one of the most significant days in my long life and still thankful I was allowed to live....
On Nov. 15, 1989, an F4 tornado with winds up to 260 mph ripped through southeast Huntsville. Ultimately, the storm left 463 people injured and 21 others dead, making it the deadliest tornado in Huntsville history.
I miraculously escaped that tornado on Airport Drive and was able to turn right and speed down Chadwell Road as apartments, an entire shopping center, other buildings were being smashed and destroyed....and people were being injured and dying just a few hundred yards behind me in my rear view mirror.
I was lucky....truly lucky that day. There’s more to the story but this is not the right place to tell all of it. It's long and boring to most people.
It’s just hard to believe that was 33 years ago and that I was able to see the tornado illuminated by ground level lighting behind a wall cloud just 60 seconds or less before Hell descended on Airport Road. If I had not seen it I would have died on Airport Road at the first stoplight.
As it happened I was “allowed” to see it, I believe, and survive....and my children (18, 12, and 10 at the time) were not orphaned as their mother passed away the next day at home under Hospice care after an 11 month battle with Brain Cancer as well as after being home for 17 days in a coma.
November 15th and 16th are always memorable, emotional days for me.
Many believe I was spared for a reason and I can’t argue with that viewpoint. My wife's mother believed my wife hung on in her coma until she knew I was safe and it was ok for her to go...
One more note....a wife and a mother was killed by that tornado at Jones Valley Elementary school. We knew her. She was a member of the Church we attended and she visited my wife in the hospital every other day for almost 3 months before she came home in a coma to die. This woman was younger than my wife (and my wife was only 46 at the time) and she knew her disease was terminal. She held my wife's hand and sang to her on every visit. I'm sure she did not know or even think she would die before my wife and my wife would pass a day after her.
Life is so strange at times. But the lesson in me telling that part of the story is to remind everyone tomorrow is not promised to any of us.
I will visit her grave tomorrow and we will talk and I will tell her how the kids are doing as well as the 5 grandkids she never got to see.
.
On Nov. 15, 1989, an F4 tornado with winds up to 260 mph ripped through southeast Huntsville. Ultimately, the storm left 463 people injured and 21 others dead, making it the deadliest tornado in Huntsville history.
I miraculously escaped that tornado on Airport Drive and was able to turn right and speed down Chadwell Road as apartments, an entire shopping center, other buildings were being smashed and destroyed....and people were being injured and dying just a few hundred yards behind me in my rear view mirror.
I was lucky....truly lucky that day. There’s more to the story but this is not the right place to tell all of it. It's long and boring to most people.
It’s just hard to believe that was 33 years ago and that I was able to see the tornado illuminated by ground level lighting behind a wall cloud just 60 seconds or less before Hell descended on Airport Road. If I had not seen it I would have died on Airport Road at the first stoplight.
As it happened I was “allowed” to see it, I believe, and survive....and my children (18, 12, and 10 at the time) were not orphaned as their mother passed away the next day at home under Hospice care after an 11 month battle with Brain Cancer as well as after being home for 17 days in a coma.
November 15th and 16th are always memorable, emotional days for me.
Many believe I was spared for a reason and I can’t argue with that viewpoint. My wife's mother believed my wife hung on in her coma until she knew I was safe and it was ok for her to go...
One more note....a wife and a mother was killed by that tornado at Jones Valley Elementary school. We knew her. She was a member of the Church we attended and she visited my wife in the hospital every other day for almost 3 months before she came home in a coma to die. This woman was younger than my wife (and my wife was only 46 at the time) and she knew her disease was terminal. She held my wife's hand and sang to her on every visit. I'm sure she did not know or even think she would die before my wife and my wife would pass a day after her.
Life is so strange at times. But the lesson in me telling that part of the story is to remind everyone tomorrow is not promised to any of us.
I will visit her grave tomorrow and we will talk and I will tell her how the kids are doing as well as the 5 grandkids she never got to see.
.
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