'That storm ... cheated us out of a mother'

Twenty years ago, Bobby Brewner refused to believe the worst when he saw the first televised images of the devastation wrought by the tornado that ripped through Plainfield, Crest Hill and Joliet.

The DuQuoin resident knew his ex-wife, Patricia Combs, was living in that area. But she told him days earlier she was returning downstate to be closer to him and their two young children.

Combs was in the process of moving out of her Crest Hill apartment on Aug. 28, 1990, when the tornado pulled her through a window and threw her into a cornfield several blocks away. She was 25.

"I can't tell you how many times I've wished it would have turned out different," said Brewner, 52. "Do I think we would have gotten back together? I don't know. But I know one thing: I never wanted anything to happen to her.

"I miss the girl I married," he said. "I miss her every day."

Brewner said he got custody of the children, Amanda and Coty, after his five-year marriage to Combs ended in divorce. Combs, who had lived in Crest Hill for two years before the storm, was working part-time as a cosmetologist and studying to become a nurse.

When Combs died, Brewner was the one who broke the tragic news to his children. At the time, Amanda was 5 and Coty was 4.

"They were too young, really, to understand it," he said. "I sat down and explained to them that a big storm had come down and their mommy had been hurt. Then I said she won't hurt no more because Jesus took her up to heaven."

Amanda Brewner, now 25, says it was tough emotionally growing up without a mother. She recalled one fond memory of her mom visiting her and her brother.

"We climbed all over her like she was a jungle gym," Amanda Brewner said in an e-mail. "She would lay down on the floor and pick us up with her feet and arms. We pretended we were airplanes. That was a good day."

Coty Brewner said his own memories of his mom are like dreams. Still, he remembers "how pretty she was and how we all miss her very much."

"I feel like that storm - that rage of nature - cheated us out of a mother," he said.

Amanda Brewner said the hardest challenge she faces today is being a mother herself.

"I have a 5-year-old daughter who knows about her Grandma Trish and what happened," she said. "It warms my heart whenever she asks me about her."