From swimming lessons to basketball camp to softball games for her nine-year-old daughter, Ryen, this summer for Woodridge‘s Katie Wilson is a busy one.

Yet, these long summer days are a welcome respite for the Katle Wilson and her family.

Five years ago, Wilson was severely injured after a tree crashed through the roof of her in-law’s home from the impact of the EF-3 tornado that touched down in Woodridge and neighboring communities late in the evening of Father Day’s 2021.

Wilson, who was seven months pregnant at the time, and her husband, Bryan, lost their unborn son, Jordan.

She spent weeks in the hospital followed by a period at a rehabilitation center and only returned home around Labor Day.

Five years later, Wilson said, “I am okay—as good as I could be.”

“Physically, I am about where I am going to be. I still have deficits. But I am about 95% of what I am going to be. If anything, it is strengthening what I have, but that could go for anybody, too,” she added.

Wilson has no memory of the night five years ago.

“I don’t remember that night. Everything I know from that night is what I have been told. I have no recollection of even the day prior to it. The brain works in mysterious way,” she said.

“I remember waking once while I was at University of Chicago downtown” nearly a week after the tornado, she added.

It was then she asked about her unborn son, Jordan.

“They told me, but it didn’t click,” Wilson said.

“My husband, Bryan, says I asked him that same question every single day.”

On the night of the tornado, Bryan and Katie Wilson were temporarily staying with her in-laws after selling their town home and prior to closing on the Woodridge house they live in today.

Both homes were damaged during the storm.

As part of repairs to her home, Wilson said, it was reconstructed to include an accessible bathroom for her, as she was in a wheelchair at the time.

Today, Wilson is completely ambulatory, but back then she was completely dependent on her husband for “pretty much everything” calling him her “rock.”

At the time, she said, “Not only did he have to take care of his disabled wife, but he had a little girl who didn’t know exactly what was going on.”

Every year since the tornado, the family visits Jordan’s gravesite.

In addition, a pond memorial is being constructed in the family’s backyard in his memory, and the front yard contains an angel baby plaque in his honor.

“He is everywhere. My daughter talks about him all the time,” Wilson said.

In addition, Wilson said, people still ask if there is anything they can do for the family.

With both sets of parents, aunts and uncles and siblings in Woodridge, “We are a little community right here,” she said.

“Once you live in Woodridge, you don’t move from Woodridge,” she said.

Today, Wilson is a substitute teacher in Woodridge School District 68.

“I love it. It gives me the flexibility to take Ryen to and from school and other extracurricular activities,” she said, “Education has always been my passion.”

After the tornado, Wilson made the decision to go back to school and finish her degree, a goal she realized “despite everything that happened to me” she said, adding that her resilience and determination helped make it happen.