XENIA, Ohio–April 3, 1974.
4:39 p.m.
The clock that is now on display at the Greene County Historical Society is frozen in time and has been for 50 years.
Like this year, April 3 fell on a Wednesday in 1974.
On that day, life was forever altered in my hometown of Xenia, Ohio.
Those of us who lived in Xenia and are old enough to remember vividly recall where we were when the clocks stopped at 4:39 p.m.
That is when a tornado packing 300 miles-per-hour winds splintered neighborhoods, reduced schools and businesses to piles of rubble, shredded graceful Victorian homes like paper dollhouses, and ripped apart historic landmarks that had stood for more than a century. Xenia was caught in the grip of one of the most violent single-day tornado outbreaks ever to strike North America.
In an 18-hour period on April 3—or Black Wednesday, as it is called—148 twisters ravaged parts of 13 states, killed more than 300 people, injured nearly 6,000 others, and caused about a half-billion dollars in property damage. It was the deadliest tornado outbreak in history at the time.
Seven of the tornadoes were rated F5, with winds topping 260 mph. At one point, 16 tornadoes were on the ground in neighboring Indiana.
Xenia was the hardest-hit area of all.
The funnel cloud was believed to be around 1,000 yards wide and cut a 16-mile path of destruction. Dayton Daily News accounts showed that debris from Xenia was found in suburban Cleveland, more than 200 miles away.
I was a 5-year-old kindergartner on that day. An only child, I lived with my parents on Wyoming Drive in Arrowhead Acres, which is simply called “Arrowhead” by locals. The expansive subdivision of brick ranches was built five years earlier on the west side of Xenia. My carefree days consisted of school in the morning, playing with neighborhood children on my backyard swing set, and riding Big Wheels during the afternoon—except on April 3.
The cotton-like clouds and rays of sunshine on this warm spring day were replaced by an ominous dark cloud that cast a green glow in the southwest sky as I was called to the kitchen for dinner at about 4:30. A tornado watch was posted, but there was no reason for alarm, we figured. Tornadoes seemed to strike other parts of the region, not Xenia. It was just a typical April thunderstorm, or so we thought.
Pork chops, mashed potatoes, apple sauce, and peas were on the table. Outside, the wind gusted, and the sky grew darker.
Minutes later, we were drawn away from the table to the living room, where a weatherman on TV frantically urged the residents of Xenia to seek cover immediately. A tornado was on the way.
From the picture window, my mom and dad looked down the street to a field a block away. I was oblivious to the pending danger but frightened by my parents’ panicked facial expressions.
We rushed down the hallway of our one-story home into my bedroom, which offered a better view of the field. The massive black cloud had started its destruction, tearing shingles from roofs and tossing debris into the air.
Perhaps to clutch a good luck charm, I grabbed a copper rabbit figurine that sat on a shelf above my bed. Our house did not have a basement, so we dove onto the hallway floor. The phone rang momentarily. Then the tornado hit.
Mom and Dad covered me, shielding my body from flying bricks, shattered glass, and other debris. The deafening wind sounded like a team of fighter jets above us. It was the sound of devastation. In between my sobs, I could hear Dad praying to God for our protection. I looked down the hallway and saw the bedroom doors slamming against the wall before being ripped off their hinges. The roof tore away, and the walls around us crumbled.
The horror of the storm seemed to last a long time. Yet, in less than a minute, the tornado had left our neighborhood and continued on its destruction path across the city. The eerie silence that followed was soon broken by the wailing of sirens, the sobs of frightened survivors, and the frantic screams of people searching for their loved ones.
Daylight appeared above us as we climbed to our feet. Most of what, only minutes before, had been our comfortable and cozy 1,000-square-foot house was reduced to piles of rubble. Thankfully, the hallway wall beside us had only partially collapsed, leaving us somewhat protected and mostly unscathed. Glass covered the floor as Mom took me into the bathroom steps away. Though the roof was gone, a box of tissues remained in the same spot on the sink, and my mom used them to wipe away my tears. Dad’s hand, bloodied from a flying brick, was the only injury our family had suffered.
‘Toys All Broke’
Years later, I read a newspaper article about the tornado that included a quote from a little boy that reflected my own feelings back then upon rising from the rubble.“House all broke, toys all broke, but birds all working.”
Little did we know the carnage that had been left by the storm’s fury. The heart of the tornado was centered two short blocks away, where many homes were ripped from their foundations.
When the tornado had passed, it left 25 people dead and more than 1,000 others injured. Twelve of the fatalities were children 16 or younger. Eight more people died from their injuries in the following week. Half of the town’s structures were gone. Hardly any buildings remained standing in Xenia’s downtown.
Sharon Augsburger lived on Commonwealth Drive, one block away.
In the wake of the tornado, Ms. Augsburger and her nine children were surrounded by rubble—and death. Her home was destroyed, but everyone in it escaped with minor cuts. Occupants in the homes on both sides had perished, including 33-year-old Virginia Walls and 22-year-old Joyce Behnken, who was 8½ months pregnant.
Around the corner on Roxbury Drive, 14-year-old Prabhakbhaker Dixit was killed. His family had recently moved to Xenia from India. Nearby, 12-year-old Sabina Ehret and her 16-year-old brother Michael were also among the casualties. Marilyn Miller, 33, and her 7-year-old son, Robert, died on Gayhart Street. On Roxbury, the tornado had claimed 4-week-old Eric Crabtree and 7-year-old Brian Blakely.
Nine people were killed before the tornado departed the neighborhood. Some of the children would have been my classmates at McKinley Elementary School, which sprouted a few years later in the field where the tornado touched down.
