By Becky Bratu, Kate Snow, Tim Uehlinger and Jay Kernis, NBC News

As she tours the husk of Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla. -- the little that was left behind after a powerful tornado shredded everything in its 17-mile path -- Principal Amy Simpson thinks back to Monday morning, when her biggest task was helping the sixth-graders get ready for their graduation ceremony.

Pre-K teacher Linda Patterson and aide Kaye Johnson were working on report cards, while kindergarten teacher Erin Baxter was having her 6-year-old students write about the weather.

Four miles to the east, Susie Price began the last week of her 41-year career in public education preparing her retirement speech, getting ready for graduation -- and watching the sky for any possible threats.

“That’s what we do in Oklahoma on those days,” Pierce, the Moore Public Schools superintendent, told Rock Center’s Kate Snow.

Hours later, a Category EF5 tornado would touch down killing 24 people, injuring more than 370 and destroying as many as 13,000 houses.

Sixteen minutes. That was how long Pierce had to prepare between the time she heard that a tornado had hit the ground and the time Moore was in the middle of it.

“It's not a lot of time,” she said. “But because I know these people and I know everybody that works in our district. … we've been through this before.  I know that they know what to do.”

“This is part of our reality,” Pierce added.

By Scott Stump
Today

In her first time back at the school since late Monday, Plaza Towers Elementary principal Amy Simpson recalled the moment the deadly tornado took aim at the school.

“I got on the intercom and said, ‘It's here,’’’ Simpson told NBC's Kate Snow. “At first, it's just a rattling, but then all of a sudden, bigger things. (I) could hear the air duct crash down and a pipe, and I could hear the other four ladies in there. And that's when I started to yell.

"Just: 'In God's name, go away. Go away.' And I yelled it four or five times. And then it was gone.”

The chatter of frightened children could be heard in the aftermath, but it was eerily silent in the third-grade building. Teacher Jennifer Doan and her students were trapped, with Doan draped over two small boys and a wall resting on top of all of them. Doan suffered a fractured spine and sternum and several lacerations, but she survived.

Seven Plaza Towers students, all 8 or 9 years old, perished.

“(Doan) was hearing crying and crying and crying and then after the tornado, the crying stopped,’’ Simpson said. “What she said was 'The crying was horrible, but when it stopped, it was worse.'"

A memorial service for one of the children took place on Thursday, and more are scheduled for Friday and Saturday.

Snow's full interview will air on "Rock Center with Brian Williams" Friday at 10 p.m. ET.

Rock Center

If you think that the ability to see is the first requirement for being able to make a movie, then you haven't been to Kevin Bright's film-making class at the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston. Rock Center's Harry Smith visited Bright's class. Bright was the executive producer of the wildly successful show "Friends." Now, he teaches students how to make films – even though many of them are completely blind. The videos they made show that while the students don't have sight, they do have vision, and they provide a rare window into the world of the blind. Watch Smith's full report, Fri., May 24 at 10pm/9c on NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams

By Jay Kernis
Rock Center

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once said, “There is a special place in Hell for women who don’t help other women.”

If Albright is correct, then Pamela Ryckman has found a lot of women who are likely to be moved to the front of the line when the time comes to enter Heaven. That’s because they’ve made the commitment to invest time and money in other women, and this is happening as women network with each other in dining rooms and restaurants across the country. 

According to Ryckman, author of the new book, “Stiletto Network,” the conversations at these women’s power circles—some with such ironic names as Chicks in Charge, Babes in Boyland and SLUTS: Successful Ladies Under Tremendous Stress--have led to new jobs, seats on corporate boards, the creation of new companies, and multi-million dollar transactions. 

Ryckman says the process works because “women are using the same skills that women have always used throughout history. It’s collaboration. It’s ‘I’ll pick up the kids Monday if you do it Thursday.’ It’s trust and empathy.” She adds, “It’s this incredible support group, and you don’t have to be a CEO, and you don’t have to be wealthy” to participate. 

