BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Four words came to Curt Cignetti’s mind as he tried to follow along from 800 miles away the path of a tornado that was closing in on his youngest child.
“What have I done?”
It was April 27, 2011. Cignetti was at a function at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP), where he had recently started as head football coach, taking a 60 percent pay cut from the $250,000 he was making on Nick Saban’s staff at Alabama. His family was still back in Tuscaloosa finishing out the school year. Son Curtis was an Alabama student and was bunkering down on campus as the tornado — which would end up killing 64 people, six of them university students — passed nearby.
Cignetti’s wife, Manette, was three and a half hours south in Mobile for daughter Carly’s high school state tennis tournament. That left the youngest, daughter Natalie, at a friend’s house in a neighborhood that was about to be hit directly. Manette got Natalie on the phone and screamed at her to take cover. She and her friend’s family did, in the basement, under a table, as the house was moved off its foundation — a few hundred yards from a house that was completely obliterated.
“You’re just sick to your stomach, you’re helpless,” Manette said. “Meanwhile, Curt has to be present…
