Memories of an ominous day

Wednesday marked the 50th anniversary of the two-day 1974 Super Tornado Outbreak that began on April 3, and lasted for roughly 16 hours across 13 states.

Over the two-day span, 148 tornadoes touched down from the Great Lakes to the Southeast, killing 330 people and injuring more than 6,000.

On that terrible Wednesday in 1974, also called Black Wednesday, an F3 tornado ripped through Trousdale, Wilson and Smith Counties and was one of 24 tornadoes that touched down in the state that left 38 Middle Tennesseans dead.

While the tornado that hit Hartsville had a path of 21 miles and was approximately 300 yards in width, thankfully, there were no fatalities.

Former Trousdale County teacher and Hartsville resident Kenny Martin, 74, remembers that day clearly, as he and his family lost their home.

“The afternoon of the tornado, I was helping Jim Satterfield coach football,” said Martin. “We were having spring practice. There had been reports about storms, but when lightning hit a house, we decided that we’d better shut practice down. So, I came home. I got home at around 5 p.m. We lived close to the (Trousdale County/Smith County) line. We were living in a house that my uncle owned on his farm.

“My wife, Diane, was very afraid of storms. She had come out of the bedroom after changing our daughter Cynthia’s diaper and said, ‘listen to that thunder.’ Our daughter was two-and-a-half years old at the time. But I said to my wife, ‘That’s not thunder.’ It sounded exactly like a train.”

Martin quickly realized that the sound they were hearing was a tornado and told his wife and daughter to take cover in the innermost part of the house.

“I told my wife to take my daughter and lay in the hallway,” said Martin. “When I got up and looked outside, I could see the tornado. It looked like it was standing still. I learned later that when it looks like it is standing still, it means that it is actually coming toward you.

“I started opening the windows because we’d done it as part of a drill at the school where I was teaching — we raised the windows. But when I raised one of the windows in my house, the curtains blew back in my face, so I thought I’d better go lay down in the hallway.”

As the tornado passed over, it threw the Martin family out of their house.

“By the time I laid down, it was getting pretty loud,” said Martin. “Of course, Diane and Cynthia were laying right beside me. But I happened to raise up to look for a moment and saw the picture window from the den blow into the couch.

“We were laying under a pulldown staircase, and I looked up at it, and when I did, the staircase flopped open and I could see the sky. At that moment in time, I got up to get out, but something hit me in the back of the head, so I thought I’d better lay back down again. Then I felt a lifted feeling. It actually lifted us up and blew us out of the house. We ended up laying on top of the end wall of the house. Everything was gone. There was nothing left of the foundation. Our house just exploded.”

All of the Martins’ belongings were destroyed, in addition to their home.

“The tornado took our car and truck around the house and totaled both of them,” said Martin. “Our washer and dryer ended up way out in a field on the farm, and some of our canceled checks were found in Tompkinsville, Kentucky.”

What seemed like an eternity at the time was, in reality, over in less than five minutes.

“It takes me longer to tell the story than when it actually happened,” said Martin. “From the time that I realized that it was a tornado, until it hit, was probably three to four minutes. When it hit us, it was over in, probably, less than a minute.”

Although the tornado took his material belongings, Martin says he is grateful to God that his family was spared.

“When I raised up, I hollered for my wife, but she didn’t answer,” said Martin. “So, I hollered again, and right beside me, she raised up and then my daughter popped her head out from under her just grinning — I always say that my daughter thought she’d been on a roller coaster ride.

“I had stitches in the back of my head and in my arm, my wife had whiplash in her neck, and my daughter had a little puncture wound in her thigh, but we survived. We walked away with bruises and a few injuries, but we were all OK. And if you look at the pictures from that day, there is no explanation as to how we got out, except to say that the Lord really blessed us.”

According to Martin, it was the support of others that helped his family in the aftermath of the tornado.

“When something like this happens, it makes me sad to hear people say that they don’t have anybody to turn to,” said Martin. “My family and my church and the community were there for us after the tornado, and that really meant a lot.”

The damage from the tornado across Trousdale, Wilson and Smith Counties totaled $1 million.

The 1974 Super Tornado Outbreak is considered to be one of the worst outbreaks to hit the U.S., and to this day is considered to be the worst tornado outbreak to hit the Upper Cumberland region of Tennessee.