Two die; school, churches destroyed

By Heather J. Smith
Staff writer

Some mark March 20, 1998 as the day they lost everything.
Less than a minute of hellish wind and the tornado howled on. Recalling it, survivors describe moving toward shelter by instinct as they heard the storm's approach, realizing the danger later. Some had seconds to scramble under desks, into bathtubs, under bridges.
Few had experienced twisters, unaware of the sound, the speed and the destruction. The storm shook the walls around them, tossing aside trees and stealing breath. Prayers were uttered in haste.
Tornadoes don't happen here, they said to each other later. No one alive remembered a tornado, certainly not one of this magnitude.
Exhausted after tearing through Pine Hall, Madison, Mayodan and Stoneville, the funnel retreated, but the system rallied and touched down again in southern Virginia, scattering belongings ripped from the lives it disrupted. Invoices from Southern Finishing's devastated building fluttered to the ground in Axton, Va. Belongings of Rockingham County residents landed in Lynchburg, Va.
Residents of western Rockingham County picked their way out of ruined houses and overturned cars. Dazed, some found their homes and families safe. Others walked through ruined streets, finding their towns changed and their businesses, houses and churches damaged, their loved ones injured.
Some of the structures were leveled. Some were not missing the first shingle or gutter.
Two people died. Beth Mitchell was 24. The car driven by the Stoneville Elementary third-grade teacher was tossed into a building, killing Beth and critically injuring her mother, Nancy. The storm struck the home of Powell "Roud" Hickman, an elderly Stoneville farmer, throwing him from the house. People still mourn their loss but offer thanks that more did not perish.

A beautiful day

Residents remember a brilliant, sunny morning following three days of rain, but the weather changed as the day wore on. Sheryl Eaves, now assistant principal at Western Rockingham Middle School, remembered remarking to her fellow teachers and band students about the morning's beauty. But as she sat in her room later that afternoon, dark clouds rushed to cover the sun.
"It was just so sudden," Eaves said. "All that day, I remember this kind of ominous feeling. I was sitting in my classroom after the dismissal bell and I noticed it got so dark outside. "
Ten reported tornadoes touched down in North Carolina that day. The strongest began in Stokes County and moved through Rockingham, injuring 27 in addition to the fatalities. In 24 minutes, the storm traveled 12 miles before lifting off the ground west of Eden. The same system spawned a weaker tornado in Henry County, Va., not 10 minutes later.

Unfamiliar territory

North Carolina is not unfamiliar with such storms, but this tornado was unusually strong. Meteorologists rated it on the upper range of an F3, a level usually found in America's plains.
Stephen Keighton, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Blacksburg, Va., said complex layers of conditions produced a tornado that should have been impossible in this terrain.
Though not as mountainous as land to the north, Rockingham County is hillier than areas that typically bear tornados. Tornadoes more often happen in the southern Piedmont, where the warm, moist air that fuels strong thunderstorms isn't pushed away by cool, higher elevations.
"The flatter terrain reduces the friction in the boundary layer of the atmosphere, helping the low-level winds and wind shear to support tornado formation," Keighton wrote in an e-mail. "Not that it can't come together in the mountains, it's just not as likely."
Compare our atmosphere to a river of air. Pockets of warm and cold air collide and push the other aside as the current flows north and west. The sunny March day heated air still moist after days of rain, creating a pool of humidity above western Rockingham County. A warm front from Virginia descending south and cold air pushing up from Georgia butted against moisture here. Heat, cold and moisture reacted in the sky as it does boiling on a stove.
The fronts collided, forming a strong thunderstorm. Hot and cold air scraped past each other, prompting a stormy rotation.

Funnel cloud

Before touching down, a funnel cloud damaged property in the small Stokes County town of Pine Hall. The fellowship hall of Morning Star Baptist Church was hit especially hard -- walls were knocked off the foundation and windows were broken.
Tornadoes typically weaken as they travel. Buildings and forests slow winds as they connect, but the 1998 tornado crossed into Rockingham County with growing speed.
From Pine Hall, the funnel cloud moved toward Madison, mostly across uninhabited land. Twenty minutes after the dismissal bell rang at Western Rockingham Middle School, teachers frantically ushered students waiting for rides home back into the school. Buses were already on the road. Fallen trees had already trapped one bus on N.C. 704.
Eaves was the middle school band teacher. Her observation of quick, dark clouds was her first clue of impending danger. The faculty was told to take cover, and Eaves and her son ducked into the band room and prayed. They huddled there; unsure whether it was safe to leave even after the building stopped shaking.
"No one ever told me that tornadoes couldn't turn and double back," Eaves said. "I was going to stay there until I knew it was gone."
Eaves peeked outside and saw two swirling cones reaching from ground to sky merge into a solid column. The tornado touched down just yards from the school.
A field separated the middle school from Unifi Plant No. 5. Clear, level ground gave the cone a landing strip to rally force before striking the factory. It tore the roof and wall off one of the factory buildings, picking up shingles, scrap metal and debris. Before leveling several houses, it flung a large steel exhaust fan some 300 yards.

