To most people who knew my dad, they knew him as quiet, slow to anger, an incredibly hard worker, a family man, father, Deacon of the local Baptist Church…. My dad was about 5’ 6” tall and weighed around 105 soaking wet. He was a man of very few words, and spoke softly, expecting you to listen to him, if what he had to say mattered to you. He rarely repeated himself, a trait, I find I inherited the older I get. My dad was strong in ways his small stature didn’t allow. He carried to burden of a child born with Cerebral Palsy and the financial burdens that it created without complaint. Most of my childhood, he worked several jobs just to make ends meet, so my mom could be at home and be the primary caregiver. That April, my mom had taken a job as well, so on this faithful day, I had went home with my cousins after school, since we had been dismissed early for the weather. My parents followed soon after with my brother to pick me up and head home.
We arrived home in a hailstorm. My mom laid my brother in the floor in our living room and went to start a quick supper of tomato soup before we lost our lights. We never ate the soup. I still remember going to the house days later, and it being dried on the wall behind the stove, a ribbon of red frozen in time. Minutes later, my dad and I began to discuss the fact that he wanted to use my new TV I’d gotten for Christmas instead of the family TV to watch the weather on in case lightening ran into the house. I was not happy with his choice to use my new TV, but we never finished the discussion, nor did we ever plug in or turn on either TV. Whatever warning the weather men had that night, our family never heard. By now, the hail was as large as baseballs, and my dad lost interest in me to go outside to get some hail to show the guys at work. It was that split second decision that saved all our lives that day. The first of many, in fact. For when my dad went outside, he saw the tornado hit my aunt Katherine’s house over 1/4 mile away. Her house exploded. He screamed, “Here it comes!” My mom coming out of the kitchen to see here “what comes” grabbed me and my brother and ran to the garage, the second decision that saved our lives that night, for had we gone to the center of the house, as we had been taught, we would have all been crushed by the weight of the roof of the house. I had been told to go to my closet, but the rescue workers later had to cut through the roof, to get to my clothes. Dad grabbed the mattress from their bed and covered our family in it. That was the next decision to save our lives that night.
The sounds of an F2 or F3 tornado directly hitting your house will not be something you will ever forget. The first tornado hit on the front of our house, lasted about 3 seconds and did very little damage. It was gone as soon as it came it seemed. That tornado split into two smaller tornadoes when it hit our house. One part made a path into our side yard, making a path through the forest before dissipating. Just as we thought the first tornado was done, Dad told us to wait a bit longer. Seconds later, the larger of the two tornadoes turned, directly hitting the back side of our home, lifting the roof from the walls, and knocking the entire back wall inwards. People miles away, said our house looked like it too had exploded on impact. Inside the garage, the sounds of rafters being twisted and turned made the most gut wrenching sound. I can shut my eyes and can still hear it to this day. Shingles were ripped off the roof and we were bathed in wet insulation and hail from above. Our double garage doors were lifted as if they weighed nothing, and then every thing we owned from knives, shoes, even furniture, flew out of the house, hit our mattress, and then completed it’s path out the garage doors, never to be seen again. In mere seconds, everything we owned, followed the same funnel out of our house and into the surrounding woods. And then there was the most eerie silence you have ever heard. Complete void of noise. If was if the world had blown all it’s breath our direction and was now afraid to breathe again. The monster that had made so much noise in it’s anger, was now asleep once again. In our small garage, no one dared to wake the giant. We sat perfectly still and waited.
After what seemed a lifetime, my dad rose from his seat beside my mom, who had my brother, and walked to the small garage door and into our back yard. Moment’s before our house had been surrounded by woods. My parents owned two trailers and one of those was rented to a couple in their mid twenties. Now the woods were mangled trees, and the trailers were gone. TOTALLY GONE. Only one small chicken perched on what had been a leg of a deck, was left sitting on her nest of eggs. Not one feather was ruffled. Around her, the only semblance that a trailer and home to two people had existed, was the dirt that was underneath. Thankfully, we would later find they had ran to a ditch and were unscathed, although traumatized.
Upon exiting the house and viewing what had been our back yard, my dad fell to his knees and for the first time in my life, my Daddy cried. A sound more horrible and terrifying than the winds that had just destroyed our home. A sound that I can still hear in my nightmares 50 years later and can still bring me to my own knees at the recollection. Until that night, I had never feared anything in my life, because my dad was in control. But on the evening of April 3, 1974, he stood and the crying shook his body and the tears flowed. Despite having been told to stay where I was, I ran to my dad’s side. I looked out the garage door and I could not see why he was crying. For there was nothing to see!
My dad had already seen his sister’s house explode, before the tornado reached our house. The two trailers were gone, and as far as he knew everyone he had ever loved had gone with them.. We lived on the family farm. Surrounded by his parents, sister, nieces and nephews. He later said when he looked out that day, that he thought we were the only people left alive.
Soon my parent’s decided to make the 1/4 mile walk to my grandparents. I had lost a shoe in the excitement, and was walking with only one shoe, when we were met by a Civil Defense worker who was walking up the road to see how many people were alive. As he came by, slowly people came out to the road to join us. Because there were live electrical wires on the ground, he picked me and our very smelly dog, whom had fought with a skunk earlier in the day and carried us to my grandparent’s house. In our neighborhood, only two houses were left standing. Many of the homes were trailers and they were destroyed or were totally gone. Two of my cousins had to go to the hospital with injuries they sustained when their trailer flipped with them inside. Thankfully, no one was killed. My dad’s worst fear, thankfully had not been realized. Though traumatized, and exhausted, homeless and stressed, we were as a family, still all in one piece.
It’s been 50 years. I was nine years old the night the tornado of 1974 destroyed our house, our clothes, our car, every worldly possession we owned. I still have nightmares about that day. I still dread the anniversary every year. Especially since this year it is not only the 50th, but also on a Wednesday. But thankfully, I never heard my dad cry again after that day. Not even when he was told he had stage 4 lung cancer. Not even as he was dying. Only one day in his life broke my dad. Wednesday, April 3, 1974.
Walk In Their Steps 