A Life Wasted

Tornado 1985

Remember the story about Mary in her slip and bra and the hug in the mirror. That was in late February 1984. There was actually a little more to that story. We were late for that event. Nine months later, November 19, 1984, Kelly Lynn was born in Virginia Beach. We now had four children. I had shifted my business from custom programming to vertical market sales of my personal agency management software. I'd invested more than a year in developing and tweaking P.A.M., then sold and installed in two Beta sites, so it was well tested software and ready for prime time. After Kelly was born Mary wanted to go home, the Ohio/Pennsylvania border. Her parents lived in eastern Ohio as did her brother and sister and their families. I was selling P.A.M. nationally so regardless of where we lived I would have to travel. We packed up our growing family and moved to western Pennsylvania.

December 1984 we moved into a rented mobile home just outside of Mercer, Pennsylvania. A mobile home wasn't our first choice with three children and an infant, but we needed a place to hold us over and we were able to rent it monthly. It was in the country at the back of a five acre pasture so not too bad.

Late in the afternoon of May 31, 1985 we began to hear Tornado warnings on the radio. Tornado warnings weren't common here and I didn't like the look of the sky so I kept the local radio station turned on. It was a huge storm front with sever thunder storms in the Cleveland area. Already more than a dozen F3 and F4 tornado's had touched down in Ontario, Canada, so this storm had everyone's attention. As the afternoon moved towards evening a tornado was spotted on the ground in Niles, Ohio directly west of us. The early reports from Niles were horrific. Mary's sister and family lived in Niles so Mary tried to call but couldn't get through. She wanted to go to her sister. I wasn't willing to allow Mary to drive into a tornado zone, but I didn't like the way the tornado tracked toward us. Not willing to ride out a tornado in a mobile home I decided to pack everyone up and get out of the storm's way.

Mary had a van, but the winds were already building so I didn't want to be in something top heavy. It was a bit tight for everyone, but we crammed into my Nissan Maxima. The storm was west of us, but a little to the south, so we drove west towards the storm but well north of where it was tracking. My plan was to get above the storm's track and let it pass to our south, then we could come in behind it, go to Niles and check on Mary's sister's family. As we drove the reports were non-stop. The tornado that hit Niles had leveled a skating rink and other buildings. Early reports were calling it the largest tornado to ever hit Ohio which would later prove true as it was an F5 tornado, the largest. Another fact that surfaced as we drove was that it wasn't a single tornado, but many. The radio reports made the course of the multiple tornado's difficult to track, but it began to look like I had made a good choice in driving north.

Driving back roads we avoided areas reported to have been hit by a tornado. We ended up in Braceville, Ohio, the place Mary lived when we met. As we passed the church we'd been married in we pointed it out to the kids. At this point tornado reports were confused. What was apparent was that the storm had cleared the area to our west. Just north of Braceville was an entrance ramp for the Ohio Turnpike, so I got on it with intentions of taking the Turnpike west for at least an exit to clear the storm, then come in behind it to Niles and Mary's sister.

That was when we heard of a massive tornado strike on the Mercer County community of Wheatland, near where we lived. Another tornado, an F4 hit Jamestown, Pennsylvania, also in Mercer County killing 23 people. I was feeling smug with my decision to run towards the storm. When we reached the Ohio Turnpike entrance ramp we discovered we weren't the only ones running from the storm. There was a line of cars waiting to clear the toll both. The line wasn't too long so I pulled up to it, but because of the way I'd trained myself as a criminal I stayed clear of the car in front of me so I could get out of the line in a hurry if needed.

We had just stopped in the line when the sky south-east began to get dark, then in seconds turned black. I had never seen a tornado except on TV. This was nothing like a TV tornado, but I knew it was a tornado. A big one. Using the open space in front of me I pulled out of the line, onto the grass and drove across the grass until I reached the connecting road.

Neither Mary nor I could take our eyes of the black storm. I rolled my window down and we heard the fabled train sound, though I'd never heard a train sound evil. The tornado and its massive dark cloud settled on the small town of Newton Falls, Ohio. As it settled we watched buildings lift into the air and disintegrate. The edge of that dark destruction was a half mile from us and seemed to grow. Not moving in any direction, but hovering over Newton Falls and getting larger. Like it was feeding on the small town. There was no traffic on the country road in front of me so I floored the Maxima.

We knew Newton Falls had been destroyed. It was a town Mary had lived walking distance from, a town where she knew people. The same F5 tornado that hit Niles turned north and hit Newton Falls. I hope to never see an F5 tornado again, but if I do I'll know what it looks and sounds like.

In that drive north we saw numerous paths cut by multiple tornadoes as they crossed the road, wrecking destruction as they went. Trees were broken and tossed to create open lines through woods, houses flattened and destroyed, cars laying upside down were no car should be. We drove north for ten miles to clear the destruction of the monster that ate Newton Falls, then turned west to get behind the storm system. Though we saw far too much destruction, the F5 that hit Newton Falls was the only actual tornado we witnessed. It was enough.

Once we were confident the storm had passed we drove back to Niles to check on family. Mary's sister and her family were fine, but other's weren't. The National Weather Service had tracked twenty-one tornadoes on the ground, the one that hit Niles and Newton Falls was an F5, six were rated as F4's and many were F3's. One of the F4's touched down in Mercer County Pennsylvania (where we lived) and stayed on the ground for more than an hour and cut a path of devastation 56 miles long, killing and destroying numerous communities along the way. While we ran from the storm Mary prayed for the safety of family and friends but she also prayed that our home wouldn't be harmed.

The F5 that hit Niles and Newton Falls, the one we witnessed, cut a forty-one mile path of destruction. The end of that forty-one mile track ended a half mile from our poor little mobile home. The F5 hit the community of Wheatland, killed seven people, injured hundreds, and destroyed thousands of homes, then lifted off the ground just south of the town of Mercer. It died a half mile from our home. We had pieces of homes on our five acres, but there was no damage at all to our mobile home. Not even a window broken. Cars were thrown all over the place, some never to be found, but Mary's van sat untouched where we left it. We would have been safer had we stayed home and had a picnic.

*After reading this story, I decided to research this storm. I don't really remember this time in my life, but I remember my older sister telling me about it. Here's an article I found, if you're interested in knowing more.

http://www.ustornadoes.com/2015/05/31/may-31-1985-a-tornado-outbreak-out-of-place/

Thank you all for taking the time to read my father's memoir. I am personally so grateful for the opportunity to share his stories with you.

~Rebecca