Matt and Macy Collins launched the Magnolia Foundation to honor their daughter Hattie Jo, who died in a tornado.
By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle
COOKEVILLE, Tenn. — Not long before the tornado that claimed her life, 4-year-old Hattie Jo Collins asked a question.
The blond bundle of energy was riding in her family’s minivan with her mother, Macy, and baby sister, Lainey Mae, when she posed it.
“We were just driving, running errands,” Macy recalled in an interview with The Christian Chronicle. “Out of the blue, Hattie asked me if there were magnolia trees around.”
The fragrant trees with creamy white petals abound in the South, so Macy promised to show Hattie the next one she saw.
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The young mother never got that chance — but Hattie’s question helps explain the Magnolia Foundation, the ministry started by Matt and Macy Collins to honor their daughter’s memory and care for other parents who lose a child.
Hattie was one of five children and 14 adults killed March 3, 2020, when an EF4 twister battered this community 80 miles east of Nashville.
Her death made national headlines when her father, then the youth minister for the Collegeside Church of Christ in Cookeville, shared details on Facebook about his family’s experience.
After the tornado, burial plots for Hattie and her family were donated at Crest Lawn Memorial Cemetery. Still recovering from their own injuries, Matt and Macy did not see their daughter’s final resting place until the day of her funeral.
At the graveside service, four magnolia trees shaded the burial plots.
“That was the first thing I noticed,” Macy said. “And I remembered that she had asked me that. … So that’s been something that we’ve hung on to. It’s just a symbol for her.”
This story appears in the online edition of The Christian Chronicle.
Featured photo by Ted Parks
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