A destructive path

The tornado next went to Kingswood Apartments, a small complex across from West Side Baptist on Ayersville Road. The few tenants at home took shelter in bathrooms and closets as wind ripped off roofs, shattered windows and deposited debris inside.
Former tenant Charles Joyner worked at Kobe Wieland Copper in Pine Hall. That Friday seemed ordinary - until the afternoon sky changed.
"All I remember is that we were sitting there in the office and it got black ... pitch black," Joyner said. Joyner was a volunteer firefighter in Mayodan. When his pager went off, he knew it wasn't a fire.
After leaving work, Joyner checked on his children, who were staying with their grandmother on Virginia Street. He heard that the church adjacent to Kingswood was damaged, and he went to take stock of his belongings.
"I left work to go check on my upstairs apartment and, needless to say, when I opened the door to my apartment, there was no roof on it," Joyner said.
Joyner's neighbor, who crawled under a bed when the tornado hit, commented that damage to his apartment could have been worse. Joyner went across the hall and found the storm had taken the neighbor's furnishings. The man told Joyner he survived by clutching a mattress.
"Unifi was right across the road and when I opened the door, physically it didn't look like anything wrong with my apartment. The apartment next to me, the whole back wall was gone," Joyner said. "But when I unlocked the door, there was no roof, but I had probably about 3 or 4 foot of cotton all over my living room and bathroom."
Unlike his neighbor, nothing was missing. Pillows and blankets were undisturbed; plants were still neatly in pots on the counter. Joyner remained in the ruined apartments that night to safeguard belongings.

Shelter after the storm

The National Guard found temporary homes for people, and a curfew kept those with the worst intentions indoors after dark. More than 190 houses were damaged. Miraculously, no one in Mayodan was killed.
Connie Fox, Mayodan United Methodist Church's unofficial historian and a member since childhood, was safely on the other side of town at Frontier Spinning Mills. A warning call answered by the receptionist at the mill was yelled to everyone in earshot. Fox moved to the window.
"What was going through my mind was, there can't be a tornado. This is not tornado country," Fox said. "This little town is between two mountains. This can't be."
But the sight outside confirmed it. A funnel, top-heavy and slanted, was moving through the town center. Fox saw flying debris and knew a tornado formed in an improbable place. She knew it was unusually dangerous.
Employees hid under desks until it was safe. Outside, rain and hail fell after the funnel passed, and the temperature dropped to a biting coolness. Fox said her first reaction was to call her husband. She asked if he and their house were safe. He said yes, but the rest of the town was not so fortunate.
"He said the church is gone," Fox said. "And when he said that, I just lost it."
Fox said her husband watched the tornado move through neighborhoods and the ballfield, rip open the church and slam against the abandoned Elliott Duncan Elementary School.
The next day, Fox prepared herself for the sight of her home church in shambles and drove to town. Streets were still blocked by trucks and debris, so she parked and walked the two blocks to the church, the school building obscuring her view.
"When I got closer to the corner where I was about to come into view, one of my friends turned around and saw me coming," Fox said.
The friend ran to her and offered her arm, saying Fox should not see it alone. They rounded the corner, and Fox spied piles of brick where her church had stood a day before. The top half of the sanctuary was gone. The tornado tore at the fellowship hall, peeling off the roof but leaving the contents intact.

She wept.

That weekend, pastor Doug Miller, parishioners and people living nearby scoured the wreckage, salvaging anything not damaged. Pieces of their spiritual home were collected from the parking lot, nearby yards and the interior of the elementary school. Workers found the brass cross, collection plates, candlesticks and other items from the altar.