Janet Hanson is one of the founding mothers of the women’s networking movement, having created the group 85 Broads in 1997. She named the power circle after the New York City address of Goldman-Sachs, the investment banking firm where she worked for many years. 

By Izhar Harpaz and Sopan Deb
Rock Center

For millions of people struggling with the Great Recession, the American dream had become just another jaded catchphrase. But for single dad and Army veteran Dan Greeley, a Longmont, Colo., resident, the future looked promising.

In 2011, Greeley was about to be promoted to director of operations at Sister Carmen, a nonprofit community center and food pantry, and he was certain that his higher income would finally allow him to fulfill a dream: to buy a house for his three young children, ages two, four and six.

“Everything I do is for my kids,” Greeley told NBC News' Lester Holt in an interview airing Friday, March 15 at 10pm/9CDT on NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams. “I can live in an apartment and be happy. But they want a house, they want a backyard. They’re going to get a house and they’re going to get a backyard.”

But instead of getting a raise, Greeley was forced to take a pay cut.

He fell victim to what is known as the "Cliff Effect," when a small increase in a family's income can lead to an abrupt termination of an essential public benefit like food stamps, health insurance or child care assistance.

For Greeley it was child care. As the single parent of three young children he needed lots of it and it came at a high cost -- $2300 a month, almost all of his take-home pay. And that was before his rent, car payments, utilities and health care bills. Not to mention the money he needed to put food on the table.

“The way I was brought up, we didn't ask for help,” Greeley said. “We just figured it out and this was the first time I had to ask for help.”

As long as he earned below $50,000 a year, Greeley qualified for as much as $1,700 a month through Colorado’s Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), a fund jointly subsidized by the state and federal government to support working parents.   But as a result of budget cuts in 2010, Boulder County lowered the income limit to 185 percent of the federal poverty level for a family of four – about $41,000. That was $3000 less than what Greeley was making.  And even though his upcoming raise would have increased his income a bit more, it would not have been nearly enough for Greeley to pay for his kids’ child care on his own; Greeley would have been earning more, but would in fact be worse off.

“My stomach was in knots,” Greeley said. “Supposed to get a raise, and instead, I took a pay cut.”

Sister Carmen CEO Suzanne Crawford, Dan’s employer, couldn't believe it when her newly minted director of operations showed up ashen-faced at her office. “For me, it was really educational,” she said. “Because I would never in a million years expect an employee to come in and ask me for a pay cut.”

By Kurt Schlosser
NBC News

Zach Galifianakis warned Brian Williams that viewers would turn off a long interview piece with the actor if it aired on "Rock Center." But after watching several candid minutes with the comedian and "Hangover" star on Friday night, it was hard not to be left wanting more.

Galifianakis, the bearded comic turned reluctant big-time star, opened up to Williams about more than just the buddy-movie trilogy that has made his extended Greek moniker a household name.

They talked about life on the North Carolina farm where Galifianakis, 43, and his wife Quinn Lundberg spend part of each year. "I have donkeys. I have blueberries," Galifianakis said. "But enough about your Brooklyn apartment," Williams countered. "I asked about North Carolina."

NBC News

Cue the whistling: Galifianakis says a 6th grade visit from the man behind the iconic theme song of "The Andy Griffith Show" convinced him he should go into show business. "I remember being affected by that whistler, thinking I could maybe try to do something like that with my life. Not whistling ... but telling diarrhea jokes."

But it's no joke that life at home on the farm has framed Galifianakis' view of Hollywood and all that comes with being a celebrity. "It's not for me. I'm not into that scene," he said. "It's so stupid. It's all so dumb. It's so weird to me."

And for a man with the last name Galifianakis, there's a punchline waiting in the wings. "If I've always wanted to have my name up in lights I would have changed it to Don't Walk." Nod. Wink. Cheers.

Starring roles on television aside, it's the "Hangover" movies which did put Galifianakis' name in lights. Alan -- the portly, man-purse carrying sidekick to Bradley Cooper's Phil and Ed Helms' Stu -- is back in theaters May 23 in the third and final movie.

