A lost summer. A tornado’s toll. How a North Texas band marched on after the music stopped

VALLEY VIEW — On an early summer day, Shannon Worley sat in the high school’s band hall. Room 109 was unusually quiet but for the click-clack of her computer’s keyboard.
The band director stared at an open Google Doc lighting up her screen, wondering how to ask a question she already knew the answer to.
The questionnaire prompted students for their favorite candy, TV shows and movies. It asked about their goals for the year. It gauged interest in the jazz band.
The questions hardly changed from year to year, but they had to this summer. She pecked her keyboard.
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How were you affected by the tornado?
Worley knew it was bad.
The tornado came May 25, not long after 10 p.m. It was gone within minutes, taking seven lives with ruthless indifference.
Worley spent part of the Memorial Day weekend trying to check on her students and piecing together what happened.
They told her how the storm punched holes in their homes. The way the wind made twisted sculptures of whatever it stripped away. How the patchwork of farmland surrounding the community was snarled by wreckage.
Some students were staying with family in nearby towns spared by the tornado. A few were in hotels. Many remained in their mangled homes.
Among the dead was an incoming sophomore who played sousaphone in the band.
A search and rescue team found the 15-year-old in the rubble by her mother. Her younger brother was found nearby.
Worley paused. She thought some students might skip the question rather than rehash what happened — and was still happening — to them. That’s what her teenage self would’ve done.
She hoped those students would answer the next question.
How can we help you?
She didn’t know the answer to that one yet.
Worley wasn’t sure exactly how to discuss what happened, either.
A self-described “country girlie,” she grew up tough with few tears to shed. She pushed down her emotions. Talking through them was not her forte — music, not words, is her thing.
A plaque on her desk mirrored her sentiment. She’s had the trinket so long she forgot where it came from. The words etched into the frosted glass: Music expresses what words cannot.
Summer band camp was coming up.
Soon, she’d try to teach her students to march in step while making music together. They’d spend many mornings and afternoons perfecting a craft defined by its precision — even as ruin now shaped their lives.
She knew this: The band hall’s doors would be open.
Room 109 would be what her students couldn’t find anywhere else — a sanctuary.
***
The house went dark around 10:20 p.m.
Jareth Vickery’s game of Minecraft was cut short. Storms often made the power flicker where they lived in Shenandoah Estates, a subdivision of mostly manufactured homes south of Valley View.
A minute ticked by.
The 17-year-old, who prefers they/them pronouns, expected the power to come right back on like it usually did. But the lights stayed off.
The teen had left work early, and was still wearing work boots and a Taco Casa uniform. Nana was out of town, so Jareth was alone.
Another minute passed.
Outside, a vengeful chorus swelled. It began as a faint rumble that shook the walls. Then came a roar, violent rocking. Creaking. Then crashing. Then chaos.
In the dark, Jareth felt the earth shudder.
Sounds left as quickly as they came — so fast Jareth hadn’t noticed. Only dim moonlight peering through broken windows lit the hallway. It was quiet.
Jareth was disoriented but unharmed. Out of desperation, the teen called the first person listed in their call history and screamed for help in an empty house.
They started walking through their Nana’s house, the crunch, crunch, crunch of shattered glass under their boots.
What had been familiar no longer was.
The roof had holes. One of the bedrooms was missing chunks of the exterior wall. Walkways were cluttered.
Jareth started looking around, getting on hands and knees to navigate parts of the house. They found a flashlight and began surveying the damage.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
Nothing was where it had been. Jareth’s flute was somewhere. Marching band camp was weeks away. How would senior year look now?
Now Nana was on the phone. She asked for deep breaths. She asked what happened.
She said everything would be OK.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
Jareth was bawling now.
There’s so much glass.
***
About two miles away, first responders would establish a command center off Interstate 35 at the AP Travel Center gas station.
Some of the first 911 calls came from people in the station. Videos captured inside showed the EF3 tornado tearing the building to its frame. The clips flooded Facebook feeds.
On May 26, with the gas station’s husk at his back, Gov. Greg Abbott described the videos as “harrowing.”
The tornado ran nearly 50 miles and ripped through southern Cooke County, including Frf Estates and Shenandoah Estates — two manufactured home communities where the seven deaths were reported.
Search and rescue teams struggled to access the neighborhood. Tossed vehicles and debris blocked the entries. Some residents jumped into their skid steers and tractors to clear a path.
Jareth stood outside their house into the midnight hour, waiting for help. The house was still standing, but just barely, it seemed.
“This doesn’t happen to real people. This is supposed to happen in the movies,” the teen recalled thinking.
The house to the right sustained damage but seemed OK.
