March 16, 1942 was a stormy day.

… Too warm for mid March with the wind gusting round the house all day. We lived in a frame wooden house on the plantation Star of the West owned by Mr. Luther Wade. It was a prosperous cotton plantation typical of those in that era. My father was one of the plantation managers who supervised the workers of the cotton fields and other aspects of plantation life. He rode a horse in his daily work and always seemed to be busy especially in cotton season which was from early planting in the spring until harvest in the late fall.

On this particular day, I remember my mother being very nervous and agitated. There was a feeling of unease as the wind blew and the sky assumed an ominous look. Ordinarily we (myself age 5, brother Jerry age 4 and sister Tootsie was 9 months old) would have been bathed and cleaned up by lunchtime, but this day mother was so nervous about the weather that she just let us stay unwashed. She had a great fear of storms and this day her fear was accentuated by the fact that she did not know where my father was. He had left in the early morning and had not yet come home for lunch. I believe the time frame would have been late morning about 11 or 12 o’clock as I can remember.

The Escape to Greenwood

At one point, my mother got so scared that she told us to get in the car so that we could try to find my father. I sat in the passenger seat up front, while Jerry and Tootsie were in the back seat as far as I can remember. They made no sound whatsoever throughout this entire event. I’m sure they must have been scared, but the thing was so horrible that I did not hear them if they cried or made any sound.

We drove down to the plantation store so Mother could ask if anybody knew where my father was. She ran into the store and came back saying that they told her he was off somewhere with Mr. Wade, but they did not know where. Her panic increased, and I remember sensing that something very bad was about to happen.

When we got back to our house, she stopped—not even turning off the engine—and told us to stay while she ran into the house to get her purse. Later, she said that when she came out of the house, she could hear a locomotive sound as the storm crossed the river in front of the house. It was almost on us. Later, one of the plantation workers who saw us drive away told Mother that if she had looked in her rearview mirror as we left, she could have seen the house blow away.

Before we got to the highway into town, the rain started. It was so heavy I don’t know how Mother could see the road. I imagine she just kept going without seeing anything. Somehow, we got onto Grand Boulevard in Greenwood with its gigantic, hundred-year-old oak trees. What I remember is those branches bending over in the wind, almost touching the car. It was so black—so dark that we couldn’t see anything. By the time we got to the end of the Boulevard, which was one or two miles I guess, the rain had begun to let up, and we pulled into Fant’s Grocery and stopped.

The Aftermath of the F5

About this time, we began to hear the ambulance sirens start up, so we knew something had happened. For a few minutes, Mother and I just sat there and cried. As soon as she got herself together, we went into the store and asked what had happened. They told her that a tornado had come through. Somehow we knew we were affected, even though we did not know how much.

It was an F5 tornado that touched down around Itta Bena, killing three and staying on the ground through Leflore, Avalon, and Carroll Counties. In Leflore County, nineteen were killed. I’m not sure how long it stayed on the ground. At the Star of the West, the workers had houses lined up on two sides of a road. The storm went through there and wiped out every house; I think some of the workers were killed, but I am not sure.

Searching for Father

My paternal grandparents lived on Highway 82, just east of Greenwood. Mother dropped us off there while she went back to town to try to find out something about my father. During the time she was gone, my sister screamed at the top of her lungs without stopping. Nothing would soothe her. I remember this as being awful because, at that point, we did not know whether my father was okay or not. The screaming baby made it worse.

After some time—a few hours, I suppose—Mother came back with my father. She found him in Greenwood when she accidentally encountered one of the plantation workers. He told her that Mr. Wade was in the hospital and that my father was in the doctor’s office down the street. Mr. Wade and my father were trying to get home when the tornado picked up their car and tossed it into a field, turning it over several times. Mr. Wade had broken ribs and my father had a broken arm.

A Lifetime of Vigilance

My father’s injuries stayed with him for the rest of his life. I think it was PTSD. He had an overwhelming fear of storms after that, and as children, we were frequently roused in the middle of the night to go to the storm pit—a reinforced hole in the ground with seats so that we did not have to sit on the cold dirt floor. Sometimes we got two alarms in the same night. We would be allowed to go back to bed, only to be roused again in a couple of hours. While we were in the storm pit, my father could not stay down there. He stood at the door watching the clouds while the thunder and lightning churned around. We constantly begged him to come back in, but he could not stop watching the sky.

Nothing Left But a Miracle

My maternal grandparents lived at Itta Bena, MS. When they heard about the tornado on the radio, they rushed over. Our house was gone. Nothing was left. A refrigerator and washing machine were salvaged, and that was all. My grandparents asked the plantation workers where we were. The response they got was, “Mr. Taylor is in the hospital and we have not found Mrs. Taylor and the children yet.”

I remember being taken back to the house site. There was nothing there—just a bare piece of dirt where our house had been. I had a favorite doll that I had gotten for Christmas, a Little Red Riding Hood doll with blonde curls and a red cape. I looked for her that day, but never found even a scrap of red cape. All of our possessions were gone. It was a miracle we were all alive.