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1974 Xenia tornado left mark on reporter

By Dale Huffman, Staff Writer Updated 9:36 AM Thursday, April 2, 2009

As a newspaper reporter, I found the Xenia tornado to be one of the most poignant stories in my career, which spans over half a century. Some of you lived through the tornado, which occurred 35 years ago this week. Others have heard about it from family members, or by reading or seeing news reports, or in a history class.

On that memorable day, April 3, 1974, the killer tornado ripped through Xenia and parts of Greene County leaving behind death and destruction as the worst natural disaster in the Miami Valley since the 1913 flood.

As the evening police reporter for the Dayton Daily News, I was sitting near the police radio monitors when the first emergency calls were dispatched. Through a window of the newspaper building at Fourth and Ludlow streets, I could see that the late afternoon skies had grown dark as night.

The tornado alert triggered a certain tension in the newsroom. People walked faster. Voices were pitched just a trace higher.

Some reporters and staff members made quick calls to sources, and others checked in with loved ones at home to tell them to be safe, to be prepared, not to be scared. This was one of those nights when no one knew what time the work day would end.

I was dispatched along with photographer Wally Nelson to the Xenia area. We arrived there just before police blocked all nonemergency traffic from entering. Nelson and I worked our way past a train knocked off the tracks and into the dark downtown streets, talking to survivors, listening to reports from frightened victims, hearing vivid harrowing stories of life and death.

It seemed surreal. Children were crying in the night. There were the eerie shadows of nearly destroyed homes in the darkness and the calm that followed the touchdown. Kitchen curtains were flapping where windows were no more.

Trucks were overturned and trees uprooted while people rushed for help, and to help. Dogs were running free, lost, disoriented, barking, and in some cases injured. Sirens from emergency vehicles echoed across the flattened cityscape.

Some of the victims we encountered were beyond help. They were lying in a row, in front of a carry-out, in the center of town, white sheets over their bodies. I saw a mother run up and pull back sheets, frantically, one by one, and then finding her 19-year-old son. And falling to her knees, leaning over the body, she quietly sobbed, caressed, and tried to deal with raw emotion.

I was able to dictate information to the newspaper office using portable radios, and later from a phone in a Red Cross emergency tent designated for the news media. Just before the morning sun of April 4, 1974, gave a clearer view of the horrendous damage, I was dropped off in the downtown newsroom, sat at my typewriter, and composed the lead paragraphs for the main story.

The entire newspaper staff worked together to provide complete coverage of the terrible event. As I think back to that time, there are unforgettable images that remain burned in my mind and soul.

How about you? Is there a Xenia tornado story that has been handed down over the years in your family? If you have a tornado-related confession you have always wanted to share?

Dale Huffman would like to share your tornado story. E-mail dhuffman@DaytonDailyNews.com or write to Dale at 1611 S. Main St. Dayton, OH 45409. Fax: (937) 225-2489. Phone: (937) 225-2272.

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