Memories of the Superoutbreak

Please indulge me one more long post…final one…I promise…

All weekend, I have been collecting stories from readers about their recollections of the April 3, 1974 Superoutbreak of tornadoes that killed 86 people in Alabama and 335 nationally. Here are their stories, unedited and raw, for your review…

J. Bookout writes…
Wasn’t that when the F5 hit the Brilliant/ Winfield area? I was ten years old and just barely remember. My great-grandmother’s house was destroyed. I remember going down there with my parents a couple of days later.

What really sticks out in my mind was all that was left of the house was a shower stall. I also remember an iron skillet being split in half. I can’t really figure out exactly how that happened.

Was that when the Center Point area was hit also? One of my mother’s high school classmates was killed in that one.

Thanks…the Center Point tornado was the year before…hitting on May 27, 1973.

Terry Taylor-Walls writes…I remember that very well, I had just turned 18 yrs old. My daddy was watching the sky and we were all very nervous. Luckily we had a full basement and we just waiting on the word from Daddy to get downstairs.

We had hail the size of golf balls, some of our cats, were sleeping under the hoods of the car and truck in the drive-way and once the hail started falling, the poor cats came out from under the car and truck, and were wailing and trying to stay close to the ground. My mama flung the front door open and cats came flying in. Our dogs where trying to hide under the sofa.

My daddy has just bought his first brand new automobile, he had ever had in his life, a 1974 Ford pickup, it was sitting nose to nose with his 1964 Ford car. You could see the dents being put into his truck and all he could do was watch. The old Ford car had only 1 dent in it. We lost a couple of windows in the house from the hail.

Otherwise, we were all fine, truck was totalled, some shook up pets and my beginning of being scared to death of storms.

I was living in Clay, in northeast Jefferson County.

D. Chambers writes…
I remember the tornado that came thru Haleyville, Ala. april 4 1974, killed several people in Haleyville, dogs hollered before the storm, golf ball size hail fell. It was a night I’ll never forget.

Kenneth Wright writes…I remember the outbreak of tornadoes in April 1974 very much, being as I was stationed at Fort Orr in California. It was a week before I could get a call in to my parents in Berry Alabama to find out if they were Ok. It was a very scary time.

Brian Watkins writes…Hi Bill,

On April 3, 1974, I was 9 years old and a patient at Community Hospital in Jasper. My tonsils had been removed that morning. I remember lying in bed that afternoon listening to the weather reports on WARF 1240 on my transistor radio and watching the orange mammatus-like clouds float quickly by. I remember having an eerie feeling that something was going to happen. That evening, my grandparents and aunt came from Adamsville to visit me and they were there when the tornado hit downtown. Many patients were moved to the basement of the hospital, and when the electricity went off a gasoline generator powered the building. I remember how the exhaust from the generator irritated my already sore throat and I thought I would taste it for the rest of my life. My grandmother took a kleenex from her purse and wet it in a water fountain for me to hold over my mouth and nose. It smelled like the Doublemint gum she always carried. Ah!!! (She passed away last October and this is one of my favorite memories of her.) My father was in the National Guard and his unit was activated. The next morning I was discharged from the hospital and my mother drove around Jasper as best she could to survey the damage. Jasper lost its library and a brand new fire station. The courthouse and many buildings around it were heavily damaged. The campus at Walker College lost many trees.

A few weeks later we drove up to Guin to see the damage there. Unbelievable. Later they put up a sign in the Bankhead Forest on Hwy 33 between Double Springs and Moulton marking the path one of the tornadoes took through the forest.

It’s something I’ll never forget.

If I remember correctly, wasn’t James Spann doing ham radio communications in Jasper after this storm?

Yes he was Brian…I am sure he will share that story on WeatherBrains this week.

Julia Womack McCombs writes…I can remember being a senior at Hewitt-Trussville High School. We were sitting in Mrs. Roby’s senior English class discussing the previous night’s events. As a group of 17 and 18 years olds, we thought we knew it all and were ready for anything. Mrs. Roby was visibly moved as we talked about the death and destruction. We could only imagine what it must like for the seniors in high school who were experiencing it first hand.

