A small crowd gathered Monday afternoon for the groundbreaking at the site of the new $26 million Page Middle School on T.C. Walker Road. The school will house about 650 sixth, seventh and eighth grade students when it opens in 2015.
In his opening remarks, superintendent Ben Kiser said he and his family had just taken shelter in their home from an approaching tornado on April 16, 2011 when then county public works director Garrey Curry called. Curry told him emergency responders were on their way to Page.
Page Middle School was then located on Route 17 not far from its future site, and directly in the path of a tornado that first touched down in the Cedar Bush area on the York River and cut a swath across the county stretching to North Point at the Gloucester/Mathews county line.
The tornado struck early on a Saturday evening. "We were so fortunate children were not in the building," Kiser said. After viewing the destruction, school officials put together a plan for all sixth,...
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