Tomorrow, Scott’s family and mine will celebrate Father’s Day together. The Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Jon Tevlin tells the story of a father, Wes Michaels, who didn’t make it to the holiday. On Thursday, tornadoes swept through Minnesota. One of them hit the town of Mentor and destroyed this gas station where Michaels’ daughter was working:
Tevlin writes:
[W]hen he saw on the television that tornadoes were forming in the area, Wes Michaels jumped in his pickup truck and drove down to the Cenex to check on Heidi, who was managing the station. When he got there, a customer joked that he should be out having fun on his birthday.
A few minutes later, a twister took aim on the station. Michaels ordered Heidi and customers into the cooler as it hit.
Michaels was a big man, about 6 feet tall with a broad chest, “a strong man who wasn’t afraid to use his strength,” according to his former boss, Orville Lee. Instinctively, he positioned his body above that of his daughter, and took the brunt of the force from debris as the building crumbled around them.
It occurs to me that Michaels’ story is a little like a real-life version of a song that we noted recently. Wes Michaels, RIP, and happy Father’s Day to all of our readers who are fortunate enough to bear that title.
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