KFOR’s Alie Meyer reporting
Eight-year-old Kyle Davis was one of seven 3rd graders who died when an EF-5 tornado hit Plaza Towers Elementary in Moore, Okla., on May 20.
“It was the longest night of my life, just the wait,” said his mother Mikki. She wasn’t told her son died until the next morning.
Mikki and her parents, Marvin and Sharon Dixon, are living out of suitcases after the storms damaged their house. In the meantime, they have scrapbooks that survived the tornado, salvaged pieces of the life they had before the storm.
Family friends helped Mikki dig through the rubble of Plaza Towers Elementary on Memorial Day, searching for Kyle’s school book bag.
They found it, full of his belongings. Kyle’s teacher, Mrs. Doan, found a soccer memento of Kyle’s. She accidentally left it in a jacket, after she’d taken it from Kyle one day at school; he had been fidgeting.
“I want to say thank you to anyone who helped, financially or those who came and helped our family; my job, my friends and their families, my church, Southlakes Soccer Club,” Mikki said. “Our family just wants to say thank you. I don’t want to miss anybody. This is a big thank you to anyone that’s helped not only me but any of the families that have been affected.”
Davis said she feels so grateful for all of the people who have helped her family pick up the pieces during what has been the most difficult season of their lives.
They have pictures now of the area they couldn’t get to that night, the hallway in the third grade wing where Kyle’s class took cover.
She kissed the wall where he died, a firewall that was supposed to hold but didn’t.
“I am lucky that God gave me this child,” she said. “It was for a short time but I am lucky.”
Mikki’s last words to her son were early in the morning, May 20.
She was leaving for work about 5 a.m. and he woke up to watch cartoons in her bed.
“I said, ‘I love you, Bub.’ He said, ‘I love you, Mom.’ Then I went out of my bedroom and I stopped and I came back and I looked at him and he was just watching the TV and that was the last time I saw him,” she said.
If you would like to donate to Kyle Davis’ family, friends have set up an account at Bank of Oklahoma.
You can give to the “Kyle Davis Special Contribution Account” at any BOK location.
For complete coverage of the Moore, Okla., tornado, visit our sister station http://kfor.com/tag/moore-tornado/
