Ripped from dad’s arms, the youngest Beauregard victim was an ‘extraordinary’ inventor
Armando “AJ” Hernandez was an inventive boy who combined the pieces of his broken toys to build new ones.
He was happy with whatever you gave him to work with, said his mom Kayla Melton: “You could give him a cardboard box, and he’d be happy.”
He would take the box and find something new to do with it. He might crawl inside and sit, or draw pictures on it, or hide under it, or make it into something else.
One day he built a pretend car, and told Kayla about each part, using some automotive jargon she did not recognize. “They were real terms,” she said. “It was just crazy how advanced he was.”
AJ was dyslexic, so he struggled with reading, but his mind seemed to compensate with his intuition and creative streak, she said, adding it was “extraordinary” just “how precise he was when he wanted to do what he wanted to do.”
He had a big brother, Jordan, 11, who played Nerf gun battles with him in their extended mobile home, which had two bathrooms and four bedrooms. “They would run all over the place,” Kayla said.
Both Jordan and AJ were ripped from father Steven Griffin’s arms as the March 3 tornado took their home apart. Jordan survived, but misses his younger playmate. He’s now in counseling. “He’s actually been pretty strong about it,” Kayla said.
Also caught in the storm was a family dog named Bella, a 2½-year-old pit bull who had been in a cage on the living room floor. Missing in the chaos, Bella later was found, amid the debris, by some of the father’s coworkers. “She was absolutely uninjured,” Kayla said.
At 6 years old, AJ was the youngest of the 23 people killed in the storm. Asked what she remembers about him, Kayla said, “His little smile.”
His family almost lost all images of that little smile, as their photos and electronics were destroyed in the storm. “Pretty much everything was gone after that,” Kayla said.
But Jordan’s first-grade teacher at Beauregard Elementary School, Dawn Wheatherly, retrieved the boys’ school pictures, and gave the family AJ’s. It was published with his obituary.
The family also kept AJ’s memorial cross, presented at Providence Baptist Church to families of the lost. To AJ’s cross, the parents added lights and a Batman hat, representing his favorite superhero.
The night before the storm, they all went out for Mexican food, and AJ stayed up all night. Kayla found him playing on Jordan’s phone, at 3 a.m., lying on his belly in the living room, his little feet wagging in the air.
Kayla, who was leaving for work, would not see him alive again.
“Mama’s going to work, baby,” she told him. “’Bye. I love you.”
This story was originally published March 3, 2020 at 5:00 AM.