From Anonymous….I was 9 years old. We lived on a hill near Eastwood Mall. I feared we would get hit, as “everyone else” seemed to have been worried about this possibility. We must have been watching TV or listening to the radio. I don’t remember. I do remember a greenish sky, and having an eerie feeling. How much of this was because of my older brother trying to scare the bejeebers out of me, I couldn’t say. I remember writing a note and putting it in the hallway outside the room where we were that was most underground. I decided that anyone digging through debris to find our bodies would have to go that way. The note said: “Dear whoever finds us: Do not worry about us, because we have all gone to heaven.” A few days later, my dad drove us to Center Point to see the damage. I had never seen anything like it–and that was after some of the initial cleanup had started to take place.

Paula Smith Cleghorn writes…I remember that night like it was only yesterday for some unknown reason. I was only 5 and my brother was under 2 weeks old. We were crowded in a basement of someone my dad knew because no one around here had storm shelters back then. There was about 45 people in the basement and I remember my mom trying to keep my brother quiet so he wouldn’t bother all the other people.
The next morning, my dad, being a carpenter, went to Jasper to help access the damages. He came back with stories about a lawnmover sitting in the front seat of a car and a piece of plywood sticking straight out of a tree.
I developed a very healthy respect for tornadoes and the destruction that they can do from that experience many years ago.

Thomas W. Waller writes…Bill: As a civilian engineer, I was at an AF training school at Wright-Patterson AFB near Dayton OH during the super outbreak in 1974. We had just come back in about 4PM from training to the VOQ lodging when the front desk announced that very severe weather was approaching and to open our windows (strange?? at the time) and take pillows and sit down in the hallway up against the wall. The sky was blacker to the south of the base than I have ever seen a thunderstorm sky so I knew some really rough weather was closing in. Within minutes after we got in the hallway, hail the size of tennis balls began hitting those windows we had opened (old jalousy roll out windows) and began breaking them. The sound was horrendous. Then the heavy rain started about when the hail ended. But in less than 15 minutes there was almost a dead calm and it quit raining. Then we heard there had been a deadly tornado that had almost leveled Xenia OH to our south and the AF wanted volunteers to go and help in search and rescue.

The large hail had taken down the aluminum awning-type cover out to our bus stop in front of the building and damaged all the cars in the parking lot. I finally realized why we had opened our old windows – to possibly equalize the air pressure of a tornado coming right onto the AF base. I prayed to God for sparing us from the fateful tornado in Xenia that had taken so many lives and injured so many people, not to mention the dollar value of all the destroyed homes and businesses. FYI. Thanks, Tom Waller, retired AF engineer, Columbus MS

Michael Oden writes….I remember listening to the NWS on my crystal controlled police scanner. The following statements I will always remember…”This is the NWS broadcasting live. If you are in the sound of this radio broadcast take cover immediately.” There were so many new warnings that the weather folks simply could not keep up.

Angie Morris of Bloutsville writes…Hi
This is in response to your request to hear recollections of the 1974 tornado outbreak. If there was a different outbreak and I am incorrect with the exact date, it would have had to have been only a few months difference as I remember exactly how old I was when it happened and I was born in 1970. I was only 4 years old but this moment has defined me and my obsession with the weather (especially bad weather). If this is the correct outbreak I remember, the tornado that hit Centerpoint was on a Sunday or perhaps a Saturday. It would have had to been on a weekend because if it were not we would surely be dead. As children we had a tradition to spend the weekend with my grandmother on the north side of Roebuck. I remember the tornado warnings and my parents anxiety as the day progressed and the skies went green. I remember getting in the basement of my grandmother’s home. We were lucky as she had a nice room built in the underground part of her basement but it was still scary. However, it was nothing compared to what I was to see when we got home to our tiny house in Centerpoint on 4th Place (which, by the way, had only a super spooky, dirty crawl space).

