Graduation day is a bright spot amid Oklahoma tornado recovery

OKLAHOMA CITY — Before 18-year-old Zach Joyner rushed into a storm shelter Monday, he made sure to grab two prized possessions: his blue Southmoore High School graduation cap and gown.

“It’s important to me,” he said of the ceremonial garb. “I thought, ‘I cannot take a chance on this.’”

Joyner wore the cap and gown proudly at Southmoore High School graduation Saturday afternoon, five days after a massive tornado ravaged his hometown.

Three high schools in Moore and south Oklahoma City — Westmoore, Southmoore and Moore — held back-to-back ceremonies at the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City.

The graduations marked a bittersweet milestone for the community, but also provided a joyful reprieve.

At Westmoore High’s graduation, Brandi Johnson and her friends Breanna Butcher and Meredith Gibson, all 18, walked into the convention center together, adjusting their gowns. After a week of consoling each other, families and friends hugged their red-robed graduates with smiles, posing for photos, the new pages for family albums.

“Monday was our last day, and we didn’t know it was our last day,” Butcher said.

The mile-wide tornado ripped a path of destruction that killed 24 people, including 10 children in Moore and Oklahoma City. At least 13,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, and 33,000 people have been directly affected by the twister.

Free caps and gowns were distributed to students who lost their homes; graduates and their guests observed a moment of silence.

“My nana’s house got blown away,” Southmoore graduate Harli Haworth, 18, said quietly.

She posed for photos with friends in their caps and gowns. It’s good they went through with graduation this week, she said. Even if they’d waited, it would still be painful.

“We gather today to celebrate under unique and trying circumstances,” Terry Tamage, a Westmoore teacher, told the crowd. “We are acutely aware of the events of this week.”

Tamage said his family lost their home in the May 3, 1999, tornado. Years from now, he said, Moore students who lost classmates this week will be graduating.

“I and we hurt for them,” he said of the families of the children who died and of others affected by the storm.

He told the crowd to “celebrate the class of 2013 in a way that is joyful but respectful of our seniors and our community.”

President Obama will arrive Sunday to view the damage. A public memorial and prayer service will be held Sunday evening at First Baptist Church in Moore. The church has been a hub for volunteers and the site of a Federal Emergency Management Agency relief center. Relief supplies — bottled water, food, shoes — have stacked up there in recent days.

The celebrations on Saturday were tempered as funerals were held for two children: Emily Conatzer and Christopher Legg, both 9. Christopher’s funeral was to occur at the same time as the Southmoore graduation. Several other victims have been laid to rest in recent days.

Southmoore High is only two miles from Plaza Towers Elementary School, where seven children were killed when the tornado leveled the campus. Families from the high school live in the surrounding neighborhoods.

Joyner’s family lost their house. “My family’s houses, and friends’, all blown away,” he said.

His 8-year-old brother, Christian, is a student at Plaza Towers school. Three of Christian’s friends died there.

Their mother picked up Joyner and his brother from school minutes before the tornado hit, and they made it to their home shelter.

When they emerged, Joyner saw people running down his street, calling: “Plaza Towers! The kids need help at Plaza Towers!”

Joyner ran to the nearby campus and pulled children from the wreckage, including one boy who had a “huge chunk out of his back,” Joyner said. Another child yelled, “My friend is dead!” as Joyner helped him.

A girl he pulled out had a gash on her head. “I was just comforting them, saying it’s OK,” Joyner said.

Joyner said he planned to get a tattoo of the Plaza Towers Panthers paw print on his arm with the words, “Never forget.”

When Southmoore student Alyson Elizabeth Costilla crossed the stage to get her diploma, the crowd roared. Family and friends held up portraits of her mother, Terri Long, who was killed by the tornado.

Supt. Susan Pierce told the crowd that the community wanted to celebrate the accomplishment of its youth even though “our world has been turned upside down.”

Pierce said she’d been asked repeatedly through the week why she lived in Oklahoma, especially in Moore.

“I thought to myself, ‘That’s a silly question. Why wouldn’t I live here? Why wouldn’t I live in Oklahoma?’”

The crowd applauded.

“The reason I stay, why I don’t go anywhere else? The students I see before me,” she said.

hailey.branson@latimes.com

stephen.ceasar@latimes.com