Posted on Fri, May. 02, 2008

Some days Danny Trent doesn't feel like it, but he knows he's lucky.

Although he still has shoulder and back pain every day, he can walk on his own now and do his job as Greensburg's city mechanic.

In the days after a tornado flung him into a water-filled ditch, Danny wasn't sure he'd ever do those things again.

"I don't know he'll ever be the same, but at least he's moving," said his mother, Theresia Trent.

This weekend is a big one for Danny. It marks the first anniversary of the Greensburg tornado. And his oldest child, Kasha, will graduate from Greensburg High School, where President Bush will deliver the commencement address.

"We've got a big barbecue planned," Danny said Wednesday.

And that will take place at his and girlfriend Suleenia Charlton's new house in Greensburg.

"Our new home has a basement," Danny said matter-of-factly.

When an EF-5 tornado hit Greensburg last May, Danny and his family had no basement in which to take shelter. Two of the children were out of town.

The rest of them held on in the bathroom. Their house was ripped apart.

Danny suffered blood on his brain, a fractured neck, several broken ribs, fractured vertebrae, a punctured lung, a collapsed lung and a dislocated hip. A cut on his back almost severed his spinal cord. Two months later, he was released from the hospital, one of the longest hospital stays of any of the tornado survivors.

In addition to the basement, the new house has four bedrooms, two bathrooms and a fireplace. It's a lot more roomy than the Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer where the family lived from August until March.

"Oh yeah, it was pretty crowded," Danny said. "It had three bedrooms and one bathroom, and there were five people and two dogs. But it was better than nothing."

Danny never considered not returning to Greensburg, he said.

Greensburg is home.

"I didn't figure I could get a job anywhere else," he said.

Nobody, he said, wants to hire someone with chronic back and shoulder pain as a mechanic.

Reach Deb Gruver at 316-268-6400 or dgruver@wichitaeagle.com.