Along Main Street near downtown, five people lay dead under the debris of the A&W Root Beer Stand, including a family enjoying dinner—Paul Wisecup, 25; Sue Ann Wisecup, 19; and 16-month-old Amy. A young woman who worked there also died. She was buried in her wedding dress, her grieving fiance at her side.
Xenia High School had 2,000 students in attendance two hours before the tornado. After the storm passed, it was “an unrecognizable pile of junk (with) its huge yellow buses flung into the rubble,” Xenia Daily Gazette reporter Phyllis Morrissette wrote for the book, “April 3, 1974: The Ohio Tornadoes.”
On the west side of town, Warner Junior High was destroyed. Ninety minutes after the tornado hit, an assembly of 600 people had been scheduled to take place.
Just as the tornado cut through downtown Xenia, the engineer of a 57-car freight train sounded a frantic warning with the horn. The twister’s force scattered half of the cars like matchsticks, blocking Main Street. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base’s heavy construction battalion was sent to remove the train cars so emergency vehicles could reach their destination.
The twister’s aftermath brought out the best and the worst in humankind.
Help came from all over.
Police and fire personnel arrived from across the region. Volunteers helped to search destroyed homes, looking for survivors and bodies.
Wright-Patterson sent a medical convoy of 50 and later dispatched bulldozers, dump trucks, generators, floodlights, and a helicopter airlift of medical supplies. Crews from the American Red Cross and Wright-Patterson played prominent roles in Xenia’s recovery for months.
Looters descended upon Xenia not long after the storm subsided. The National Guard was called in. Two days later, two guardsmen were killed in a fire that erupted in a debris-filled downtown furniture store. Shady contractors flocked to the most devastated neighborhoods, took residents’ money, and left without delivering what they had promised.
A Visit From President Nixon
A few days after the tornado, President Richard Nixon visited Xenia. At the time, he was mired in the Watergate scandal and would resign later that year, on Aug. 8, but his presence provided comfort and hope to hundreds of Xenians who crowded around him everywhere he went.On the morning after, sunlight beamed, illuminating the damage. We returned to the house and sifted through the debris. In the kitchen, amid the rubble, the skillet with pork chops, and the pans with mashed potatoes and peas, remained on the range. The walls were knocked down, but my mom found her purse behind the couch where she had put it before the storm. My parents’ white Volkswagen Beetle was blown through the garage wall and landed upside down in the backyard. With an effort from my dad, uncles, and grandfather, they tipped the car upright, and to their amazement, it started up.
Like many families in Xenia, my parents were left with few material possessions. And, as many Xenians did, Mom and Dad chose to remain in the town where they were raised. They rebuilt a house on the same lot—the house where I grew up.
To this day, the ’74 Xenia tornado is studied intently at meteorology schools across the country. The now late Bruce Boyd was 16 when he recorded a 16 mm home movie of the tornado while standing in the front yard of his family’s home, much to the horror and chagrin of his mother.
That two-minute film was closely reviewed by scientist Ted Fujita, who created the Fujita scale of damage. The ’74 tornado was classified as an F5, but Fujita said that if an F6 existed, the Xenia tornado would qualify.
The Super Outbreak resulted in an array of changes to weather reporting, including outdoor warning sirens and a wider use of radar at NWS stations. The National Weather Service adopted the F0–F5 Fujita scale as a standard for describing the severity of a tornado. The events of April 3, 1974, demonstrated the critical need for research funding, and that ultimately led to the development of the Doppler radar.
In 1974, tornado warnings were distributed with a teletype system. Warnings were punched into a paper tape and manually fed through a reader. On April 3, 1974, multiple tornadoes were simultaneously in progress. Some warnings were transmitted an hour after they were issued.
This prompted the National Weather Service to find a better way to disseminate warnings to the public. It expanded its weather radio network, which allowed anyone with a weather radio to immediately be alerted when their local NWS office issued a warning for their area.
Today, 50 years later, there are a few visible reminders of the 1974 disaster. The former city hall that now serves as the justice center, and Greene County Courthouse, are architectural treasures that survived.
Shawnee Park is the focal point of community events and one of the most picturesque little city parks anywhere.
The Shawnee Indians, who lived in the area long ago, called Xenia “the land of the devil wind.” The city’s emotional recovery was scarred by a small tornado in 1989 and a ferocious twister in 2000 that killed one man and followed the same path as the 1974 storm.
I don’t remember landmarks that pre-date the tornado, like the Xenia Hotel, which was built before the Civil War and reportedly welcomed guests like President William McKinley and Charles Dickens.
I don’t recall the Xenia where Victorian homes dotted tree-lined streets near downtown.
What I most recall is the family togetherness that followed April 3. First, my parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and friends pitched in to clean up the mounds of rubble until there was a clean slab. Then many of the same people helped rebuild the house where I grew up.
My parents lost most of their possessions and had no choice but to start over. I once asked my dad why they decided to stay when many families relocated to other towns.
“This is home. It’s where we were raised and where we had lived all of our lives,” he said. My parents, now married for 56 years, remain in Xenia.
In my post-’74 tornado childhood years, our backyard was the scene of wiffle ball games that would stretch from morning until night during the summer. At times, we would dig in the yard and uncover shards of glass, pieces of china plates, soda cans, and other remnants scattered about and buried by the tornado.
Fifty years later, when I think about the tornado, names like Brian Blakely, Eric Crabtree, and Robert Miller enter my mind. Perhaps they might have become classmates, friends, and part of our wiffle ball games.
If the center of the tornado had struck just a block closer, perhaps our names would be on the monument honoring those who lost their lives, and the children and their parents who perished on nearby streets would be writing about their memories of that day.
April 3, 1974.
4:39 p.m.
Fifty years later, I remember when the clocks became forever frozen in time because the memory serves as a reminder to appreciate even life’s most routine days.