I will never forget seeing a LARGE oak tree totally lopping off the left side of our house. It had crashed through roof and landed right smack on my bed sending it through to the crawl space below. This is where my twin sister and I would have probably been playing or napping had we been there and not heard warnings. I remember walking in the house and seeing my doorway still intact but with a large crack right down the center of the door. As my dad opened this door, I saw all my beloved toys and stuffed animals ruined, floating in puddles and wedged in rubble. Pink insulation dangling everywhere, glass everywhere and bits of wood, grass and leaves plastered on the walls that still stood their ground. At only 4 years old I terrified, but didn’t realize the magnitude of what had happened until years later as I got older learned more about tornado’s.

I don’t remember what we did that night after we surveyed the damage. We must have stayed at our grandmother’s house. But I do remember the workers coming to repair the damage and anxiously awaiting the day when things would return to normal. In regards to bad weather….things never really did return to normal.

Tanya Glover writes…My mother was telling me yesterday about her memories of April 3, 1974. She and my dad lived in downtown Jasper at the time. She said the day was warm and nice. She and my Dad were inside watching a movie on cable and the power went out. Then everything became black outside. She said that it never got that bad in their part of town. The only reason they knew what had happend was their neighbor told them. When he came home he was showing them how a drink machine had hit the back of his truck. Thankfully, their neighbor was not hurt.

Steve Parr writes…
Bill,
I have some clear recollection of the April 3-4, 1974 tornado outbreak. Here are some things I remember:

• I was a junior in high school in Huntsville.
• I remember going to the basement of my church on a Wednesday night to wait out the storms.
• Our Junior prom band had to be changed because some band members were killed in the tornadoes.
• In an area north of Huntsville, I heard that a young child was killed and the body was found in a tree. I’m not sure if this is just a legend or not.
• I went with a group of RA’s from my church to do some relief and clean-up work on a Monday night–the night Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run. I missed the live coverage on TV.

Those are the recollections of a high schooler. It’s interesting to me the things that stick out in my mind.

Bob Plummer writes…Hi Bill, Bob Plummer. We used to attend the same Sunday school class at Trussville First Baptist. Cary, my wife, and our two sons have been living in Hoover since 1996. We have been members at Hunter Street since we moved to that part of town. I remember the night in 1974 very well, even though I was only 12 years old. I was a boy scout and we were participating in a program for our wilderness survival merit badge. Our troop was from Cordova so we were at a camp between Jasper and Cordova. As part of earning the merit badge, we had to go out with a partner and build our own shelter and stay in it overnight. It just so happens that the night that we were out by ourselves in the shelter is when the tornados came through and flattened Jasper. My buddy and I were determined to stay in our shelter and we did until they sent out the adult leaders to bring us back to camp. It was a very scary night, but our shelter survived and we earned the badge.
Bob Plummer

Susan Chaffin Goggins writes…I was 8 years old during that huge tornado outbreak in 1974. I remember it well as we huddled around an old tube radio of my dad’s trying to pick up broadcasts of weather reports around the state and up north. We were in Birmingham, but my dad’s parents lived just outside Guin, Alabama. He knew it was bad there. My grandparents were safe and sound, though, in their storm shelter built into the side of the embankment across the road from there house. They spend the night there. A couple days after the storms we drove to Guin and saw the damage. We still have snapshots of the destroyed churches. The most memorable shot is one of a service station with its roof blown on top of a car that was sitting in the lot. Off the rural road where my grandparents lived, you could see the path the tornado cut through the woods for years. I’ll never forget the damage and destruction.

Tammy Boyd from Cullman writes…I live in Cullman and I was 12 years old on that day in 1974. My Mother and I went to Decatur for her to bowl that night not knowing what was coming. My Father worked in Huntsville at the time. The tornadoes began to hit up in Decatur and after they finished bowling, we all started home. As we passed under I-65 at Lacon, we had to pull over under the bridge for one of the tornadoes to pass over. We arrived in Cullman at the North Shopping Center in time to hear it announced over the radio that 9th Street S.E. had just been hit by a tornado. We lived on Avenue G 9th Street S.E. and we had no idea if our home had been hit or not. My Father had come home early because of the tornadoes in Huntsville and was in the basement when that one came over. Fortunately our home was not hit, but they stopped us around Avenue A and a neighbor led us over hot wires with a flashlight and we walked to Avenue G and my Father met us at the top of the hill. We slept in the basement that night. The power was off all over the city for a couple of days. The next few days you could hear chain saws all over the place the next day. We spent several days helping neighbors gather what we could from their homes that had completely been destroyed.

