PRAIRIE VILLAGE, Kan. – The residents of Moore, Okla. are still picking up the pieces of their homes and businesses after an EF5 tornado ripped through their city. There already have been many stories of generosity. One group, who traveled thousands of miles to Moore to bring donated items from the East Coast, said they know all too well about overcoming tragedy.
On December 14, 2012, gunman opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., killing school staff and children.
“There are days I still have trouble processing it and I was there to witness all of it,” Peter Barresi told FOX 4 News.
Barresi, an alumni of the school, said his son is a first grader at Sandy Hook Elementary.
Now Barresi is trying to teach his six-year-old another lesson and the lesson took him more than 1,500 miles away to Moore.
“How I broke it to him is that daddy’s going to try to help some people like the people who helped us,” he said.
On May 20, 2013, a tornado tore through thousands of Oklahoma homes, businesses, and an elementary school, killing hundreds including children, leaving them buried under the rubble.
“Say, an adult in a car accident dies. Yes, it’s sad. Throw it in where now it’s a child, it makes the emotion probably amplified by 100 percent,” Barresi explained.
That is true for Barresi and his friends. All of them are volunteers with ties to Newtown.
They made a stop in Prairie Village, Kan., where their friend Mark Rixson, who’s also from Newtown, lives.
But their goal is to go from Sandy Hook to Moore with a trailer full of donated food, bags of clothes, and much more.
“About half way through collecting, we decided we needed to seek out a second trailer. Because one of the things that’s not on this trailer, but on the other trailer, is flashlights. A company called and said, ‘We want to donate two pallets of flashlights,'” said John Dicostanzo, a volunteer.
The group said there have been hurdles along the road like a flat tire, but the trip is well worth it.
“This whole trip is as much to help myself heal and to pay it forward,” Barresi said.
The group arrived in Moore om Sunday evening. They dropped off their items at the Journey Church in Norman, a detour from their original plan to head to First Baptist in Moore, because of the President Obama’s Sunday visit.
The group said they plan to leave Sunday night to travel back to Conn. They said they didn’t want to be in the way while the city tries to rebuild. They said they will plan another trip back to Moore in the near future.