Letters from heaven make Archer Avenue mom rejoice on The Murfreesboro Post

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Letters from heaven make Archer Avenue mom rejoice

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By: LISA MARCHESONI, Senior Writer

Posted: Sunday, May 10, 2009 7:01 am

Letters from heaven make Archer Avenue mom rejoice | Tornado, Stcay DeBerry, Laurie Williams

Stacy DeBerry smiles as she displays a letter from her grandmother once lost in the Good Friday Tornado. TMP/Lisa Marchesoni

Stacy DeBerry smiled in delight when she received another “letter from heaven.”

The Good Friday Tornado whipped through the attic, destroying DeBerry’s Archer Ave. home and scattering a box of her grandmother’s letters, all the more precious because her maternal grandmother died at age 99 about five years ago.

Laurie Williams of Lascassas found the last page of the letter mentioning the video of Stacy acting and singing in “The Gift of the Magi” play.

After a story in last Sunday’s “The Murfreesboro Post,” a reader notified her husband, Cliff DeBerry who called his wife.

“I cried and cried,” DeBerry said. “It is very precious to see her handwriting again. This is the third or fourth letter that has fallen out of the sky from my grandmother that people have called me about.”

The day after the tornado, a son of a co-worker at Providence Christian Academy found a 1988 letter from DeBerry’s grandmother in his yard near Lascassas.

Ironically at the end of the 1988 letter, her Texas grandmother wrote she heard Murfreesboro experienced some bad storms.

“She was glad to hear we were safe,” DeBerry said, adding she and her husband were safe again Good Friday when they got into a closet for shelter.

DeBerry plans to check the Linebaugh Library to hopefully retrieve more letters.

In the letter Williams found, “grandma” mentions her eyesight dimmed but that was not the last letter DeBerry received.

DeBerry starred in “The Gift of the Magi” at Cannon County Arts Center. Because her grandmother could not travel to see her, she watched a videotape.

She was close to her maternal grandmother, especially since her mother was an only child and DeBerry was an only granddaughter. While in college, she spent one Sunday with her maternal grandmother and the next Sunday with her paternal grandparents.

“My grandparents are so precious to me too,” DeBerry said. “It makes you feel so loved.”

She’s happy her son, Taylor, a freshman at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, spends time with her parents in Waco.

Phillip, her oldest son, graduated this weekend from Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville.

The family was able to save some photographs and belongings from the tornado.

State Farm Insurance, Providence Christian Academy, First Methodist Church and her husband’s state co-workers have been generous and giving.

“We were very blessed,” DeBerry said. “Everybody has been great to us. People are so generous and show lots of love.

“God can bring good out of a bad situation,” DeBerry added.

Lisa Marchesoni may be reached at 869-0814 or at lmarchesoni@murfreesboropost.com.

Tagged under Laurie Williams, Stcay DeBerry, Tornado

Member Opinions:

By: tnlonestar on 5/12/09
Amen.

By: diddlede on 5/12/09
I believe the address is Archer Avenue instead of Archer Drive. Need to check this and make sure the address is right.