The one to the left was gone, turned inside out. Jareth later watched first responders carry their neighbor out in a body bag.
Jareth’s cellphone pinged: It was a new message in a group chat with the Valley View marching band’s squad leaders.
A search and rescue team found Miranda Esparza, the sweet sousaphone player who was on Jareth’s squad last year.
She was dead.
***
A lone roaming water sprinkler on the Valley View band’s practice field faced tall odds against the late August heat. Tucked between the elementary and high schools, the football field-sized plot was a collage of soft green and crispy yellow.
The band’s nearly 50 musicians stood at attention in single-file rows, exactly four steps apart. Worley’s instructions rang out from a loudspeaker as the students, instruments in hand, ran marching drills.
The halftime show this year: three hit songs by funk and R&B band Earth, Wind & Fire, including “September” — a soulful number that can be ambitious even for a band that’s stationary.
“Remember, you guys are in charge,” Worley reminded the drum majors, who set the tempo. She cautioned the band not to let the beat rush away from them.
The lasting aftermath of the storm weeks earlier may have been easily missed by someone new to Valley View. But for Worley and her students, it was unavoidable.
Hundreds of homes were damaged or destroyed. At least 100 people reported injuries. A company hired by the county later estimated it removed nearly 50,000 cubic yards of debris.
Miranda — who was warm and talkative once she knew you and hated wearing her glasses — was gone.
Some students dropped band, unwilling or unable to continue. The ensemble used fewer chairs for rehearsals. The reunions after summer break weren’t as warm.
The students’ answers to Worley’s questionnaire painted a grim picture: More than a quarter of band members were displaced or their homes damaged. Some lost their instruments.
One of Miranda’s friends, also a sousaphone player, left the band. Without her and Miranda, just one sousaphone player remained: Shawn Brown.
The deep hum of a sousaphone, a tuba relative built for mobility that wraps around its player, forms the backbone of a marching band’s sound. It’s the largest wind instrument on the field. It typically plays long notes to ground chords or syncopated rhythms to frame the melody.
To Shawn, a junior who wears Star Wars-themed button-up shirts to match his Star Wars wallet, Miranda and her friend were the life of the sousaphone section.
The two were chatty — like really chatty.
Worley sometimes had to intervene when it got out of hand. It often did.
But it was quiet now.
Shawn felt he had to play a lot louder, too.
***
Band kids are a weird bunch.
Some oddities are ubiquitous: The phrase “Hey band” will draw an instinctual and unified response of “Hey what” from members, current or former. They insist the football team should “get off the band’s field.” Losing sheet music or forgetting to pack the long black socks for the uniform is no laughing matter.
Other things can’t be explained, like how some Valley View band members bow their heads in solemn homage at the sight of the group’s most sacred relics: two mismatched cans of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle soup.
Few know how or why this ritual started — only that it must be done.
Band kids are the best kids, Worley often says. Her students deserved a marching season dedicated to having fun in spite of all the heartache — that’s why this indoor rehearsal in late August would be tough.
Early on, Worley had an idea of how she wanted to honor Miranda’s memory.
It was a delicate balance: She wanted to acknowledge the deep loss while highlighting how the Valley View community had come together, how strangers helped strangers.
She didn’t know how to put that in words yet, but she’d figured out the music.
The students were seated, tinkering with their instruments and chatting with their seatmates. Worley asked them to pull out sheet music for “Salute to Freedom,” a stirring arrangement that includes taps and “Amazing Grace”.
The students grew quiet but for the shuffling of their sheet music. Worley measured her words.
“OK, can I teach y’all a life lesson real quick?”
The students nodded.
“OK, if you’re the kind of person that stuffs down your emotions and says you can deal with it later, don’t do that. Because I’ve done that — I did that, and it worked for about 35 years of my life, but it doesn’t work anymore,” the band director explained. “It’s going to come up, and it just keeps going — that’s why I can’t get through this, probably, without crying.”
She explained that an announcer at their first home football game would read prepared remarks about Miranda and her family, the others taken by the storm and Valley View’s lost summer. Then the band would line up in the end zone to play taps and “Amazing Grace.”
Worley paused.
“We lost Miranda. Also, people lost other people as well. And some of you guys lost your homes, and that’s not cool, right?” she continued.
Their nods kept her from breaking down.
It felt like her words were failing her. One of her assistant directors brought out tissues as her voice shook and cracked.
Miranda was in elementary school when Worley met her. Back then, the director also drove a school bus for the district, so she dropped Miranda off some days.
She remembered how Miranda moved her music stand close and leaned forward in her chair, squinting at her sheet music. She had glasses but often didn’t wear them.