And any interview with Galifianakis wouldn't be complete without actually being interviewed with ferns for a backdrop, something he's turned into comedic art with his fake Internet talk show "Between Two Ferns." Williams brought the two ferns to the interview and Galifianakis was game for a lengthy chat among the plants.

"This is the longest conversation I've had with anyone in, like, seven years," Galifianakis said, contradicting his earlier directive to Williams to "do a couple of jokes and then get out."

Rock Center
The murder of Karen Cox Smith by her husband allegedly sparked both her family and the mayor of Dallas, Texas to work to curb the rising number of domestic violence cases in Dallas. At the time of Karen's murder, police had a warrant for her husband's arrest, but the warrant was never served because of a case backlog. Kate Snow reports.

WATCH: Domestic violence victim's 911 call ignored says family

WATCH: Dallas 911 operator breaks silence on Deanna Cook case

Related:

Click here to visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline or call 1−800−799−SAFE(7233)

Click here to visit Deanna's Voice, the non-profit organization started by Deanna Cook's family to raise awareness about domestic violence.

Click here to learn more about The Family Place, a Dallas based organization working to prevent family violence.

Click here to learn more about the Domestic Peace App created by Tonyita and Eric Hopkins.

Rock Center
A month after the bombings at the Boston Marathon, survivor Marc Fucarile is determined to leave the hospital, though he’ll leave with one leg gone and a body full of shrapnel.

“It’s right on the surface,” says Fucarile of the shrapnel still within his body. “There’s more BBs, like, in my, I got shrapnel in my heart.  It came up through a vein and came out in my heart.”

Fucarile’s family, including his fiancée and 5-year-old son, say that the 34-year-old’s heart, while littered with shrapnel, is still as big as it’s always been.

“He’s still that strong kid with the big heart that would do anything for anyone and what they did to him that day didn’t destroy who he is,” said Fucarile’s sister, Stephanie Baron, in an interview airing Friday at 10 p.m./9 CDT on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams.

Baron has started a fund to help her brother pay his mounting medical bills.

CLICK HERE TO HELP MARC FUCARILE

Fucarile, 34, was at the April 15 marathon celebrating Patriot’s Day when the two bombs exploded. He still remembers everything about what happened that day -- the moment his right leg was blown off and a firefighter put a tourniquet on him.

“I’m like, ‘I don’t want to die. I got a little boy and I got, you know, my fiancée. I don’t want to die.’ He’s like, ‘Just think of them. Just think of them. Keep them on your mind. Just hang in there,’” said Fucarile of the firefighter who helped him.

When Jen Regan, Fucarile’s fiancée and the mother of his son, saw him, she said she didn’t recognize his burned face.

“He was like, looked like he was 400 pounds and his skin was not his skin,” Regan said.

HOW TO HELP BOSTON BOMBING SURVIVORS HEALING FROM SEVERE LEG TRAUMA

Since April 15, one of Fucarile’s family members has stayed at his side every minute of his recovery at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“We’ve seen the progressions, we’ve seen the setbacks, but in our world, it’s still April 15,” said Fucarile’s father, Eddie.

Rock Center

The family of Dallas woman Deanna Cook is outraged it took police almost one hour to respond to her call for help, while she was being allegedly attacked by her ex-husband while on the phone with 911.

Cook's family discovered her body two days later.  The family says her death exposes a larger problem – a broken emergency response system that fails to take domestic violence seriously, especially in minority neighborhoods.  

Related:

Click here to visit Deanna's Voice, the non-profit organization started by the Cook family to raise awareness about domestic violence.

Click here to visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline or call 1−800−799−SAFE(7233)

Click here to learn more about The Family Place, a Dallas based organization working to prevent family violence.

Click here to learn more about the Domestic Peace App created by Tonyita and Eric Hopkins.

Editor's Note: Kate Snow's full report airs Friday, May 17 at 10pm/9CDT on NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams.

By Kate Snow, Diane Beasley, Jay Kernis, Michelle Kessel and Erin McClam
Rock Center

Friends started calling Jennifer Summers on Monday night and telling her to turn on the news: Three kidnapped women had been freed, and there was a chance that one of them was Summers’ daughter, who disappeared in Cleveland six years ago.

