'I gotta call 911'

By By Ernie Suggs

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

As much as Douglasville tries to pretend to be a big city, at its heart, it is a small town — where most people know each other.

The first death Kathleen Gardner Brown heard about in the wake of this week’s devastating storms that ripped through Douglas County was that of Donald Wayne Warlow.

Warlow, who was killed early Monday morning when his pickup truck washed downstream into West Billy Creek, was Brown’s niece’s father-in-law. Another person who died in a separate accident, Delena Weathers, was the wife of her son’s boss.

Then her phone started ringing.

“Someone called and said that Kevin was missing,” Brown said.

Kevin was her 29-year-old son, Kevin Michael Hodges. A cabinetmaker with a passion for University of Alabama football, Hodges had last spoken with his girlfriend. Driving a red Honda Civic that his mother had given him, Hodges called his girlfriend to tell her that he had been caught in rushing water.

“I gotta call 911” was the last thing he said to her.

Brown said that on Monday afternoon, as she and her family waited for news, a deputy sheriff came to her house to tell her that her son’s body had been found.

“She said, ‘We found your son and he didn’t make it’ ” Brown recalled. “I just started bawling.”

Hodges, Weathers and Warlow were three of five people who were killed in Douglas County in separate car accidents related to the storm. Kelli Smith of Carrollton was also killed. And a fifth body — a woman reported missing by her husband early Sunday morning — was found Tuesday afternoon.

The last time Brown saw her son was Sunday night, his 29th birthday.

“He had just left my house,” Brown said.

She said she gave her son a birthday gift, and he spent much of the evening measuring space in her house. The cabinetmaker was going to give his mother a gift — a new computer desk.

She said he left about 9:30 p.m., made another stop, then rode into the storm. County coroner Randy Daniel said Hodges was found near the junction of Pool Mill and Banks Mill roads.

“It has just devastated our family,” Brown said, adding that she had hoped that her son would soon get married to his girlfriend, whom she described as “sweet.”

“He was so young and had so much going for him.”