Worley wanted to fashion a tribute to Miranda. Her husband, who works maintenance for the school district, made one with a band chair, a dolly and a sousaphone. It was rolled into the band hall so the students could see.
A floral wreath would line the sousaphone’s bell. Its curved brass would shine under the Friday night lights from the 50-yard line as the band played.
A few students wiped away tears.
Worley paused.
“I want to go ahead and play if you’re ready,” she said. “If that brought up some stuff for you and you need a moment, I got you. I get it. Have your moment.
“Those of you that can play let’s go ahead and start.”
They talked more. Then they all took a breath and she cued the band.
***
Jareth took comfort in one part of the slow but steady cleanup of their old home: at least most of the glass had been cleared away.
After three months, tarps now plugged the holes in the roof. Cardboard boxes from Home Depot dotted the floor. A calendar on the wall was frozen in May.
Jareth’s Nana, Deanna Vickery, was making progress. She and her husband, David, were outfitting a prefab shed beside their house to live in as they figured out what came next.
The damaged house was not yet paid off: Vickery’s last payment was coming up.
“I make my final payment next month — and then all of this will be mine,” she quipped, waving her hands over the ruin that used to be her living room.
In some ways, the storm profoundly changed Jareth.
Jareth planned to inherit Vickery’s home, attend North Central Texas College and enroll in a police academy in Denton. The teen wanted to raise a family in that house, building upon nearly 15 years of memories.
Now, leaving Texas after college seemed likely.
But, in at least one way, the storm strengthened ambitions Jareth held. The teen now sees becoming a police officer as a way to help people who face dangers like the Valley View community had.
The storm also made Jareth appreciate their outlets — mainly the Valley View Mighty Eagle Band.
When Jareth came out as gender fluid last year, the teen’s fellow musicians were some of the most supportive and accepting.
The band hall had been a safe space. Worley and her assistants made sure of it.
That’s why, despite the storm’s lingering ruin, Jareth still walked into Room 109 for the first day of summer band camp.
Copies of Worley’s questionnaire were passed out early on. The students used music stands as desks as they scribbled their responses.
Jareth eyed the questions.
How were you affected by the tornado?
“I’d prefer not to respond,” they wrote.
How can we help you?
“You already do by letting me in band.”
***
The Valley View Eagles and Alvord Bulldogs faced off Aug. 30 in John Kassen Stadium under the Friday night lights, but their marching bands stood together.
Worley studied music at Tarleton State University with Alvord’s head high school band director, so she called him to pitch the idea earlier in the summer: Their bands would merge in the end zone to play taps and “Amazing Grace”.
The bands bonded over Domino’s pizza before the game. They ran through the music together. A few players who forgot their sheet music looked over at their neighbor’s.
Joined by the other band, Shawn, Valley View’s lone sousaphone player, was not alone anymore. He was one of a trio.
The wreathed-wrapped sousaphone was rolled out to the 50-yard line. The announcer began reading the prepared remarks.
Worley turned to face the bands.
Many of her students had tears welling. Some wrapped their arms around themselves in a hug. A few hung their heads low, their band caps covering their wet faces.
Still, the musicians all met Worley’s eyes, so they dried theirs and readied their instruments.
Worley raised her hands to give the tempo — a purposeful 68 beats per minute — and began counting them off. She cued the band.
Together, they took a deep breath.
The trumpets called out with the first solemn notes of taps. The woodwinds, including Jareth and the flutes, joined in. The beat of a lone snare drum kept pace.
The band’s sound gradually swelled, faded, then swelled once more as the brass took the lead. The mellophones stood tall on the foundation laid by Shawn and the sousaphones, the trumpets again soaring above.
The brass dialed back as the band moved into “Amazing Grace,” where the clarinets took the lead. The brass returned and then retreated, leaving the woodwinds to carry on to Worley’s cutoff.
The ensemble’s final chord resonated through the stadium.
The notes clung to the air for a moment — then, they were gone.
A short pause.
Then applause.
***
The Valley View band members looked drained. The tears came back as they shuffled out of the end zone, heading for the home-side stands.
Worley stopped them.
“We’re not in a rush. Take the moment you need right now,” she said as they circled around. “If you need a hug, whatever you need, let’s just let it out right now, OK?”
A referee blew a sharp whistle as she spoke, signaling the start of the football game behind them.
“I’m not in a rush to get there,” the director said again, not looking away from her students. She leaned in close. “We’re not gonna rush it. All right? I love you guys.”
Students held each other. They pulled Worley into the embrace.
Staff writer Lana Ferguson contributed to this article.
Due to the May 25 storm, Valley View band director Shannon Worley paused plans for an overnight band field trip this year, worried the costs may strain families. The band boosters set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise donations and help make the trip possible.