WAVERLY — In a town full of sadness, people smile when they hear what happened to Tracy Nagy.
“I’ll be walking downtown, and people will give me hugs,” she said.
On Aug. 21, 2021, the day 20 people died in the flood that has defined Waverly ever since, a man the 56-year-old Nagy barely knew saved her from being swept away from her home on Meridale Street.
On that Saturday morning, Chris Etheridge, 52, reached into the raging floodwater and pulled out a fairytale.
“It’s like a movie,” she said.
It’s better than a movie because it really happened.
Before the flood, two different lives
She was once a school teacher.
A couple of decades ago, Miss Tracy, which is what the students called her, taught second grade. One of the children in her class was the daughter of Chris Etheridge.
Etheridge, around the same time, was the Little League coach of Tracy Nagy’s son.
In a small town like Waverly, (population 4,000) tiny connections like that happen all the time. Nagy and Etheridge knew each other, but she lived in Waverly and he lived in New Johnsonville, a few miles away.
She had studied languages and had multiple degrees from Austin Peay State University. He worked in a cardboard box factory, with a specialty in machines. He was a “lube and vibration specialist.”
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“That sounds so creepy,” she said with a laugh.
Over the years, they had sent a few Facebook messages to each other. A couple of times, they had exchanged text messages.
But in recent times, their lives had gotten complicated. Both were divorced. Nagy started a new job as an accounts payable specialist.
Nagy and Etheridge hadn’t talked, exchanged messages, or seen each other in more than five years.
‘I’m at your door’
As the floodwaters threatened that morning, Chris Etheridge was trying to help another person on Meridale Street.
Meridale ends at Trace Creek, which overflowed in the storm. By 8 a.m., a 6-foot wall of water was hurtling toward downtown Waverly.
It slammed into Tracy Nagy’s house first.
Etheridge rushed to move a boat and some vehicles for his friend Sean Buchanan.
That’s when he realized he knew the woman who lived across the street: Tracy Nagy.
Her number was still in his phone. His call woke her from a dead sleep.
“I’m at your door,” he said.
“Why?” she replied, with no idea the reason her adult son’s Little League coach would be on her porch at 8 a.m.
“Have you looked outside?” he said. “You’ve got to get out.”
She went to the door in the T-shirt and shorts she had slept in. She was barefoot.
‘He grabbed me by the arm’
Nagy grabbed her dog Thelma and hustled into Etheridge’s truck.
She could hear people on her street screaming for help.
That’s when the first wave hit. The truck was lifted off the ground. Nagy, with her dog, jumped out of the truck because she didn’t want to be swept away.
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Nagy had been a competitive swimmer and a junior lifeguard in her youth. But this water was too angry.
She thought she would land on her driveway, but the water was more than six feet deep. She couldn’t feel the ground.
Her head went under the water. She was at the mercy of the current.
She thought she was going to die.
Then, suddenly …
“He grabbed me by the arm,” she said.
The world stopped and she felt safe. He held her tight. “It was a reassuring feeling,” she said.
The water lurched forward, and Nagy found herself standing waist-deep next to the man who saved her life.
And then he did something legendary.
Etheridge put his arm around Nagy and kissed her forehead.
He just wanted to let her know she was safe.
What just happened?
Etheridge helped Nagy and Thelma into the next-door neighbor’s home, which happened to be her parents, Gene and Jo Trotter.
They climbed on furniture to stay above the waterline. When it looked like they were going to be ok, Etheridge said he was leaving to go help other people.
Nagy was left with the question: What just happened?
A man she barely knew had saved her and kissed her.
And then he was gone.
Like a superhero.
‘I want to hang out with you’
Three days later, Nagy had a doctor’s appointment but no way to get there.
She texted Chris Etheridge asking for a ride.
“He said he wanted to help,” she said. “But he also said, ‘What I really want to do is hang out with you.'”
She was on the fence. Hang out? What did that mean?
So she asked him.
He said he wanted to take her to dinner and a movie. Sept. 3 was their first date, two weeks after the flood. They had Mexican food and saw “Free Guy” in Dickson.
She began to take a look at Etheridge differently. “He’s a really nice guy, and really shy,” she said. He told her he had wanted to talk with her for years, but he was too nervous.
“You know what he did?” she said. “In that flood, he showed complete disregard for himself.”
As all heroes do.
‘I knew when he kissed me’
On Dec. 18, Nagy was watching a murder mystery on Dateline NBC when Etheridge grabbed the remote control.
He was trying to turn off the TV, but he couldn’t get the remote to work.
“I turned off the TV,” she said. “Next thing I knew he was on a knee.”
He said he had known her as a teacher and a mother, and that he had always loved her.
“I knew when I kissed you in the flood, we would be together forever,” he said.
He asked her to marry him, and she said yes.
On 2-2-22, they were married in the Humphreys County Courthouse.
He wore an untucked shirt, and she went with a blush, woven pullover.
They went to Gatlinburg for their honeymoon.
“He’s just a good ol’ country boy,” she said.
Reach Keith Sharon at 615-406-1594 or ksharon@tennessean.com or on Twitter @KeithSharonTN.