Wearing neon green safety vests, more than 100 Andrean students, staff members and adult volunteers hoisted classroom furniture into the Catholic high school Tuesday.
Their effort represented a vital step toward readying the school for the first day of classes Aug. 13, just two months after a June 11 tornado ravaged the Merrillville school.
“Where we’re standing was standing water,” said Principal Jaycob Knazur in a first-floor classroom. He called the massive repair and construction effort “divine intervention.”
“If this would have happened on a Tuesday in October at 1 pm., it would have been a very different scenario.
“So the fact that it was late in the evening during the summer was a godsend in its own way that no one was in this building. This is normally a bustling campus,” he said.
Boys’ basketball coach and volunteer Jack Cundiff and his team were in the building June 11, but left before the tornado ripped through Merrillville.
“We were in here in the afternoon,” Cundiff said. “We had workouts,” but they left before the storm. He got a phone call that night about the damage.
What he witnessed the next day stunned him.
“I mean it wasn’t just the school. But when you’re seeing the school – the place that you work and the place you’ve grown fond of – and it’s a ton of damage, it’s pretty shocking.”
Sophomore Danielle Fleming, 15, of Schererville, was in Europe when the tornado hit and texts pinged off her cell phone at 3 a.m. “Everyone was texting and calling.”
Fleming had no hesitation about volunteering Tuesday.
“I really wanted to help. We’ve already been through so much,” she said. “We’re such a tight-knit community, but I didn’t expect it to happen to us.”
Vanessa Ruiz, 16, a junior from Merrillville, said homes on her block suffered major damage.
After seeing the devastation at her school, she wanted to help.
“I saw how bad the school was and I wanted it to get in better shape quicker. Everybody wants to help; I saw a lot of parents here, too.”
Monday’s soaking storms brought back bad memories.
“I was scared and home alone. I didn’t know if it would be safe,” she said.
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Andrean 1971 alum Jim Donner, of Highland, hasn’t been inside the school since a reunion in 2006.
He made several trips alongside students pushing and carrying furniture into the school.
“God has blessed me with the ability to help at my age, so I think I should come out here and help,” he said. “I try to volunteer wherever it’s needed.”
Donner didn’t immediately rush to Merrillville to glimpse the school after the tornado because town officials urged people to stay away.
“I did respect that, but I was thinking if I see something, I’m coming,” he said about the call for volunteers.
He did see the photos and news accounts of his school’s damage. “It was sad. It was horrible. I was wondering if they were going to be able to open again.”
Knazur credited Tonn and Blank Construction, of Michigan City, for speeding up repairs.
He said more than 100 workers labored in multiple shifts each day.
While the school awaits its insurance money, he said initial renovation funding came from the school, the Diocese of Gary, philanthropic partners and individual alumni supporters.
“A little bit of everything has gotten us to where we are today,” said Knazur.
Despite the tornado damage, Knazur said Andrean is on an enrollment upswing. He said it attracts students from 37 zip codes across Northwest Indiana.
“We’re expecting about 130 freshmen, which is larger than we anticipated, and we should be really close to the 500 mark for students,” he said. Last year’s enrollment was 470.
Knazur expected about 20 to 30 volunteers Tuesday, not the 100-plus who showed up.
“I think that says something to the community, and it says something to our people. They want to help, and this is one of the first ways in which we really asked them to help, and they showed up,” he said.
Knazur felt the tornado’s destruction deeply.
“I mean, this is home. I was a student here. I graduated in ‘05. I’ve been on the staff since 2013 and principal since 2019.
“This is really the fabric of who I am and who so many are in this building.”
Staff, students and alumni are recovering from the images of the ripped-apart school that opened in 1959.
“It was devastating, but we grieved, and we took that grief and motivated it into action,” he said.
Tuesday also reminded Knazur of Andrean’s 1959 roots and history. As the school prepared to open, preparations fell behind schedule and the school’s principal sought help from parents and students.
It probably looked a lot like Tuesday.
“Yeah, it was to unload the trucks and to get the desks and the chairs in the rooms. They showed up,” Knazur said. “So here we are, 67 or 68 years later, and we’re doing the same thing.”
Carole Carlson is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.