AMANDA RHOMBERG

QUICK CARVING: Tommy carved his first bat by hand. But when orders started pouring in, he bought a machine called a lathe, which rotates the wood to help carve bats more quickly.

On August 10, 2020, 12-year-old Tommy Rhomberg and his family sheltered in their basement as a powerful windstorm swept through their town of Mount Vernon, Iowa. The storm was a derecho. Its hurricane-force winds flattened crops, power lines, and trees, and damaged thousands of homes in the Midwest (see “Surviving the Storm,” Science World, February 15, 2021).

After the storm, Tommy whittled a baseball bat out of wood from a fallen tree in his yard. He named the bat “The Great Derecho” and gave it to a friend. Soon, other people started asking for bats of their own. Tommy decided to sell bats made from trees knocked down by the storm and give a portion of the money to disaster relief. So far, he’s made 215 bats and donated more than $4,000. “When I look back, I know that I’ve done a good thing,” says Tommy. “That’s why I want to keep making more bats and helping more people.”