Courtesy of Summers family

Ashley Summers

“Oh, my God,” Summers remembers thinking. “Let’s hope it’s Ashley.”

It was not. So while Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight are all beginning to adjust to open society again, and while their families can finally start catching up on lost years, the family of Ashley Summers still waits.

“It’s been a restless week,” her mother told Kate Snow of NBC’s “Rock Center with Brian Williams. “I’ve been feeling all kinds of emotions. Happy for the girls that were found, very sad that it wasn’t my daughter, wondering when it’s going to be her turn.”

Ashley was 14 when she disappeared one day in July 2007 and never came back. She went missing just blocks from where the other girls were last seen in Cleveland, and Ashley went to the same middle school as one of them.

Click here for more from the FBI on the disappearance of Ashley Summers

She even looked similar in some ways to the other girls — on the smaller side and close in age.

“We were very concerned that maybe this was all one thing,” said Vicki Anderson, a special agent in the FBI’s Cleveland office.

But the family has heard little, except for one day almost a year after Summers’ disappearance, when her mother got a phone call. She is certain that it was her daughter on the line.

“She took one deep breath, and she was like, ‘It’s me, mom. I’m OK. Don’t worry.’ It was really fast.”

Then the phone went dead.

Her mother said she misses everything about Ashley. She thinks of how they used to stay up late and watch scary movies together — the mother always scared, the daughter never scared.

Ashley Summers as a little girl.

When Ashley reached her teenage years, her mother said, things got harder. She gave her mother a hard time about going to school, and the two sometimes fought. In the summer of 2007, just before she went missing, Ashley went to live with her great uncle.

Anderson, the special agent, said that so far  authorities have not connected Summers’ disappearance to Ariel Castro, the man charged with kidnapping the other three women and holding them for a decade.

She stressed that agents are still investigating.

“All the investigators that were on the situation this week,” she said, “everybody is aware, if you hear Ashley Summers’ name, you know, let’s get on that immediately. Everybody has been looking.”

In the meantime, the family keeps hoping. On Wednesday, Vicki Summers, Ashley’s little sister, made a video featuring all her siblings.

WATCH: YouTube video made by Vicki Summers

One of them, a 5-year-old whom Ashley has never met, introduced herself: “Ashley, I’m Tina.”

Jennifer Summers, the mother, said she thinks of her daughter a million times a day.

“These six years have been the worst six years of my life,” she said. “If I could just see her one time, it would erase all the pain.”

Click here to visit the Center for Missing and Exploited Children

Rock Center

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie says that his decision to have weight loss surgery was a personal one made for his wife and children.

“Last fall, I was turning 50 and it really was a moment of reflection for me,” Christie said in an exclusive interview with NBC News’ Brian Williams airing Friday, May 10 on Rock Center with Brian Williams.  “And so I really just felt like for Mary Pat and for the kids that I needed to take a more significant step to try to get my weight under control so that I could have a really active next half of my life.”

Before going through with the surgery this February, Christie says that he consulted with Dr. George Fielding at New York University, a pioneer in weight-loss surgery.

“I said, ‘Well, do I really think I need this?’ And he said to me, ‘If you came in here with cancer and I told you that I had a 40-minute surgery that'd give you a 90 percent chance of cure, would you sign up?’ And it just really crystallized it for me.  And I said, ‘Yeah, I would.’  And he said, ‘Well, then why wouldn't you do that to cure obesity?’ Christie recalled.

Christie, who is often toted as a Republican presidential contender, has often joked about his struggle with his weight – even appearing on the Late Show with David Letterman eating a donut earlier this year. By the time of that appearance, he’d already made the choice to have Lap-Band surgery.

“I did not want to take the risk of becoming unhealthy and the ramifications that would have for Mary Pat and for my four kids.  And as you know, I still have children that are in elementary school, so I got a long road here as a father and I don’t want to miss any of it,” he said.

