Kindness continues to come from near and far as storm survivors pick up the pieces of their lives

Greenville Police Department recently received a call from a New York State Police post on Long Island, asking for help choosing someone to donate some funds they collected for tornado relief. New York State Police Troop L, located near Farmingdale, New York, collected nearly $1,000 and wanted to donate it to someone who has ties to law enforcement.

Greenville Police Chief Darren Harvey immediately thought of Kathy Perry. Perry lost everything in the Dec. 10, 2021 tornado, and is the widow of former Muhlenberg County Sheriff Eddie Perry. As Harvey and Perry opened the card and read the message inside, both were moved by the generosity and kindness of people so far from Bremen, Kentucky.

A young woman who is from Greenville, now working as a detective in northern Kentucky, was contacted by a friend in the New York State Police, who wanted to help someone here in Kentucky. The connection was made, and Perry seemed to Harvey to be the perfect recipient.

Perry lived in a neighborhood in Bremen dubbed the “kill zone” by a meteorologist who surveyed the area. Her home is completely gone, along with almost everything she owned. Of all the things destroyed or lost to the storm that night, she said there were only two things she hoped to find, more than anything else. They were her late husbands law enforcement badges, and the flag that was presented to Perry at his funeral, folded in a triangle and stored in a frame.

A keepsake box, given to Perry after her husband’s death, held the badges. Volunteers found the box in a cow field across from her home, with everything undisturbed inside.

“That keepsake box didn’t have a latch on it, it didn’t have a magnet, it just shut,” Perry said. “And they found it flipped upside down in the mud. When they turned it over, everything was still in it. It’s a miracle.”

Perry and Eric Bletzinger hold the flag found after the tornado, in a new case built by Bletzinger. (Photo/Kathy Perry)

The flag was also found in the same field. “When they brought the flag to me, it was so muddy I couldn’t tell what it was, until I flipped it over and saw a star. I knew it was his flag.” She said the flag was then cleaned and given a new home.

Eric Bletzinger, who is a Veteran and an official with the Muhlenberg County Public Schools, heard about the flag from someone who works in the board office. He then set about cleaning the flag and constructing a new box. He used some wood salvaged from Perry’s home, and another from Dawson Springs, to build a new triangle box to store the flag in.

Bletzinger used a piece of wood from the Perry’s flooring to make an inlay for the box. “So now I have that flag back in the case, with wood from the house Eddie and I built,” Perry said.

Perry feels fortunate to be alive, when several of her close neighbors did not survive the tornado. Even with all the loss, she said she was able to see God was there. “A couple of nights later, I went to the Bremen Community Center. The Amish were there, and a guy I had met from Texas, these people from California, there were people from Florida,” Perry said. “When you walked into the building, it was more powerful than being in church.”

People came together to feed the volunteers, and Perry said she could hear the different accents and dialects from the group, as they prayed and took fellowship with one another.

Perry said her husband would be so proud she was selected for a donation because of his career in law enforcement. “I am humbled and deeply grateful to the New York State Police Troop L. I have much respect and admiration for their work. I am blessed to be a part of the law enforcement family. There has been a light in all this darkness, God is still present and acts of kindness are still rampant.”