Bedell ran into a bathroom and was sucked out a window as her home was tossed into the air.
Judy Bedell's home at 11 Stewart Avenue is seen after the tornado hit Monson.MONSON – Judi B. Bedell was cooking shrimp and tortellini in the late afternoon of June 1 at her house at 11 Stewart Ave., unaware that a tornado was on the way.
The kitchen windows blew in, shattering glass, so she ran into the bathroom.
Bedell was sucked out the bathroom window of her home as it was tossed into the air and flipped upside down.
“When I woke up, I was face down outside of the house,” Bedell, 56, said recently.
When she looked up, she saw the crumbled remains of her neighbor’s house across the street.
“The house slid off the foundation and went airborne. ...She was knocked out cold. The neighbors found her,” Bedell’s partner, Douglas R. North, said.
The upside-down house was photographed frequently in the days after the tornado.
“The story goes, it rolled over me. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I probably knocked myself out when I went out the window,” Bedell said.
She suffered a concussion and hairline fracture in her wrist, and spent the night at Johnson Memorial Medical Center in Stafford Springs, Conn. All she could think of was North, and her 20-year-old stepson.
“I hadn’t seen (North). I couldn’t get in touch with him. All I wanted to do was get to my family,” Bedell said. “I needed to see their faces.”
North said it’s a miracle that Bedell survived not only being thrown from the home, but having it miss her when it landed (she was right next to it). And, he said, she was fortunate not to be struck by the debris whirling around in the air.
Now the couple, like others on their street, where only two homes out of 10 were left standing after the tornado, is faced with the daunting task of starting their lives over. Things people need, like checkbooks, are now gone. Account numbers to cancel services are nowhere to be found. But the bills are still coming in.
“It brings to light a lot of things that we take for granted,” North said.
North ran his plumbing and heating business out of the Stewart Avenue home that once belonged to his grandfather. They moved to an apartment on Palmer Road, and he has relocated the company there as well.
“We spent four years remodeling that house. It was a lot of work and a lot of time and it was gone in an instant,” Bedell said.
“Thank goodness for great neighbors and great friends. It brought the neighborhood a lot closer together,” she added.
Judi Bedell's house at 11 Stewart Ave., Monson was flipped upside down when the June 1 tornado hit town.Whether they rebuild at the site is still in question.
“The people are the same. The neighborhood’s not,” she said.
North said he was able to salvage some items for his business – one of his invoices was mailed back to him from where it was found in Holliston, approximately 60 miles away. But Bedell said most of their belongings are gone. Something that did escape the twister’s wrath was an intact box of ceramic shoes that her late mother collected.
“It’s nice to have something from my past,” Bedell said.
Bedell, who is from North Carolina, said she is still amazed that the tornado happened here. The couple said they are thankful to the many volunteers, and good friends, who have helped them. North’s employee, Forris Day Jr., was one of them.
North’s after-hours activities as a water and sewer commissioner and president of the Home for the Aged have come to a halt, as he has been too consumed by the tornado. Others have stepped up, he said.
Bedell has been in touch with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and North credited her with putting “our life back together.”
“You need to move forward, not backward,” Bedell said.