'It's Not a Baby Doll -- It's Alive'

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Deadly Tornadoes Sweep the South

More than 60 tornadoes were reported in the Southern states on Tuesday and Wednesday, killing dozens of people and injuring hundreds. President Bush flew to Tennessee, one of many states consequently suffering, to meet with survivors on Friday.

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The tornado damage in this small rural community was centered on the area post office on Highway 25. Elsewhere, the county seemed untouched. But for a few hundreds yards around the post office, the destruction was overwhelming. Nothing was left of the squat brick post office building but the concrete foundation. A steel vault estimated to weigh as much a 700 pounds wound up in a field across the highway, along with lots of other debris.

Two houses next door, including Kyson's, were flattened as well. Immense trees lay on their sides. Bits of vinyl siding, even sections of fences, were left hanging in tree branches and power lines.

After the tornado moved on to the east, those whose houses were largely untouched saw a brilliant fire in the eastern sky, a gas explosion in a nearby county.

"There was a large glowing in the sky that kept getting brighter and brighter and brighter," said Andrea Stewart, 29, a chiropractor's assistant. "It was pitch dark out, but I could see everything in my front yard."

Rescuers came soon after 10 p.m., when the tornado struck, to sort through the debris, and in a short time they found three bodies in the area, including that of Kyson's mother.

It wasn't until 1:30 a.m. Wednesday that Harmon found Kyson, diaper askew, in the mud.

He brought the baby out to the edge of the highway, where rescuers John Michael Poss, 25, and Douglas ministered to him. To make a place to lay the baby, a firefighter laid his coat down. They took off the shivering baby's wet T-shirt. His grandfather, who had just arrived on the scene, gave up his red flannel shirt so that the rescuers could swaddle him with it.

"I touched every inch of that child because I figured he must have some injury -- he'd been thrown so far," Poss said. There were no cuts. The baby seemed well enough. But still he had a blank stare. Maybe, Poss thought, the child had sustained a head injury.

To check for neurological trouble, Poss lay his hand over the sandy-haired baby's blue eyes and then quickly removed it, to see how his pupils would react to the light. At last the baby started crying, as they had hoped.

"He was crying, and we were so happy because of it," Douglas recalled.

Kyson was eventually taken to Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt in Nashville, where he was listed Wednesday evening in stable condition.

"He has no broken bones -- he's doing great," Doug Stowell said, though he was already wondering about medical costs and insurance coverage.

He said he and his wife will now raise Kyson.

"We'll get by best we can," he said. "We've had some divine intervention."

Staff writers Jose Antonio Vargas in Atkins, Ark., and Jill F. Bartscht in Washington contributed to this report.