A fateful morning

In minutes, the tornado touched down, caused widespread destruction and moved on. The storm traveled past Mayodan's Main Street, down the valley to the Mayo River and over the mountain.
Hills and valleys did not weaken the storm, nor did miles of forests and farmland that lay between Mayodan and U.S. 220. It was here that Hickman, 80, died.
His widow, Allie Mae, now lives with her daughter on a small road off 220 in Stoneville. Fragile and gray, she can recall details of that fateful morning.
"We weren't doing anything special that day," she said. "(Roud) got up and fed the hogs and then he was out with his friends looking for timber to cut. I worked around the house."
Later, Allie Mae said, tornado warnings flashed across the TV and the weather grew violent. Roud, watching from the window, called her over to point out wind that was carrying away objects. The items became heavier as the storm raged. A tree fell outside, and windows of the two-story house burst with the pressure change of the approaching tornado.
Allie Mae said details of what happened next are not clear; she remembers regaining consciousness after the tornado picked the house apart.
Rescue workers found Allie Mae yards from the ruined house.
"'Course they found him dead, 500 feet away," she said.
Aerial photos show a flattened path as wide as a football field across the middle of Stoneville. Trees look like so much trampled grass, and buildings were scattered with debris. Southern Finishing's main office, an old tobacco warehouse, First National Bank and several other structures were heavily damaged. For the second time, the tornado brushed - but it did not hit - a school.
Renee Halpin and 37 students were in the auditorium at a play workshop when a voice announced over the P.A. system, "Renee, get those kids down now."
Halpin said tornado warnings usually began early and were repeated several times, but this was sudden, unexpected and terrifying.
"So, then we just ran to our positions where we were told, and everybody got near a wall," Halpin said. The tornado hit about 3:30 p.m., around the time buses were heading out and parents were waiting in cars outside. Everyone was called back in.
Cowering against the auditorium wall with her students, Halpin became fully aware of her responsibility for the small lives she ordinarily only protected from scrapes and teasing. She was frightened for herself, but she was more afraid for them.
"A lot of them were crying. A lot of them were very scared. And I kept saying, 'It's just a storm, we're going to be OK. It's just a storm, we're going to be OK.' And I don't know if I was trying to convince them of that, or just trying to convince myself of that," Halpin said.

Beth Mitchell

The twister pounded along, following the train tracks to Stoneville's center. Mitchell and her mother, Nancy Lee, had just crossed the tracks when Beth saw the storm hungrily ripping apart the houses of Hampton and Woodlawn streets. Beth stopped the car in front of Claybrook Tire. The funnel was less than a quarter mile away.
"It's a tornado," Beth said, panicked. "What do we do?"
Nancy said later it moved too fast for the car to escape, or to run from the car to safety. She told Beth to curl up in the car's floorboard with her poodle, Onyx. Mother hovered protectively over daughter as the dark funnel approached. Before she lost consciousness, Nancy remembers seeing flying shingles, metal, branches, plastic and other things moving too fast to discern.
Awake again, Nancy saw blood around her. She tried to rouse Beth, shook her and called her name. She looked for an injury that would explain why her daughter was still. She saw more blood.
"It wasn't from her because there wasn't a mark on her," Nancy said. The blood was hers, dripping from a deep gash in her scalp.
It was minutes before someone noticed the car trapped beneath Claybrook's collapsed building and began uncovering it. The uninjured hurried over to help. In a small community where all are either related or close friends, a circle of searchers reeled in horror when they realized Beth and Nancy were in the car.
Emergency workers extracted Nancy and took her to Morehead Memorial Hospital. Doctors discovered the cut caused a life-threatening blood clot, and she was moved to Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. She slipped in and out of consciousness the following days. One thought continually raced through her mind. She must tell her husband, Worth, that Beth didn't make it.

Away from home

Stoneville mayor Rex Tuggle and his wife, Julia, were attending a District Rotary meeting in Myrtle Beach, S.C. They were eating dinner, unaware of the tornado. Fellow guests first asked him about it casually. After the second mention, Tuggle told his wife he had better step outside to check his voicemail. Another guest told him the national news was saying Stoneville had been struck by an unusually strong tornado.
"I went out and checked my messages on my cell phone, and I had like 10 messages," Tuggle said. "Myrtle Beach police, the town manager, National Guard, my mother, my wife's mother, my daughter who ran my antiques store, you know, everybody was looking for us."
He called his daughter at home. Tending shop at Rex and Julia's Antiques on East Main Street that afternoon, she saw the twister approaching. She sheltered in a bathroom - one of the few rooms in the rear of the building that did not collapse. She told him two people were dead and the guts of damaged buildings blocked Henry Street. The National Guard stood guard to protect crippled homes and businesses from looters.
The Tuggles reached Stoneville by midnight, and he dropped her off at home before walking into town. He found rescue workers searching damaged buildings. Power lines were down and blackness hung past the reach of floodlights set up by searchers. People of Stoneville worked all that night, shaken and grieving, numbly searching the rubble.
"People's attitude was we'll never recover. I heard that from a lot of people. Stoneville is gone. We can't fix it," Tuggle said. "And there were others who said we will, we will rebuild. We'll make it better."
In Mayodan, pastors wrote sermons based on God's message of hope during life's darkest moments. In communities between the towns, families sheltered families, and relieved phone calls eased worried minds.
The earth turned on its axis, and healing began with the dawn of March 21, 1998.


Staff writer Heather J. Smith can be reached at hsmith@reidsvillereview.com or 623-2155, ext. 15.