Former principal places fitting memorial

By Steve Lawson
News Editor

When a tornado rolled through her hometown on March 20, 1998, Faye Frye was hours away in Fayetteville.
As principal of Stoneville Elementary School, Frye also served on a Southern Association team that helped to evaluate other schools, and she was with that team.
“I got a call from a family member about five o’clock that afternoon telling me about the tornado,” Frye said. “I started making plans right then to head back home.”
Frye discovered someone from the school had been trying to call her since the tornado struck but had failed to get through because phone lines were down and cell towers were overloaded with calls.
“I was warned not to try to come back because of tornadoes and storm damages between Stoneville and the eastern part of the state,” she said. “I did have to make a lot of detours along the way and didn’t arrive back home until almost midnight.”
When Frye arrived back home she was greeted by two Stoneville firefighters. Jake Hundley, who was the town’s fire chief at the time, had told them to bring her to the school to open the gymnasium and auditorium building to use as an emergency command center.
“I still remember being led through town that night,” Frye said. “A lot of the debris had been cleared to allow emergency vehicles to get through, but even in the dark it looked like something from a war zone. I had no concept of the amount of damage that had been done.”
That image became more vivid when Frye toured the town about 6 a.m. the next morning.
“I had the impression that the tornado sort of hit here, then there,” she said. “I had no idea of the extent of damage to the heart of town until I saw it in the light of day.”
Frye spent most of Saturday on the phone with people from the community, county, state and even from across the nation. She fielded a lot of calls from the press.
“I called Superintendent (George) Fleetwood about midday and told him I desperately needed some help,” Frye said. “My assistant at the school had damage to her own home, and I told her to take care of that first. But I was being swamped with calls and duties securing the school.”
Fleetwood sent three people to help Frye.
On Monday, Frye met with her staff at McMichael High School. She told them that core of 82 people had to pull together to make it through what was before them.
“We knew we had to support each other emotionally and otherwise during this crisis,” Frye said. “With all that was going on, the county decided to give us until Wednesday to start school back.”
Reopening school to students created a new set of problems for Frye and the Stoneville Elementary staff. Realizing how emotional the past few days had been for them as adults, they recognized the potential for distress among the student body.
“By then, everyone had pitched in to clean up the downtown area,” Frye said. “But we knew the students would have to ride through that area to get to school and thought it could very well be a disturbing sight for them.”
Frye was also concerned about the emotional impact of the loss of one of their own during the tornado. Beth Mitchell, one of two Stoneville residents killed as a result of the storm, was a teacher at the school.
“We all knew her and love her,” Frye said. “It was rough on me and the rest of the staff, and we knew it could be a tough adjustment for the students as well.”
When students returned to campus Wednesday they were greeted by staff members, assistants and parent volunteers. Extra school counselors from other schools in the district were there to help students who were having trouble handling the situation.
Fortunately, the school itself received very little damage from the tornado, making it easy for things to get back to some semblance of normality – at least physically.
“We were very lucky the storm didn’t shift a hundred feet east or the school would have been gone as well,” Frye said.
She commended the work of Ken Dowdle and Debbie Joyce-Jenkins -- staff members she left in charge while in Fayetteville -- for keeping everyone safe during the actual storm.
“We still had about a hundred kids at school for after-school care that day,” Frye said. “Ken and Debbie, and the rest of the staff, did a great job keeping everyone calm and safe during a very frightening time for all of them.”
Later in the spring of 1998, the school placed a memorial to Beth Mitchell in the courtyard outside the auditorium building. The memorial consisted of a plaque and birdbath.
“Everyone wanted to do something as a tribute to her, and it helped in the healing process for all of us,” she said.
Frye and grandson C.J. Frye, currently a fifth-grader at Stoneville Elementary, recently replaced the birdbath with a small lighthouse. They also planted flowers around the base of the memorial.
“The birdbath kept getting blown over with strong winds and storms,” Frye said. “I remembered how much Beth loved the beach and thought the lighthouse would be a fitting tribute.”

News Editor Steve Lawson can be reached at slawson@reidsvillereview.com or at 548-6047.