Personal Notes
A Tornado Took Their Home. Ten Years Later, I Went Back.
Ten years ago, I stopped along Highway 180 near Cool, Texas, to film the aftermath of a tornado. A conversation with Glen Zell became part of that record. This year, I returned to ask Glen and Vicki what happened after the cameras left.
In this story
Some stories take years to reveal what they are really about. When I first met Glen in 2016, his home had been destroyed, and the damage stretched across the property around him. I pulled over, introduced myself, and asked if he wanted to share what had happened. At the time, I thought I was documenting the destruction. I did not yet know that our conversation would become the beginning of a film about recovery.
My new documentary, After the Wind: One Small Thing at a Time, brings that original interview together with a return visit ten years later. Glen and Vicki Zell now sit inside a rebuilt home on the same foundation, looking back on the storm, the people who helped them, and the things they carried forward. The change in the landscape is easy to see. Understanding what it took to get there means listening to the people who lived through it.
A roadside meeting in 2016
The original footage holds a moment that could never be recreated. Glen was still close to the experience, describing how he and Vicki made it to their safe room with their dog as their home came apart around them. In that interview, he recalled briefly opening the safe room door, seeing the roof leaving the house, and going back inside until the storm had passed. Where the house should have protected them, he could see the sky.
The pictures show broken roofing, scattered belongings, and a home exposed to the weather. They also show how much ordinary life can be interrupted in a few minutes. The house had been planned around the life Glen and Vicki wanted to live, on land with a much longer family history. Vicki’s family had been connected to this place for generations, and the couple had lived in their new home for only eighteen months when the tornado struck.
Looking at those images now, with ten years between the two interviews, changes the way I see them. The destruction is still there in the footage, but so is the beginning of everything they would have to do next.
Watch the film
Back on the same foundation
Returning in 2026 meant sitting with both Glen and Vicki in the home they rebuilt. The foundation had survived, and they were able to use it again. Vicki explained that living in the original house had also taught them what they wished they had done differently, so rebuilding gave them a chance to make some changes inside.
They rebuilt in about nine months, but the construction timeline tells only part of the story. Before there could be a finished house, there were damaged belongings to sort through, debris to clear, and decisions to make while the full size of the work was still difficult to grasp. Glen described the feeling of walking around without knowing where to begin because so much needed attention at once.
Vicki said the cleanup was the biggest surprise. It required months of work, and even ten years later, shards of glass still appear around the property after it rains. That detail stayed with me. A rebuilt roof can make a place look whole again while pieces of the storm are still coming out of the ground.
The people who showed up
When Glen and Vicki talk about rebuilding, they also talk about the people who came. Family and friends helped, strangers brought food for the people working, and neighbors left encouraging messages in the mailbox. A group of teenagers from their church in Willow Park spent time helping with the cleanup. The couple still remember that kindness whenever they pass the church.
One young man named John traveled from Fort Worth to help clear the pasture. Glen described how much that work took off their shoulders and how much of himself John put into it. His help became part of a larger collection of practical acts that made an overwhelming situation more manageable.
“You find out there’s a lot of good people around.”
Glen Zell
Those memories give the film much of its warmth. The people who helped could not undo the damage, but they could take on a task, bring a meal, or remind Glen and Vicki that someone was thinking about them. Ten years later, those contributions still belong to the story of the home.
What they carried forward
Some of the most memorable parts of our conversation involved belongings with a meaning that could never be measured by their replacement cost. Vicki’s father’s funeral flag had been stored upstairs. After the tornado, it was missing, and one of their sons kept searching for it. He eventually found it in a bale of hay, and it was cleaned and returned to the family in its triangular display case.
A black walnut tree on the property carried another kind of family memory. Vicki’s grandmother had planted it, and Vicki remembered climbing it as a child. When the tornado brought it down, Glen had the wood milled and saved. Later, he and his brother built the patio table Vicki had wanted from that wood.
The flag came home changed, and the tree became something new. Both stories show how recovery can involve finding a way to keep a connection with what was there before. They also make room for the belongings that never returned, including family photographs and other pieces of a life that could not simply be bought again.
One small thing at a time
The subtitle of the film comes from the way Glen described beginning the work. When the whole job felt too large, they started with something small enough to finish. Completing that task made progress visible, and that gave them somewhere to begin the next one.
That idea gave this project its direction. The film follows the years between a home being destroyed and the people who lived there being able to sit together and tell the rest of the story. It makes room for the cleanup, the help, the loss, and the changes that remain long after the immediate damage has disappeared from view.
I am grateful to Glen and Vicki for welcoming me back and sharing those memories. The first time I met Glen, I was a stranger with a camera beside the highway. Ten years later, that roadside conversation had become a reason to return and listen again.
If you have lived through a storm or helped someone rebuild afterward, I would be glad to hear what this story brings back for you. I hope you will take some time to watch After the Wind and meet the people whose lives continued after that first interview ended.
About the film
After the Wind: One Small Thing at a Time is a 26 minute documentary by Jonny Goodday, built around his 2016 and 2026 interviews with Glen and Vicki Zell near Cool, Texas.
Continue exploring
More stories from the field
Fort Worth’s Courthouse Outlasted the Officials Who Built It
Fort Worth’s 1895 courthouse came in under budget—and still cost the county judge and commissioners their jobs. Explore the landmark’s history, restoration…
Read the story →
The Last Cut: How Swift & Company Made Fort Worth a Packinghouse City
Swift & Company helped build Fort Worth. Explore the workers, packinghouses, and surviving fragments behind the Stockyards story.
Read the story →
Columns for the People: Inside Fort Worth’s Central Post Office
Opened in 1933, Fort Worth’s monumental central post office turned an everyday public service into an architectural promise of order, beauty, and…
Read the story →Stay close to the road
Follow the next story.
Occasional article updates, photographs, and films from the field.
Help document the places worth remembering. Support the work →
No Responses