‘The wickedest thing.’ Husband recounts the night his wife died in KY tornado.
Just a few more steps and Melodie Godby would’ve been completely in the basement next to her husband.
That’s when the tornado hit.
She and her husband, Dave, had driven from their home on a ridge in the hilly, rural Mount Victory area of eastern Pulaski County to the home of a friend, Doris Arnold, to take shelter in her basement as the strengthening storm approached late on May 16.
It was about a three-mile trip.
Dave Godby, 73, pulled his SUV up close to the front porch of Arnold’s 70-year-old house on the farm that had been in her family for four generations.
The power was out. The wind was blowing, and lightning streaked across the sky.
The 93-year-old Arnold greeted them a the door with a flashlight.
They’d been inside less than a minute when the wind suddenly built to a jet-engine roar outside.
Dave Godby was the first to go down the narrow steps to the basement with a flashlight so he could help Arnold if necessary, and she followed.
Melodie Godby, who was 69 and had trouble getting around at times, started down but then sat down on the stairs before getting all the way to the basement floor.
“All three of us, just fear on our faces,” Godby said of that moment. “We didn’t know what to expect.”
Then the wind started wrenching the house apart. Godby saw his wife on the stairs before something smashed into him, knocking him unconscious.
He was confused when he came to, lying amid a tangle of wreckage in the basement. His glasses and a shoe were gone.
Where are we and what happened, he asked Arnold.
She told him they were at her house and there had been a tornado. The house is gone, Arnold said.
Then he asked about his wife.
“She said, ‘Honey, she’s gone,’” Godby recalled.
“I just started hollering, ‘Melodie! Melodie!’ I just started crying out to God.”
Godby was cut by flying glass and a badly bruised. His head was bleeding and he had a concussion. His leg hurt and he couldn’t walk.
Arnold was bruised, as well.
Godby said people nearby could hear him yelling for help and see the beam of a flashlight he’d picked up from the rubble, but couldn’t get to them through the thicket of downed, twisted trees on the roads.
“What was killing me was my wife, not knowing where she is,” Godby said.
Godby and Arnold sat on a wooden beam through the night, shivering as storms continued to dump rain on them.
“We were shaking so hard,” Godby said. “We thought we were going to die of hypothermia. It was that cold.”
It took about six hours for firefighters to clear a path on Poplarville Road to reach the splintered house.
“We were so frustrated that we couldn’t move faster,” said Kelly Calvert, one of the Mount Victory Volunteer Fire Department members who ultimately reached the site.
Firefighters could hear Godby calling for help as they got closer. They found Godby and Arnold standing in water in the basement.
Godby said after firefighters pulled him and Arnold out of the basement, he was able to drive her to his home in his SUV. It was battered but still ran, so they could get warm.
Soon, however, he had a neighbor take him to Saint Joseph London hospital because he believed he was having a heart attack.
Rescuers found the body of his wife of 50 years under several pieces of debris in the yard.
Melodie Godby was the first person killed in the May 16 tornado that ultimately claimed 19 more people in Kentucky, most of them in London.
Dave Godby spent four days in the hospital, but got out and preached at his wife’s funeral from a wheelchair a week after the tornado.
A neighbor and his son told Godby they’d seen the tornado come over the ridge as it bore down on Arnold’s house, and that it appeared there were actually two funnel clouds.
“They said it was the wickedest thing they had ever seen,” Godby said. “It cut me to pieces.”
Two weeks after the tornado, he still had a black eye, purple bruises on his neck and back, a knot on his right elbow nearly the size of a golf ball, with cuts and scrapes still healing.
Godby, a former member of the Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Commission, has had several businesses in Pulaski County and South Carolina during his career. His wife, who was a cheerleader and homecoming queen at Somerset High School, had worked in real estate and insurance and helped at a family outdoor store.
He also has been the pastor of Friendship Church, a small Christian congregation, for a decade.
He believes God has a purpose in everything, including the death of his wife, who “was on fire for the Lord.”
“I really believe the Lord wanted her to come home,” Godby said. “I know where my wife is. I’m thankful for God’s promises.”
The two married in April 1975 and had been partners through financial ups and downs, shared the joy of two sons and three grandchildren, endured the sorrow of a son dying in 2021.
“We just had such a bond,” he said.
Melodie and Dave Godby renewed their vows in April at their church in front of 60 friends and family members. She gave her testimony that day, speaking of what God had done in her life.
Godby did the same, saying he was convinced God had brought them together.
She had “a heart of gold,” he told the Herald-Leader.
“She loved everybody,” Godby said. “She really exemplified what Jesus said — love one another.”
Despite his deep faith, Dave Godby’s grief runs deep.
“It’s been the hardest thing that I’ve ever been through,” he said. “I’m gonna miss her so much.”
This story was originally published June 4, 2025 at 12:16 AM.