It is a night that I will never forget. When I see damage done by other tornados and drive through the area, I can still smell the unique smell and it has been 34 years. Needless to say, it left a lasting impression on me.

Gail and Joel White write…I remember that we lived on a horse farm near the Tennessee River off of Hobbs Island Road. I had a young baby and we listened to the TV with H D Bagley reporting the locations of the tornados. Suddenly everything went blank and we had no information. My husband put a mattress over the window of a bathroom and put me and the baby in the tub. He was in the Sheriff’s Mounted Posse. He left to go do work with them (in his truck, not on horseback). He came home with amazing tales of things he saw- cows in trees, homes totally razed, etc. He worked 24 hours in the relief area. The baby and I napped until we felt safe enough to emerge. That baby just celebrated his 34th birthday a few days ago. I hadn’t thought of that night in many years!

Dan Jeswald from Anniston writes…I remember them well Bill. I had just been assigned to the then Fort McClellan here in Anniston. Being a Ham Radio Operator I got involved with the local club and weather watch group (pre SkyWarn).

To say it was a shock was an understatement. It brought back some memories of Vietnam. I set up some quickly modified equipment to get on the Cheaha Repeater frequency. And because of our safe location and communications capabilities from the ARMY MARS station I was given the job of Net Control.

I think the Calhoun Club did a excellent job of helpings save lives not only on that day but for many more that followed. After I was discharged in 1979 I returned to Alabama and have called her home ever since.

Randall Sanderson of Guin writes…I was working the evening shift (3pm-11pm) at the 3M plant in Guin, Alabama on April 3, 1974. The weather had been real blustery all day and into the afternoon. Around 5:30 we had a hale storm with hale between the size of golf balls and baseballs. It actually covered the ground. That was some of the largest hale that most of us had ever seen.

At 9:00 we had a power failure and we all were looking outside to see what was going on. One of my coworkers stated that something was going to happen, because there were birds flying after dark. We could see them because of the constant lightening. Little did we know that our town was shortly going to be hit by a F5 tornado.

One coworker had gone out to the service road that runs behind the plant and I had just gotten to the door to go out there myself. When I opened the door, he was running toward the plant as fast as he could, he was yelling “Here it comes, Here it comes”. He went by me and I let the door start to close. Then the door suddenly flew wide open and I could not pull it closed. After about 30 to 45 seconds it slammed shut and I could not force it open.

Shortly thereafter, I’d say 20 to 30 minutes later, one coworker received word that a storm had hit his house. At that time we still didn’t know the extent of the damage. The company then sent us all home, since we could not operate without power.

I left the plant and went to my home at my Mom and Dad’s house. I put on a pair of boots and got my battery operated lantern and set out to see what had happened. When I got down to what is known as “Yankee” street some people asked me to help them find some of their neibors that were missing. After a short time we found an elderly lady that had been killed. We loaded her into the bed of a pickup to be transported out. Another elderly gentleman asked us if we could help him find his wife who was missing. We looked for her for about 30 minutes, but could not find her. She wasn’t found until the next day, after it was light. She was rolled up under a hedge row and covered with debris.

From there, I went on up the hill toward my uncle’s house. When I arrived on the street leading to his house, I was told that there were killed and wounded there so I went to help the people there. A family that had lived next door to me for about 10 years lived in the house on top of the hill. It was totally gone. It was the same man that had said that something was going to happen because of the birds flying after dark. We found his wife dead. Also his wife’s twin sister and her son was dead. The man’s daughter was alive but severely injured. We carefully eased the daughter onto a white interior door and carried her to a waiting vehicle to take her to the hospital. She died 3 days later in a hospital in Tuscaloosa. We then loaded her mother and her twin sister on doors to take them out. We didn’t have any stretchers, so doors were all we had to carry out the dead and wounded people. Someone else took out the twin sister’s son, as I didn’t see him taken out.

