CNHI News Service Decades don't heal pain of '74 tornadoes

Photos

Dawn on April 4, 1974, sheds light onto the miles of destruction wrought by back-to-back tornadoes that hit the Tanner community in Limestone County. Courtesy photo

The Rev. Ananias Green, with his second wife Sarah at their home near Athens, Ala.,, says finally talking about the night of April 3, 1974, has allowed healing.

The cover of Mark Levine's book about the 1974 Super Outbreak of tornadoes across 13 states. Courtesy photo

A new book, due out in June, closely examines the lives and times of families devastated by the 1974 tornadoes that killed hundreds across the Midwest and South, including the touching story of a pastor whose wife and sons were sucked from their home during the event.

ATHENS, Ala. — A smile plays at the corners of the Rev. Ananias Green’s lips when he thinks of sitting on the Tennessee River in the 12-foot aluminum boat with his son Amos, sun shining, fishing poles dangling, comfortable silence unfolding.
Until two summers ago, that was the only way he wanted to think of 10-year-old Amos. When other thoughts tried to creep in, the bad ones, Green firmly shut an imaginary door in his mind.
For 33 years, the door remained closed.
It took a slight, soft-spoken young writer from New York to open it and painstakingly extract the memories of the night in 1974 when one of three tornadoes that struck Limestone County sucked the five members of the Green family from their homes, killing Green’s wife Lillian and fatally wounding Amos, who died days later.
Green granted Mark Levine’s request for an interview, and Levine made the Green family’s tragedy one of the central storylines in his book “F5: Devastation, Survival and the Most Violent Tornado Outbreak of the Twentieth Century,” due in stores June 6.
“I would like for it to die out of my mind,” Green said at his home on Easter eve, giving only his second interview about the events of that night. His other sons, Titus and Ananias Jr., were seriously injured, and Green himself left for dead in Isom’s Orchard amid the rubble that was once his home.
“I felt like some things were tender,” he said. He made a motion encompassing his head. “I wanted to leave the tenderness where it was. I’m glad I waited this long. I can talk about it now.”
The words required in the telling, though, are hard ones, tragic ones — the kind that will bring even strangers to tears.
But Green hopes something positive will result.
“I’d like people to be aware of what can happen,” he said. “Don’t take anything for granted. Be aware and go to shelter. If one life is saved, that will mean everything to me.”

‘F5’
Type the words “1974 Super Outbreak” into the search engine of your computer and a list of dozens of Web sites appears. Read a few of the accounts and you’ll find, as in any accounts of disasters, they vary slightly. Death tolls may differ, as might the number of tornadoes that struck any one area, or the number of storms rated F5, but two numbers remain consistent: 148 tornadoes, 13 states.
Total death tolls across the states — with Xenia, Ohio, being hardest hit — vary from 315 to 350, with hundreds more severely injured and thousands of homes demolished.
Six storms that day were classified as rare F5s —t he most deadly in intensity.
The tornados that struck Limestone County included an F5 and an F4.
The storms that hit here during that onslaught — including two back-to-back in Tanner — killed 17, according to a morning-after assessment, including Green’s family members and the wife and two children of Walter McGlocklin, who are also featured in the book.
Levine wrote the book in true disaster account-style but with heart and attention to dramatic detail. Levine, who teaches poetry for the Iowa Writers Workshop part of the year and writes for The New York Times Magazine and other publications, said the book would likely be made into a mini series, or perhaps a film.
“It’s such a powerful book,” said Katie Finch, director of publicity for Miramax Books, who is preparing for the release and setting Levine’s promotional appearances. As she read, she said, “my heart was pounding in anticipation of the tornadoes.”
This summer, Levine will speak and sign books in cities across the Midwest and the South, including an appearance June 29 at Athens State University.
“He’ll talk about the book, take questions and then sign books,” she said.
For now, “F5” is Miramax’s baby and is being treated accordingly.
“This is our biggest book this summer,” she said. “We believe in its potential to do great things.”
Introducing each of the characters and their situations in turn, Levine sprinkles accounts of historical storms and the history of meteorology into the mix and places the events in historical context by describing major news events of the times: Inflation, Nixon, Patty Hurst and Hank Aaron appear on the radar during the telling.
After the reader comes to know each character, the storms, in their fury and dedication to destruction, strike again, and then again. In their fickleness, they would leave most only with the after effects of terror, while from others they would take homes and belongings, and from still others, their lives.

Why question God?
These days, Ananias Green, retired from Laborers’ International Union of North America, spends quiet weekdays with his wife Sarah and Sundays leading his flock at Macedonia Primitive Baptist Church.
His sons who survived the tornado on April 3, Titus and Ananias Jr., are successful adults.
But he can’t forget Amos, the little boy who was his shadow, who joined him on Wednesday afternoon fishing trips, nor his wife Lillian, who was the perfect pastor’s wife, caring for the children and ensuring her husband was practiced and looking his best come Sundays.
“We were sitting on the couch and Amos, he’s scared, he’s sitting between his mama and daddy,” Green said. “Titus, the baby, he was sitting on my lap. The house, it was just like it kind of exploded.”
Green recalls being lifted into the air, seeing pieces of dry wall flying past, then being struck in the back with what he thinks was a two-by-four.
“It happened so fast,” he said. And, yes, the wind did sound like a freight train roaring past.
Rescuers found the boys and transported them to various hospitals — Athens-Limestone was already overcrowded and turning people away, as were Decatur General and Huntsville Hospital. Lillian was also discovered in the orchard but died before she could receive treatment.
Ananias, though, was left undiscovered in the orchard. It was Joe Isom, the orchard owner from whom the Greens rented their home, who found him.
Green spent three months in the now-defunct Jackson Hospital at Lester, where doctors told him he would never walk again.
“I said, ‘God has not shown that to me. I believe I am,’” Green said.
Amos, like his brothers, survived, only to die later after doctors tried to remove a wood splinter from his brain, Levine wrote.
“I wasn’t able to go make funeral arrangements,” Green said. He also was unable to attend the funerals of his wife and son.
But when he was finally well enough for a visit from the now recovering Titus and Ananias Jr., Green wept.
Green was accustomed to challenges. Before the tornadoes, when he was made assistant manager of a mixed-race Laborers’ Union post, people warned him he risked violence. “I wanted to prove to the world I could do the job with respect and honesty, no matter what color,” he said.
So he wasn’t about to let a little thing like a doctor’s dire predictions keep him down. When Green finally left the hospital, he left walking. He learned to perform the duties once handled by Lillian — cooking, washing clothes, keeping house.
Then he met Sarah, who had daughters of her own, and later Sarah and Ananias had a son together, Delano, now 30. The pastor credits the soft-spoken woman with kind eyes with helping him cope.
“I’m very thankful,” he said.
Has this man of such tremendous faith ever questioned God about the loss of his wife and son?
“The Lord is just in all his dealings,” Green answered. “He knows what’s best. We each have our time and our days are numbered. Why should I question God?”
Green will read his copy of Levine’s book when it arrives, but he does not plan to watch any film version.
No images could replace the one he has of Amos in that fishing boat.
“I’d rather remember me and him going fishing the last time and the joy that we had,” Green said.
Kelly Kazek writes for The News Courier in Athens, Ala.

“F5: Devastation, Survival and the Most Violent Tornado Outbreak of the Twentieth Century” is due in stores June 6. Advance copies of the hardcover book are being sold on amazon.com for $17.13 rather than the list price of $25.95.