HENRYVILLE, Ind. — From the relative safety of his basement, John Ryan heard the tornado move over his house. He heard so much noise that he thought his house would be in ruins.

But after the storm passed and he started upstairs, he didn’t see much damage and thought maybe things wouldn’t be as bad as he had feared.

Then he looked outside. Debris was everywhere. Gone were his two barns. Gone were trees and fencing. Gone also, at least temporarily, was his desire to remain on the farm five miles west of Henryville where he’d lived for 35 years.

“The first two weeks I told the kids, ‘I can’t do this anymore,’” Ryan said. “I told them to ‘just take the farm, it’s yours.’ I was in shock. A friend and nephew stopped and I didn’t know who I was talking to.

“First, you’re thankful that you’re alive, and then you wonder about your neighbors and friends. They you try to figure out what to do first. You don’t know where to start.”

Through the kindness of strangers, Ryan’s outlook slowly began to change as volunteers worked to restore some of what was damaged by the EF-4 tornado that hit March 2. The next day, four men from Odon, Ind., arrived, hoping to help storm victims. The four told Ryan they had been in a tornado a few years ago and knew there would be a need for workers.

They stopped at Ryan’s property because one of them could see from the road that the barns were gone. As one said to Ryan, “I’m a farmer, and this is where we’re going to start.”

Those four were the first of many who have descended on Ryan’s farm since the storm. “People just keep coming,” he said. “It’s unbelievable. It’s more awesome than the tornado.”

Ryan said the first two weeks after the tornado were a blur, as volunteers worked to make his house livable and then to clean up his hayfields. One day, about 100 people were working on his property.

“The thing that really gets you is they’ll come up and thank you for letting them help you,” he said. “It brought tears to my eyes. I had no idea how many good people there were in the world that would come and help.”

As things began to improve around his farm, Ryan said his outlook also began to get better. The majority of his fencing has been repaired and he’s contracted with the Amish to build a new barn.

“It probably took about two weeks but between my children and the volunteers, I’m in a better place,” he explained. “The more that gets done, the more I’m getting closer to back to normal. It doesn’t resemble anything like it was right after the tornado.”

Ryan has been keeping records of the work volunteers have done on his farm. He said he’s had about 1,000 people total, but that includes people who have come to help more than one day. He’s had people from Indiana and neighboring states, and from as far away as Connecticut, Maryland and New York. He’s also had people who live above the Arctic Circle in Alaska.

One such group of volunteers that came to the area to work for a day was composed of students from North Montgomery High School in Crawfordsville, Ind., parents and community leaders. The group included members of the school’s FFA, Sunshine Society (a community service organization), student council and Leadership Academy.

A total of 67 volunteers – 42 students and 15 adults – made the three-hour trip to the Henryville area on April 24, said Nancy Bell, the high school’s agriculture science and business teacher and FFA adviser.

“It was a gorgeous day to work, with temperatures in the 60s,” she said. “At the end of the day, we had a bus full of tuckered kids, some with sunburned faces.”

Most of the group spent the day clearing a pasture and hayfield of debris for a local llama and alpaca farmer. Seeing the damage firsthand had an effect on the volunteers, especially the students, Bell noted.

“When we got to the hard-hit areas, where houses were leveled and roofs were off houses and barns, the bus went silent,” she said. “They were all thankful it didn’t happen to them and they were all glad they came to help. They were all concerned about the school, and where the kids were going to finish out the year. The school was really in the kids’ hearts that day.”

The March 2 tornado is the third one Pekin, Ind., Marshal Jeff Thomas remembers. Tornadoes also hit the area in 1974 and 2004. Pekin is in the southeastern corner of Washington County.

“There was a lot of destruction with each of those,” he said. “Tornadoes, hurricane-strength winds, blizzards, floods – we’ve seen it all. This is a rural country community with resilient people.”

Even though the storm left a path of damage 18 miles in length in the area, law enforcement and volunteers were able to check on everyone in about five hours, Thomas noted. “We have a lot of hills and ‘hollers,’” he said. “To get to these areas was not easy.”

While there is still a lot of rebuilding to do, Thomas said in many areas, it’s hard to see where the actual devastation was because cleanup is pretty much done.

Volunteers with construction and fence-building skills are needed, he said, as are monetary donations. A disaster relief center has been set up in the Pekin area. For information, call 812-967-6116.