In the Legg household, there is no longer a rambunctious trio of siblings. They are missing their beloved brother. The house has gone quiet.

“We need more noise,” said Danni Legg, Christopher’s mother, nearly a year after the tornado took her son. “You get used to that. You get used to that level of voices. Then it’s not there, and it hurts so bad.”

The month of May, long known in Oklahoma as a harbinger of severe and deadly weather, has come again.

While much has changed since the disaster one year ago, the lack of storm shelters in the majority of Oklahoma schools has remained the same.

The deaths of the children ignited debate about school shelters, but politics surrounding the issue in the deep red state have snarled forward movement. Even as state officials agree shelters are needed, they can’t agree on how to pay for them.

These storms were different.

In 2013, deadly tornadoes and storms May 19, 20 and 31 in Oklahoma killed 50, injured hundreds and left swaths of destruction that were among the worst that locals had ever seen in a state long accustomed to weather-related disasters.

The children who died at Plaza Towers were terrified and separated from their parents when the tornado hit the school. The blunt force of debris that fell on one boy killed him. The autopsy reports of six others listed asphyxia as a cause of death. They suffocated when their small chests couldn’t expand after the wall fell on top of them.

Like many parents, Mikki Davis thought her children would be safest from severe weather at school. In a horrifying handful of minutes on May 20, she and others realized that long-held belief was far from true. Her son, Kyle, 8, a boy who loved playing defense in soccer matches and riding on four-wheelers, also died in the hallway at Plaza Towers.

“My son and his six friends paid the ultimate price that day because there was no shelter in the school and because all of us parents thought they were safer there,” Davis said. “I think it has opened people’s eyes. I think these seven children have changed everybody’s outlook.”