Monday's read-aloud was a tad different for a Washington Elementary fifth-grade class.
The 14 students gathered in the Governor's Office, where Utah first lady Jacalyn Leavitt read her new book about the desk created from trees destroyed in the 1999 Salt Lake tornado.
Gov. Mike Leavitt sat in on the reading and signed copies of "The Tornado Desk: A Symbol of Utah's Spirit and Determination" for the students to take home.
The children's book focuses on turning bad experiences into good.
"Sometimes, unexpected things can produce new and different types of experiences . . . and things of beauty," the governor told the children, gathered 'round his new desk, made from trees the 1999 tornado ripped from Capitol grounds. "I hope you read it, enjoy it and remember it."
The book was funded by Zions Bank — "no tax dollars," Jackie Leavitt noted — and will be distributed to every Utah school. It is illustrated and designed by Tracy Smith and includes photographs of the storm's havoc from local newspapers, including the Deseret News.
The book is told from the first family's point of view. The governor was at a downtown meeting Aug. 11, 1999, when he learned of the tornado. Debris covered roads back to the Capitol, so he walked, taking in the devastation along the way.
"It looked like a giant had been pulling trees out as if they were weeds," the governor recalled of the Capitol grounds and adjacent Memory Grove, where some damaged trees were taken as saplings from Mount Vernon and were more than 100 years old.
The book tells how Natalie Gochnour, now the governor's spokeswoman, suggested her woodworking artisan husband transform the downed trees into "something of lasting value."
Workers gathered maple, Japanese pagodas and linden trees for the "New Millennium Desk," a new Capitol monument. In one of its cabinet doors is a plaque, which reads: "May it always be a symbol of Utah's spirit of determination and vision in making something of value come from adversity."
Students ran their fingers over the desk's swirling wood grains as the first lady read her story.
"It was sort of sad, the tornado that just hit and stuff," said student Erica Andino, who recalls visiting her grandmother downtown when the tornado hit. "But they made a really nice desk."
E-mail: jtcook@desnews.com