Shipping containers ‘paradise’ for Tanner man 4 years after 2011 tornadoes

April 26--TANNER -- Eddie Cosby feels a little guilty about living in a shipping container.

"I'm happy with no worries," he said. "I don't worry about health, a mortgage payment or other bills that people have. That makes me feel guilty."

The 20-by-8 1/2 -foot metal box Cosby calls his "paradise" has been home since a tornado packing winds in excess of 200 mph blew away everything he owned April 27, 2011.

It's the largest of four containers he says have functional purposes and put him in a position to help less fortunate people in the community. A smaller container serves as his bathroom, while another is a storage building. The one closest to his home is a workshop where Cosby, now retired, works on small engines and the aging trucks he drives.

"This is heaven," he said with a smile many in this southern Limestone County community known as Beulah Land still try to understand.

"He always seems like the happiest man on Earth," said Benny Green, a farm worker in the area. "He never frowns, never complains about his situation and is always willing to help others, even if they don't ask."

Cosby, 67, said he's living large when compared to the rice paddies and rubber plantations he called home as an infantryman during the Vietnam War.

"I have everything I need here," he said. "And to be honest with you, I have more than I need."

Many of his neighbors rebuilt homes. But Cosby, who also lost a home in the April 3, 1974, tornado, said he decided minutes after the 2011 tornado passed he was going to move a shipping container onto the property that has been in his family since emancipation.

"When I looked out and saw that everything was gone, I knew what I was going to do," he said.

The only thing remaining from four years ago is a block and concrete porch that also survived the 1974 tornado. The Tennessee Valley Authority replaced the warning siren that didn't work in 2011 because the area lost power.

Limestone County EMA Director Rita White said Cosby's home was one of approximately 150 destroyed in 2011. She said the county's warning sirens -- including the one about 20 yards from Cosby's home -- have battery backups.

"But the batteries will run down when they sound several times," White said. "We encourage people to get weather radios and to not depend on the sirens as their only warning system."

Cosby has a weather radio. He said his plan is to no longer wait around or crawl under the concrete porch that offered refuge four years ago.

A shipping container he used as a storage building slammed into the porch in 2011, breaking several blocks and disconnecting the concrete slab on top.

Nearly all of his neighbors -- some of them family members -- rebuilt homes with safe rooms and have given Cosby the OK to come if weather gets bad.

"I'll be there," he said.

Roots run deep

Cosby said some of his friends left Beulah Land after the 2011 storm, but his roots and memories of the area run deep. His said his family acquired the property acre by acre, and the Cosby estate once totaled almost 100 acres until TVA acquired all but 40 acres and flooded the land.

Cosby, the only son of four children born to Edgar Lee and Catherine Cosby, said his father worked in coal mines and on the railroad until he had enough money to construct a modern home in the 1920s. He wasn't a year old when his mother died, so his father started farming the land full time to take care of the family.

Cosby, a son of the segregated South, helped feed the family with fish he caught in the nearby Tennessee River until he graduated from Trinity High in 1966.

His father gave him three options: attend college, pick a spot on the family land and build a home, or buy more equipment and expand the farm.

Cosby selected none of the above.

He opted for the Army, and immediately after basic training, he was in a rice paddy in Vietnam. Cosby didn't want to talk in-depth about being shot at or about shooting at people.

In August 1967, he said he was in the "boonies" preparing for a mission when an American helicopter approached his unit and commanders told him to get his combat gear and get aboard.

The pilot flew him to Saigon, but no one told him why. Cosby said they sent him to a Red Cross shelter and this is where he learned his father had died.

The self-described "homesick country boy" said he was ready to come home, but not under these conditions. Cosby didn't return to Vietnam after burying his father, but did serve four years in the Army and eight in the National Guard.

Seven years after his father's death, Cosby had his first experience with a tornado.

The 1974 tornado destroyed his five-bedroom home, and neighbors found him in a field with a 2-by-4 in his side. His injuries appeared so bad that emergency officials carried him to the Limestone County morgue.

"My family never claimed me," he joked.

After the 1974 storm, a U.S. Housing and Urban Development grant helped Cosby and his ex-wife acquire a mobile home. She didn't want to move back, and her instincts proved accurate: Before workers could anchor the mobile home, another storm blew it on its side.

Similar situation

Conditions of 2011 were "eerily similar" to 1974, Cosby said. He was alert all day, and at one point "dressed for the tornado" by wearing a bullet-resistant vest, construction helmet and safety glasses.

Weather sirens sounded several times during the day, but Cosby couldn't hear them because parts of southern Limestone County lost power about 10:30 a.m.

A co-worker called him about 3:30 p.m. to let him know a tornado was coming his way. Cosby said he went to the back porch and saw funnels coming from the west.

He said "a stick whacked me across the butt" as he crawled under the porch.

Cosby worked for a company that rented and sold mobile containers in 2011. He has insurance, but he opted to purchase containers instead of rebuilding.

He has no regrets about his decision, saying it has put him in a position to "spend part of my little old retirement" carrying out God's command to help others.

"If you want to smile or feel good, help somebody," Cosby said.

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