ST. LOUIS — For the first time since a tornado ripped through the city three months ago, Delois Holmes' children gathered again at their mothers' home.

For years, her adult sons and their families had met there every Sunday for a meal, conversation and softball in the front yard.

But on this Sunday in late July, three of them stood on the cracked sidewalk of Cote Brilliante Avenue, outside the pile of debris that used to be their childhood home. Now, they were debating how to clear the rubble.

Delois and four other people died in the May 16 tornado that toppled trees, flattened homes and displaced hundreds of people.

"We're just traumatized," Delois' son, Rodney, said as he and his brothers sorted through the home's wreckage. "We didn't just lose our mom, we lost our house."

Three

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