It may have been 15 years ago, but Lisa (Becker) Schmidt of Pratt can still see, hear, smell and feel all the emotions that came along with living in Greensburg when an EF5 tornado hit that town on May 4, 2007. Time has not diminished the vivid memories of that day and what followed.

“It is still very clear to me,” Schmidt said. “We were in Park City when that tornado hit Andover last week and I had to deal with some extreme anxiety. It never really leaves me.”

In 2007, Schmidt (then Becker) was at home in Greensburg with her two children, a son, Jeff, who was 4, and a daughter, Kristi, age 16, while good friend Rod Schmidt was out on a delivery run that took him from Pratt to Wichita to Hutchinson, Dodge City and back to Greensburg. He was delivering bank bags at the time.

“It was just a normal day, hot and sunny, but it was Kansas,” Lisa Schmidt said. “There were some weather projections made throughout the day that had us all listening to the news that evening, but after supper I put my youngest to bed around 7 and settled in for a nice, quiet evening at home.”

That nice, quiet evening turned out to be an unforgettable experience that Schmidt wouldn’t wish on anyone, but one that has brought her great thankfulness and insight for the rest of her life.

“There were three things that really summarize the experience for me and the kids that I just will never forget,” Schmidt said. “One – always know where your shoes are, two – live in a house with a basement, and three – don’t sweat the small stuff, it’s just not that important.”

On that eve of the great tornado that killed 11 people, injured 63, and destroyed 961 homes and businesses in Greensburg, Schmidt had no idea how important those three things would become to her and her children.

“We had plenty of warnings that night,” she said. “My daughter kept coming up from the basement where her bedroom was about every 20 minutes, saying ‘Mom, the sirens are going off again,’ and I was like, ‘Oh just give it 10 minutes or so, it will pass.’”

Schmidt said her mother Janice Becker called her from Pratt, concerned about their safety.

“I had been talking with her off and on throughout the evening, but finally around 8:30 p.m. she told me to get down in the basement with the kids,” Schmidt said. “I took the time for one more phone call from Rod, who told me his sister in Illinois called him about a dangerous tornado headed for Greensburg. He didn’t know anything about it someone from out of state called him. He got very worried. And then I didn’t hear from him for almost three days.”

Schmidt said she grabbed her sleeping son from upstairs and they all went to the basement to lay on her daughter’s bed.

There weren’t any freight train noises that they could hear, it was just basically quiet, she said. However, the family dog came and laid across their heads on the bed just before the fury hit.

“It sounds to me like a soda pop bottle opening up,” Schmidt said. “It was just a big hiss and then just all kinds of wood and metal smashing sounds. It was very scary.”

While she and her two children and the dog huddled together on the bed, Schmidt said she could see the walls of the home moving in and out. Then suddenly all the windows imploded and the electricity went out.

“We laid there praying and I kept telling the kids, ‘it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay’,” she said. “Then suddenly it got very quiet again so I went upstairs to look. I opened the door and looked up. It was bright and completely quiet. We must have been in the eye of the storm because that made no sense when it had been raining just minutes earlier.”

Before she could even look around to assess any damage, the front door that she was holding suddenly just ripped from her hands and it became instantly and completely dark.

“I dove down the stairs for the basement again,” she said. “There was no question that this was the stronger part of the storm upon us now. I laid on top of the kids to protect them and we just waited and waited. It seemed like forever.”

As Schmidt and her children came to the realization that the walls and roof of their home above them were gone, they also realized they had no shoes.

“We were in our own house, I just didn’t think about taking shoes down to the basement with us. It’s something that has haunted me ever since,” she said. “How could I have forgotten something so basic as just grabbing a pair of shoes for each of us. But I didn’t, and now we had nothing.”

Schmidt said she left her children in the basement and went out in the dark to see if her neighbors were okay.

“I had some elderly neighbors I had just been talking to earlier and I needed to check on them,” she said. “I had no idea what I was going to find and it was pitch black out now. There was debris everywhere and I had to climb over what looked like a trailer house that was crashed into my front door. And I had no shoes on.”

Schmidt said she found her neighbors alive, but the first woman was behind her washing machine and refused to come out. The second person she found was stuck under debris and needed help more than Schmidt could provide to give.

“I went looking for help,” she said. “And that is when I began to realize the magnitude of what had happened. It was just overwhelming. Everything as we knew it was gone, just gone.”

After finding someone to send for help to get her neighbor out, Schmidt made her way back to her own house and her children, but when she got there, someone had painted a big X on one wall that was standing and her children were no where to be found.

“I later learned that an EMS team had come and told them they had to get out because the basement was unstable and they were in danger. They sent them on foot, in the dark, with no shoes to a check point at the highway. I became frantic trying to find them in the chaos that followed.”

Schmidt said that for several hours, the only lights she could see by were from helicopters which began flying over head with spotlights. There were no phones, no cell service because towers had all been knocked out. She had no way to communicate with anyone until she finally found her way to another checkpoint at the Dillons parking lot nearly across town.

“It was just pandemonium,” she said. “I found my friends but some of them were just saying crazy, weird things. Everyone was in shock. People were trying to get in, people were trying to get out, I was just trying to find my kids. I started walking again to find another checkpoint. I got lost in the dark, I was disorientated. That lost feeling is what I still have so much anxiety from now, I believe.”

Schmidt later learned that her brother from Pratt found a way to get to Greensburg in spite of roads being blocked and perimeter guards being set up. He found her children at the highway checkpoint and brought them to where their house had once stood, and waited there for Schmidt, because they had no idea where she was. She finally got her bearings at the courthouse which was still standing, and made her way back to her home where she found her brother and children.

“We were luckier than most,” she said. “We found each other again and none of us were hurt. There were triage centers set up. In the days that followed there were so many good, good people who helped us through this experience. From that time on I have always tried to pay it forward because of all that was given to us to help us recover.”

Schmidt said she and her children considered themselves recovered, but there were certain things that will always be with them.

“My son, he has a thing about shoes,” she said. “He has lots of them, and he is always very careful to keep a pair by the front door, wherever he is.”

Schmidt said all three of them are concerned about living in homes without basements and just won’t do it. That is a prerequisite of any place they go, or stay, or live.

And Schmidt said she doesn’t place any value on collecting just stuff anymore.

“In an instant none of those things mattered for me,” she said. “My family, my kids, my grandkids, my husband, people matter. It just doesn’t pay to sweat the small stuff.”

Schmidt said she moved to Pratt after the Greensburg tornado because she had family there. She would have liked to move back to Greensburg because that was her home, but it was never an affordable option for her. She said she likes to visit there, but the memories of what happened will always be with her.

“When I think about it I can still hear the nails being pulled from the wood of our house,” she said. “I can feel the tension in the air when our dog yelped just before it hit. I don’t like storms. It’s not an experience I would ever wish on anybody else.”