Cofield Funeral Home

Third-grade teacher Kristin Cofield pulled out her phone to look over her notes about student Mykala Waldon. But nothing she had written about the vivacious 8-year-old seemed to do her justice. Cofield’s eyes filled with tears before she could even say Mykala’s name. Fellow teacher Dawn Weatherly reached for her hand as they remembered the girl with an expressive face and infectious energy, rarely seen without her signature purse full of lotions and lip balm. They’d been teaching together at Beauregard Elementary School for a combined three decades, and Mykala was one of three students killed when a series of devastating tornadoes swept through the region over the weekend. The teachers wept for AJ Hernandez, a sweet-faced 6-year-old with a sunny disposition, and 10-year-old Taylor Thornton, an “angel child,” a former teacher recalled, who said everything “with a giggle and joy.” A fourth child, 9-year-old Jonathan Bowen, was also killed. He did not attend Beauregard Elementary, school officials said. Officials released the names of 23 victims in Lee County, Ala., on Tuesday, including seven members of a family connected by marriage, a couple in their 60s and their adult son, fathers and grandmothers, colleagues and customers, and childhood friends. Each new name was its own heartbreak — but none more so than those of the children. “Everyone here is family,” Cofield said. Two roads on the east side of Beauregard, a community of 10,000 in central Lee County, sustained the most damage. Once a quiet neighborhood of mostly mobile homes nestled within the pines, the area was noisy Tuesday with the buzz of chain saws and the steady whine of construction vehicles digging through the rubble. Piled along the side of Lee Road 38 lay a sweater still on its hanger, a muddy yellow stuffed dog, a toilet bowl, a potted plant, the silverware rack from a dishwasher, mountains of splintered siding and demolished furniture. Tufts of insu...