Gone in five minutes
Dorothy Vollmer always wanted to live in a house in the country.
So when her late husband saw that her dream house, just a short drive from the town of Pilot Grove where they lived, had been put up for sale, he sold their farm so they could afford the down payment on the property.
Many people spoke fondly about how nicely kept the Vollmers’ yard was and how the family went all out for Christmas decorations every year. And Dorothy Vollmer was constantly making improvements to the house, having just put in new insulation.
The house was her pride and joy.
But on April 2, the world came crashing down on Dorothy Vollmer.
That morning, she was sitting in her electric recliner in the living room when an EF-2 tornado developed after 8:30 a.m. southwest of Pilot Grove and moved northeast. Her house was in the tornado’s 6.3-mile path of destruction.
“I had a brick house, so I didn’t hear (the storm),” Dorothy Vollmer said, adding that she did not hear an alarm either.
She saw a tree limb smash through her front door, so the 73-year-old “rolled (her) happy ass” out of the recliner and crawled out of the storm door.
Thankfully, some nearby residents and farmers learned about the tornado and went to check on Dorothy Vollmer, helping her get to safety.
The tornado destroyed the garage and two sheds, lifted the roof off the living room area, carried an entire boat out into the fields, totaled Dorothy Vollmer’s car, and more.
“You work all your life. And it's gone. In five minutes,” Dorothy Vollmer said. She texted her family afterwards and asked: “What do you do? Where do you start?”
Her daughter Alice Vollmer, 37, said it was a shock because she grew up in Pilot Grove and a tornado had never hit the area during that time. She found out about the tornado while at work in Jefferson City and rushed back immediately.
That night, Dorothy Vollmer put up a post on Facebook asking for help to go through the wreckage and move them out of the damaged house.
The next day, about 50 people showed up at her house. Many of them were neighbors, friends, family and kids, now grown-ups, that she used to babysit. “I wiped their butts and now they’re coming to help me,” Dorothy Vollmer said. People also showed up to the house with food and gift cards.
In the days that followed, Dorothy and Alice Vollmer put one foot in front of the other and supported each other. “It’s always been the two of us,” Alice Vollmer said.
Unlimited Opportunities, where Dorothy Vollmer’s son Joey Vollmer works, paid for an Airbnb for the family. The Vollmers rented a house in Pilot Grove soon after.
As the insurance on the house was not priced high enough, Dorothy Vollmer cannot afford to rebuild and decided to sell the property instead. After the tornado, her insurance agent told her this happens to less than 1% of policyholders, she said.
Through it all, Dorothy Vollmer has not lost her humor and positivity.
She talked about their trip to the OZ Museum in Kansas just two weeks before the tornado hit, and laughed about how, like her namesake Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, she once had a dog that looked like Toto and her house had been caught in a tornado.
She also shared how her childhood home was destroyed in a fire. “I don’t have baby pictures because it all burned. At least I got pictures and some of my stuff,” she said, adding that she felt lucky.
And when she did acknowledge what she lost in the tornado, she kept it light. “We don't need to worry about that dishwasher leaking no more.”
Her outlook on life has been shaped by her husband’s death, Dorothy Vollmer said, as he passed 14 years ago at age 61 after a three-year battle with pancreatic, liver and lung cancer.
“You don't know what tomorrow's gonna bring, so you better enjoy today.”
