Grandparents of 6-year-old killed in Alabama tornadoes to help Nashville victims

LEE COUNTY, Ala. — An Alabama couple who lost their 6-year-old grandson during a tornado outbreak in 2019 is going to Tennessee to help victims of recent tornadoes there.

More than a dozen tornadoes touched down in Georgia, Alabama and Florida on March 3, 2019, killing 23 people. The youngest victim of the outbreak, A.J. Hernandez, lived in Lee County, just across the Georgia border.

Channel 2 Action News reporters were on the ground in the days following the devastating storms.

Exactly a year later, on March 3, 2020, a series of tornadoes ripped through Tennessee, killing 25 people.

Bobby and Leanne Kidd told WTVM the reports out of Tennessee hit them especially hard after losing their grandson.

"It was already a hard day, but we knew what they were going through," Bobby Kidd said. "It affected us and hit us hard because we knew what they were going through. We knew they loss they had."

The Kidds told WTVM that they decided the best thing they could do was go help out in Tennessee to honor A.J.

“I don’t think there’s any other way we could honor our grandson’s name. A.J. would have wanted us to do this. I think we owe it to all of those wonderful people who helped us, who did so much for our children when we had nothing," Leanne Kidd said.

On Friday, the Kidds packed up a trailer with basic necessities like toiletries and food. They told WTVM that it's the least they could do after everything volunteers did for them during their darkest days.

Leanne Kidd said despite their loss, they are happy to be able to give back.

“We live with a renewed sense of purpose every day for the gifts we’ve been given because we could have buried three, but we only buried one," Leanne Kidd said. “What better way to honor our grandson’s memory.”

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