MOUNT VERNON, Mo. ?
It was a bittersweet meeting when Missouri National Guard Staff Sgt. Mike Byers, his cousin, Brian Hamlet, and Mark Lindquist reunited. Three months and three days prior, the trio came together amidst the destruction of the Joplin tornado. And while this day was one for thanks, praise and celebration, it was not without tears.
?What do you say to someone who saved your life?? asked Lindquist, squeezing tight to Byers? hand in a room at the Missouri Rehabilitation Center in Mount Vernon. ?I really love these guys.?
Lindquist, who was in a coma for seven weeks following the tornado, remembers bits and pieces of that Sunday afternoon in Joplin, his memory faltering from trauma and possible brain damage, said his sister, Linda Lindquist Baldwin.
Byers and Hamlet remember their meeting quite well, and Baldwin has put the puzzle pieces together from the scattered first few days after the tornado. She didn?t know whether her brother was alive or dead, she said as they all gathered at Lindquist?s beside to tell the story.
?Brian and I were waiting for the babysitter to come,? said Byers. ?We were watching television and I could see a tornado was touching down. We immediately said ?we?ve got to go help.??
Hamlet and Byers gathered supplies; bandages, specifically, but forgot them before rushing south from Byers? home in Alba. Getting out of their vehicle? near Iowa Street, Byers and Hamlet headed for the group home known as Community Group Services where Lindquist had shown up for work a half-hour before the twister slammed the city.
?I didn?t even know it was a group home,? said Byers of the mess of wood, metal and glass that was Community Group. ?We just started pulling people out. We pulled a lot of people out and put them on trucks. Some people were dead.?
In fact, Byers and Hamlet thought Lindquist was dead, his face drained of color and his eyes rolled back into their sockets. But Lindquist spoke up and Byers and Hamlet went into action.
?I prioritized him first, but he was fighting us,? said Byers, recalling Lindquist was 50 pounds heavier and had an athletic build that day in late May.
Lindquist, fighting to find the patients he was sheltering when the storm hit, struggled so much some bones fell from his shoulder, said Byers, who along with Hamlet managed to get Lindquist onto a stretcher made from a door.
?You send your worst out first,? said Byers, reciting Army training, ?and that was the last we saw of him.?
Baldwin was fighting too - for information on her brother, she said. She and other family members gave Lindquist?s description to area hospitals, but he was rendered unrecognizable due to the storm. They checked the morgue, searching frantically for three days, said Baldwin.
Byers and Hamlet had found Lindquist at Freeman Hospital, and when Baldwin came looking the duo told her his harrowing story.
?I have no doubt in my mind my brother would not be alive if not for those two,? said Baldwin of Hamlet and Byers, who have remained in contact to monitor Lindquist?s progress. ?Mike has come to the hospital regularly. He has acted so appropriately.?
When Lindquist awoke from his coma, he began to ask questions, said Baldwin, specifically concerned with the patients at the group home. After a couple of weeks, Lindquist was told they had died. He tears up when recalling the bear hugs he received from patients he served for six years.
?I?m really going to miss them,? he said.? ?All three of them perished.?
But Lindquist brightens when glancing at photos of his 11-year-old son, Creed, who has visited his dad as often as possible from Arkansas; he brightens when jokingly disparaging the ranking of his beloved Cardinal?s baseball team; he brightens when looking at newly-minted fianc? Carolyn McKinlay, a long-gone love returned for good in the face of tragedy.
?I never forgot him,? said McKinlay, of Lindquist, who she dated and lost touch with three decades previously. ?Then I found him on Facebook a year ago.?
Since, McKinlay has visited from Great Falls, Montana, for weeklong stretches, she said, and when Lindquist recently asked if she would marry him she said yes.
?I fell in love with him 30 years ago,? McKinlay said.
Lindquist is still at the beginning stages of his recovery, Baldwin said, citing shoulder surgeries down the road that will replace now-missing bones due to the disaster. Lindquist, who was afflicted with the fungal infection some suffered from following the tornado fought it off. He also hopes to gain full use of his right arm and hand, eventually.
While Baldwin and Lindquist give full credit to Byers and Hamlet for Lindquist?s life, the duo shrugs off any credit.
?Having come off deployment, you just react,? said Byers of the yearlong tour in Afghanistan he returned from last fall as part of Joplin?s 203rd Engineer Battalion. ?I?m sure I was just one of a thousand guys that helped that day.?
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