Harold Price couldn't sing in the choir loft on Easter as he has for so many years at Goshen United Methodist Church.
Instead, Price, 80, lifted his voice to the heavens from a metal folding chair in the parking lot of the Piedmont, Ala., church that was destroyed Palm Sunday by a tornado.
Seated beside him during the windy and chilly sunrise service were 200 other parishioners who had survived the tornado that killed 20 worshipers, including six children.
"It was worthwhile, very healing," said Price, who attended services with his daughter Faye Studdard, 44, who had pulled him from beneath the rubble last Sunday. "The emotions were so high."
Cars lined roads for blocks around the church, parts of which stood in the background as an eerie reminder.
During the service, parishioners hugged, held hands, cried and reaffirmed their faith in God and the close-knit community of 5,000 residents.
Some were on crutches. Many had bandaged limbs.
Marcus Woods, 13 - whose father, Buddy, and sister, Amy, 9, had been killed - was in a wheelchair. "I just wanted to be here," Woods said shivering in the chilly air.
"There's no place I'd rather be today," a badly bruised Rev. Kelly Clem told those gathered. "Nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come . . . nor anything else in all creation will ever be able to separate us."
Clem, whose daughter Hannah, 4, was killed in the twister, led a special sermon for the surviving children and gave each an Easter basket. The baskets - along with money, food and clothing - were donated by churches and well-wishers from across the USA.
A wooden cross behind Clem's pulpit was made by a friend she hadn't seen in years, she said. And four new stained glass windows were donated by a Catholic church.
"I feel like we're like a symbol of hope," Clem said.
"We feel like we all need each other right now. And that's why I look forward to every Sunday," said Donna Tyree, 18. Tyree's great-aunt, Adell Kiser, 96, was still hospitalized since having her left leg amputated following the storm. "We just feel like we all need to be together."
Missing from the Easter service was Price's wife, Reba, 66, who suffered an injured breastbone when the church's roof collapsed onto her pew.
But Reba's absence didn't prevent Price from singing louder than ever Sunday.
"There's going to be some deep scars," he said. "We're going to rebuild and we're going to be stronger and better."
Brandenburg, Ky., Mayor Carl Wells empathized.
Wells' town of 1,857 residents Sunday commemorated the 20th anniversary of a tornado that killed 31 people, leveled homes, businesses, a church. The tornado also killed 32 people in Xenia, Ohio.
Sunday, Wells and about 75 others attended a ceremony at the Meade County Courthouse, where the names of Brandenburg's dead were read.
"I have all the sympathy for that bunch in (Piedmont), Ala., because I know what they're going through," said Wells. "It's just a tremendous task to come back, but we've made it."