After that, I got to my uncle’s house and they were all ok, but his house was destroyed. They had gotten in a closet in the basement and that saved them. I then returned home and told my Mom and Dad about our former neighbors.

You always hear that there are times in your life when you remember exactly where you were when things happened. April 3, 1974 is just such a time.

Leon Manning writes…
I recall being in the basement of First Baptist Church Cullman on
that Wednesday evening. Many church members and those who lost their
homes came to the church for shelter. The families who lost their
homes and the remarkable stories of survival where unforgettable to
my 8 year old ears. Fortunately, my family did not lose any
property, however, many close friends lost everything.

Carol Aldridge of Guin writes…Although I was just a child when the tornado went through Guin, AL, I will never forget that day. The whole day seemed strange. Almost as if it was warning you ahead of time. Sometimes as the wind blew, the hair on my neck would rise and I shivered.

My dad worked with Tombigbee Electric Co, and he called to tell my mom for us to stay home from church that night because of the weather–we were in a revival. He heard of all the damage that the storms were causing in Mississippi, and just wanted us to be near the basement. And as it turned out, we were glad we stayed home.

The sound was deafening. I have heard some say that it sounded like a freight train, but the sound will stay with you for the rest of your life. Just a few weeks ago, we were having some thunderstorms, and trying to decide to go to the storm cellar or not, and I heard this sound. I went to the door, opened it, and listened. All I heard was “that sound”. I knew what it was. Just then the siren for the tornado alert went off. We were under a tornado warning. All the fear came back.

The house I grew up in had little damage, but there was a lot of limbs and debrie in the yard. Through the woods a few hundred yards the roof was off a house and several of his cows were killed in his pasture. Many friends of my family and church members were killed. It seemed like everyone’s life in Guin was changed within just a few seconds.

Like I said, I will never forget that day.

Cathy Baker writes…
Here are my memories from that day, April 2, 1974. I was teaching at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where my office overlooked the college greenhouse. We were about 10 miles north of Xenia. That afternoon, I was at work and the weather kept getting worse and worse. Eventually, it began to hail, and the hail stones kept increasing in size, up to about the size of grapefruit. I watched as the greenhouse was demolished by the huge hailstones. I was helpless. South of us, downtown Xenia was destroyed. When I went through several months later, it looked as if the downtown had been bombed. The storms continued through the night. In addition, I could hear the sirens from emergency vehicles that were going beck and forth to Xenia.
It was a terrible thing.

Finally…Rebecca from WZZK write this….I was 14, living in Huntsville (Queensbury Apartments). My brother Kevin, who was 18 wanted to go give blood after the first tornado hit. My sister and I went with him. It was late evening, I would say sometime around 8pm. There were thunderstorms in the area. All of a sudden he stopped the car and got out. My sister and I did too. Kevin was pointing to a large wedge tornado illuminated by lightning. He was trying to figure out what direction it was headed because he didn’t know whether we needed to take cover or turn around or what. Fortunately for us, the tornado was headed in a perpendicular direction to us. We watched for about 5 minutes and I will never forget that sound. You could hear the wind and thunderous rumbling and breaking of glass and wood. We got to the debris path but couldn’t go through it so we turned around and went home.

One of the oddest things I saw was Bob Tabb Cadillac on Bob Wallace Drive. It was a 2 story showroom with offices that took up about half of the second floor. There was a spiral staircase going from the offices upstairs to the showroom downstairs. The entire front of the building was glass and then 3 sides brick. A tornado took out both side walls and every car inside, but left the staircase and all that glass totally untouched. Across Memorial Parkway was Parkway City shopping center with Woolworth’s on one end and Montgomery Ward at the other. My best friend at the time, lived right behind Montgomery Ward’s, across from Huntsville High School. After the tornado passed by Bob Tabb Cadillac, it went up through that shopping center and took out the entire right half including Woolworth’s and a gas station next to it, but left the other side OK. Pizitz also had a 2 story store right in front of that that appeared to suffer no damage except for one corner of the building ripped out. But inside, it sucked all the TVs and electronics upstairs in that area right out through that hole.

Please chime in with your posts…

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