The Xenia Tornado

Before there was 9-11, there was April 3, 1974. I was four years old and watching Gil Whitney tell us on TV that a tornado was tearing toward Xenia, while giant hail rained down on our house in Beavercreek. If my dad hadn't gotten sick that day, he would have been holding track practice in Xenia at Warner Junior High School (which was virtually demolished) while I was in daycare, in the center of Xenia and in the middle of all the chaos. (Though the basement of the church daycare survived and so did the kids, the church didn't.) My mother would have gone into convulsions of worry and fear. As it was, it took the town a long time to recover, and my dad taught school for months at night, in classrooms in Beavercreek that Xenia kids had to be bused to. But

I took two lessons with me: bad things can happen; and God and our guardian angels are on the job.

The Dayton Daily News has video clips of the tornado. (Registration now required, the wimps.) There are also articles, pictures, and audio available from the front page of the paper.