Moore School Bus Driver Returns To Work After He Loses Home In Norman Tornado

 A Norman school bus driver doesn’t know if he’ll be able to rebuild his home following last week’s tornado.

Michael O’Brien’s home along Cloverdale Lane in Norman was his support system. 

“We was gonna live here for the rest of our lives,” O’Brien said. 

Today, it’s barely able to support itself.    

“Sounded like a bomb hit,” said O’Brien, as he described the night a Tornado hit his home.

O’Brien and his sister-in-law Dawn Larson have lived together since O’Brien’s wife (Larson’s sister) Barbra died nine years ago.  

“I tried my best to help him out, help him through it,” Larson said. 

O’Brien returns the favor.   

“He helps me out when I get hurt,” said Larson, as she laughed showing off a cast on her arm. 

They support each other because losing someone they love is hard.   

“[My wife] was a sweet girl,” O’Brien said. “I love her to death.” 

They’ve only lived here for two years.   

“It jumped that house and came down on us,” O’Brien said. 

Larson found it hard to say anything that day when her eyes confirmed the fear.

“Stress,” Larson said. “You know. All that.”  

O’Brien said time is the only thing that can heal this wound, but something helped O’Brien this week. He returned to work; doing what he loves the most.

“I’ve driven for Moore Public Schools for 22 years,” O’Brien said. 

His time behind the wheel of a school bus is two years longer than his time in the U.S. Navy.   

“I was on the Persian Gulf on the [USS] Midway,” O’Brien said.

Driving a bus was something O’Brien wanted to do since he was a kid.    

In the military, O’Brien never knew if he would return home. That feeling is back again.

“A year, maybe two,” O’Brien said. That’s how long it will take O’Brien and Larson to rebuild, if they can afford to do it.

“You just suck it up and do your best,” O’Brien said. 

O’Brien will always have his family and the kids that greet him at the bus stop every day. 

“I care about my students," O’Brien said. 

O’Brien and Larson’s spirits remain high, because the storm did not break their family foundation.   

“It’s just a house,” O’Brien said.

O’Brien has a GoFundMe page set up for anyone who would like to donate toward his family’s rebuilding efforts.