10 years after Henryville tornado, lingering memories push Indiana teacher to go to Uvalde

Perry Hunter felt a conviction this fall that drew him from his home in Southern Indiana to Uvalde, Texas.

Hunter, 52, has coached high school basketball for more than 30 years and has spent more than two decades as a teacher in the area. And his own experience with tragedy in that time, he said, inspired him to step in when tragedy came to the Lone Star State earlier this year.

Hunter has felt devastation before in Southern Indiana. An EF-4 tornado destroyed much of his community in Henryville in March 2012, killing one person who lived in the town while laying waste to hundreds of homes, businesses and schools and scattering debris all over the region. Members involved with Henryville's school system were hit hard – Henryville Junior-Senior High School, a place of work and a place where many memories were born, was leveled in the storm.

Memories from that tornado more than 10 years ago have left their mark on Hunter, who was a teacher at the school when it was destroyed. Now, he said, he wants to give back to devastated communities around the world.

Hunter spent years at Henryville Junior-Senior High School, holding court in the classroom by day and serving as the girls' basketball coach by night. He now works at Silver Creek High School, where he teaches students and helps coach the school's boys' basketball team.

The destruction of Henryville High School left him with a depression he couldn't shake, he said, until a mission trip he took to Indonesia with his church reminded him of a biblical message that helped him move forward: "This too shall pass."

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That message, he said, pushed him to run toward his problems instead of away from them. The longtime coach founded Cornerstone Hoops, a nonprofit organization that aims to "use the great game of basketball to connect and provide hope for those we encounter." The organization is funded by donations that help Hunter travel the world to teach kids how to play the game along with Christian values.

"I decided that this needed to be more about something other than basketball, it needed to be about helping others," he said recently. "I was at a church service and the preacher said that feeling you get where you believe that you should do something is called conviction, and I’ve ignored that a lot in my life.”

Cornerstone drew him to travel to Uvalde, and his own children did as well – a father of a middle schooler and high schooler, Hunter said the shooting at Robb Elementary School in the small Texas town, which left 19 students and two teachers dead, hit him harder than any other recent tragedy.

It didn't matter that he was over 1,200 miles away. After the shooting, he said, he knew he had to get down there to help.

Hunter did a little research later in June and found Uvalde High School's basketball coach, Ramone Burato, was about to start his first season with the program, as the previous coach had resigned months earlier following the shooting.

Hunter reached out, Burato responded, and the next thing he knew, Hunter had packed his car for an 18-hour drive to Uvalde during his school's fall break.

"The whole thing gave me good perspective," Hunter said. "It's such an open wound for the whole community."

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School security took hold as a key issue in the aftermath of the shooting, which rocked the community and made international headlines, Hunter said. He wasn't able to just walk onto campus and get started.

First, he said, he had to pass a background check, as well as an additional teaching background check. Getting on campus wasn't easy, either, as the high school had removed the handles from doors outside leading into the school. Each day, he said, Hunter would walk to the backside of the building and walk through a security checkpoint to get to his car.

Hunter was in the Texas town for a total of three days, helping to run basketball practices for the Uvalde High School team. It wasn't about scoring points or grabbing rebounds, though. Hunter said the camp was less about improving on the court and more about "loving on them" in the aftermath of an unthinkable tragedy.

"I hope that by being there showed them that they're not alone — that there are people that love them," he said.

The resilience of the community in the aftermath of a tragedy, Hunter said, has stuck with him. He met residents who had continued to work after the shooting, he said, and even kids whose younger siblings had been killed made it out to basketball practice.

Still, it isn't business as usual. Hunter saw protests on his trip as well, including parents who stood outside an administrative building in the city demanding to know how the lives of their children had been put at risk.

"I’m amazed that people are able to deal with these things and still go on,” he said last month. “Some of the parents aren’t. Some of them are still protesting. I’m sitting here saying that I just want to love on people and I want to go help, but if something were to happen to my children, it might have to be somebody else that would do that, because I might be really angry too.”

What happened in Uvalde and what happened in Henryville are both "tragic, traumatic events," he said. And as a survivor of the tornado in Indiana, Hunter said he knows how it feels to have to move forward after a life-altering disaster.

Still, he said, the two events don't compare.

"Losing your house or your school is nothing like losing one kid, and they lost 19 plus two teachers," Hunter said. "Henryville had a lot of clean up and a lot of things to do. Those were very visible things that had happened. The trauma at Uvalde is not as visible."

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Hunter likes to bring the lessons he's learned on the road to his students back in Indiana. A social sciences teacher at Silver Creek High School in Sellersburg, his travels have helped him bring real-world experience and an understanding of different cultures to his classroom.

His time in Uvalde, he said, was like nothing he had seen before. But action in the aftermath of a tragedy, he said, can help communities heal and help individuals grow

"Life is hard, I think too often we make it harder than we should, but if it is hard for you, it is hard for someone else and by reaching out and helping others, it is amazing what lessons and fulfillment you get for yourself," he wrote in a blog post published the day after he spoke with The Courier Journal.

More information about Cornerstone Hoops and Hunter's travels are available on the organization's website.

Contact Caleb Stultz at cstultz@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @Caleb_Stultz.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Henryville tornado memory leads teacher Perry Hunter to help in Uvalde