Henryville students meet, set eyes on future - 13 WTHR Indianapolis

A Henryville High School student injured in Friday's tornadoes wants to make sure the experience is documented in the school yearbook.

Hundreds of students gathered Tuesday night for the first time since the tornadoes struck, trying to save their school year. The students are trying to find a way forward, even though the storms demolished their schools.

It has been four days since the students were together, when their classes let out early, just minutes ahead of the deadly storm. As you can imagine, they have stories to tell.

Senior Brett Burgess is making sure those stories are recorded. His is one of the writers for the school yearbook.

"Just a little shaken up, but good," he told a teacher at the meeting.

For the rest of their lives, the students will be asking each other "Where were you?" and "What happened?" about the day their school was torn apart. Part of dealing with what happened is why the church sanctuary was packed for Tuesday's meeting.

"Your body kind of shuts down and says 'This didn't happen'," said a speaker at the meeting.

They were teaching the kids how to cope.

"Some of you guys feel bad because your house didn't get demolished. Some of you guys feel bad because you didn't lose anything. Does anyone feel bad because it was not worse for you than somebody else?" asked the speaker.

By a show of hands, you could see the steps to healing are not going to be easy. The road ahead has a lot of bumps.

School administrators want to give the students this year's edition of the yearbook for free, but say they need about $5,000 to make that happen. An Indianapolis man called Eyewitness News late Tuesday and offered to pick up the tab for the yearbooks.