Friday, May 24, 2013
Associated Press
BEREA
Browns quarterback Brandon Weeden is heading home to help his cherished Oklahoma heal.
Weeden will return to his home state over the holiday weekend to assist in any way he can in the aftermath of the deadly tornado that tore through Moore, Okla., killing 24 people and destroying more than a thousand homes in the Oklahoma City suburb earlier this week.
Weeden has been in contact with Oklahoma Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb and he plans to pitch in and contribute anyway possible.
“I’ll do anything, whether it’s getting in the rubble and doing whatever, it doesn’t matter,” said Weeden, who is from Edmond. “I’ll be there to help.”
The disaster touched Weeden’s family. His wife, Melanie, is from Moore, and her mother and brother still live in the city, which has been hit by four tornadoes since 1998. Although they escaped injury from the latest monster twister, which had winds clocked at over 200 mph, their homes sustained some damage.
“It actually went right through my wife’s hometown,” Weeden said following Thursday’s practice. “Fourth Street, the path they keep talking about, my mother-in-law lives on Main, which is four blocks north of it, and my brother-in-law lives two blocks south of it. It went right over the top of them.”
Weeden, who starred at Oklahoma State, said there were some frantic moments for he and his wife when they couldn’t contact family as the tornado took aim at Moore.
“There’s a park, literally there’s two blocks between my brother-in-law and my mother-in-law,” he said. “They said, ‘If you’re at that park, get out of the way.’ It was destroyed. Once we heard it was destroyed, obviously there’s no cellphone service. We couldn’t get hold of them for about an hour. So my wife’s panicked and we’re panicked. It was tough being so far away.”