Then everyone was flying.

The aftermath

Blown into the air. Rolling sideways and forward, no control over your limbs, turning and twisting, bumpy and banging, rolling and rushing through the roar in the pitch black night.

Then falling. Then landing — crack. And then quiet.

John was sprawled next to a cast-iron tub from his house. He was knocked out. When he woke up, he heard his grandson, 7-year-old Derik, crying just a few feet from him.

“Grandpa, we’re going to die,” Derik called out.

“No, we’re going to be all right now,” John told him.

John was lying on some boards. He tried to get to his knees. He heard popping sounds in his hips. He stopped and laid back down.

Nearby, Kristina got to her knees. She tried looking around for the house. It was gone. She could make out where it was supposed to be — 250 feet back to the south. Her 5-year-old was crying several feet away. She crawled over and held her.

Paramedics and neighbors from up and down their gravel road came out with flashlights. They passed splintered trees and mangled farm implements and an upside-down car. They stepped over bricks and chunks of wood and broken dishes and even dolls. It was all from one of a dozen twisters that touched down in seven counties northeast of Kansas City, part of a band of severe weather that brought nearly 100 tornado sightings across eight states.

Kristina heard a voice: “I found somebody.” Someone else went over there. “Check for a pulse,” she heard. Then silence. Kristina figured it was Marie. Somewhere else, Patricia was crushed. They were two of the three persons killed in DeKalb and Daviess counties.

Slow road to recovery

Her kids are home from school, hopping around the house, grabbing a snack days before Thanksgiving. Kristina grabs Derik and pokes a finger through his black hair.

“Just looking,” she said. “Want to see how well your hair’s growing in.”

Then she does the same with Kasey, feeling the lumps that still stick out of her forehead. Her hair has grown back halfway down her neck.

“They had to take one of the bones out of my head,” Kasey explains matter-of-factly.

The kids stayed in the hospital three weeks. Each had a plastic plate inserted in the scalp. Kristina had worried about whether their head injuries would linger and affect their work in school. But they have been all right, she thinks. Kids bounce back quickly.

Kristina and John are not kids. She went to the hospital with a fractured vertebra, a gash in her shoulder a couple of inches wide and cuts and bruises all over her body. Some purple bumps remain on her arms six months later. Her back is still a little out of whack.

John had a broken pelvis and 16 different breaks in his ribs. He had 54 staples fastened into his scalp. The local ambulance service volunteered to take him to his wife’s funeral. He was in too much pain to go. He stayed in the hospital close to a month.

When he got out and went to live in Kristina’s house, he couldn’t walk for four more months. After that, he could get around with a walker. Only for a few weeks now has he been moving slowly and warily on his own. He has been able to visit his wife’s grave and pay his proper respects.

Adding a basement

The Red Cross gave the family money for new clothes. John’s homeowners insurance paid him off, and he’s using this to build a new home. Mennonites throughout Missouri volunteered their labor to frame and wire it.

The house is a simple one: a ranch with vinyl siding. It’s up the slope from the last one, where the foundation rises a foot or so out of the ground. Already, the walls are up.

John insisted only on a couple of things for this new house. It had to have a basement. And the basement had to have a storm shelter.

“That tornado was kind of a once-in-a-lifetime experience, I’m hoping,” John said.