Adam Rivera/NBC News

The governor said that he also consulted with New York Jets coach Rex Ryan who has had lap-band surgery himself. Christie says that he’s still adjusting to not being hungry.

“The biggest thing about it for me has been I’m just not very hungry anymore and that’s a huge change for me,” Christie said. 

While there has been a noticeable reduction in the governor’s weight, Christie says he’s taking his weight-loss one day at a time.

WATCH: Chris Christie sees hope for Jersey Shore

“I’m not taking any victory lap, I’m not talking about numbers, you know, pounds, all the rest of it.  People will notice how I’m doing.”

Editor's Note: Brian Williams' interview with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will air Friday, May 10 at 10pm/9CDT on NBC News' Rock Center with Brian Williams.

Slideshow: Chris Christie

Mel Evans / AP

The N.J. politician's straight-talk and tough policies put him in the national spotlight — but after considering a presidential bid, the governor decided he wasn't ready.

Launch slideshow

By Scott Stump
TODAY

Tennis legend Jimmy Connors is revealing intimate details of relationships including a broken engagement to Chris Evert and keeping his marriage together after a public affair with another woman.

In his new memoir, Connors, 60, writes about breaking his engagement to fellow tennis star Evert in 1975. He writes that Evert, who was 19 at the time, had an abortion shortly before they broke up.

“Well, that was a certainly a decision that needed to be made,’’ he told NBC's Harry Smith in a “Rock Center With Brian Williams” interview that will air in its entirety at 10 p.m. ET on Friday. “To face that together and to go through that together was a necessity.”

Connors, who will also appear live on TODAY Friday morning, told Smith he was willing to become a father.

“I was, but, you know, accepting responsibility was something that I've always done,’’ Connors said. “I have never ever apologized for anything. I have felt if I do it, it's done. That's the way I've always gone about it, and I was brought up that way.”

In his book, "The Outsider," Connors writes: "I was perfectly happy to let nature take its course and accept responsibility for what was to come. Chrissie, however, had already made up her mind that the timing was bad and too much was riding on her future. She asked me to handle the details.

'Well, thanks for letting me know. Since I don't have any say in the matter, then I guess I'm just here to help.' "

Evert has expressed her displeasure about Connors' choice to reveal the details of their relationship in the book.

“In his book, Jimmy Connors has written about a time in our relationship that was very personal and emotionally painful,” Evert said in a statement to Reuters. “I am extremely disappointed that he used the book to misrepresent a private matter that took place 40 years ago and made it public without my knowledge.”

Connors has been married to his wife, Patti, since 1979. In his book, "The Outsider," which comes out on May 14, he writes about an affair he had that was was so public he even brought the woman to meet his mother in Illinois. Patti took him back, despite his infidelity.

Rock Center

From severe weather, to a weatherman's hiccups, to mobile medical technology, to cliché vacation photos, to a behavioral study concerning airline passengers, to the latest in comfort dog news – Brian Williams catches up on the news you may have missed this week.

Oh, and for kicks - watch that video of a Golden Retriever puppy taking a bath after the jump.

Rock Center

The rehabilitation process to recover from severe lower limb trauma can be long, arduous, and expensive.  To help those injured in the Boston bombings, the MIT Media Lab’s Biomechatronics Group is collaborating with the Mass Technology Leadership Council and No Barriers Boston Fund on two initiatives.

The first initiative involves the  Mass Technology Leadership Council working to ensure that each person is provided with the assistive and rehabilitative solutions that best address their injury.  If you have a technology that you believe could help those who suffered traumatic injuries, please contact the Mass Technology Leadership Council by clicking here.

Secondly, the No Barriers Boston Fund has been established to provide the victims with devices to allow them to lead full and active lives.  The fund will provide these individuals with prosthetic limbs specifically designed for athletic activities such as running, cycling, swimming, skiing and even dancing.  To donate to this important cause, click here.

To contribute to One Fund Boston, the fund set up by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino to help Boston bombing victims and their families, click here.

To contribute to the Celeste and Sydney Corcoran Recovery Fund, click here.

To help Boston bombing survivor Marc Fucarile, click here.