Tornado Killed 30 and Injured 75 in Missouri.
My great grandmother, a great aunt, and five field hands were among those counted in the dead. My
Grandfather, Henry Price, was reported as injured but he died nineteen days later
from injuries received that sad, dark day.
Related tornadoes reportedly killed 83 people in four states, but the
number used to report Missouri's lost in that early report was only 14. The
other three states experiencing the death and destruction from the storm were
Arkansas, Mississippi, and Illinois. I wonder what the final total was after a
week of recovery?
The
path of the tornado reportedly started near Jackson and traveled to Vicksburg,
Mississippi. It was next reported as capsizing the Mississippi River
Packet Eleanore along the Arkansas banks of the Mississippi River. It then lifted
up from the Mississippi River and followed the path of the river a few
miles to the west in Arkansas.
The
deadly tornado happened a century ago, June 5, 1916. One of the results from
the storm was that my Mother always felt the loss of not knowing her father who died
from injuries received the day the tornado swept the Prices' two-story home off
its foundation and into a thousand pieces.
After
the storm passed, Carrie Rettig Price first checked on her mother-in-law, Cummy
Grandstaff Price (my
Great-Grandmother). She found her lying on the ground near the home's foundation. Carrie soon
realized Mrs. Price was dead.
Carrie then
hurried to find her husband, Henry Price. To her shock and horror, she found
Henry alive but pinned to a tree by straw through his body. Carrie cried
to others family members to help him. She then looked for her
thirteen-month-old daughter, and could not find her. A group of surviving family members
and neighbors began to search for the toddler. The group heard a small
child crying in a distant field of corn; the searchers followed the cry until
they found her, nearly a quarter of a mile away from where she played just
minutes earlier. She
was scared but alive and well. That child was my mother, Marie Price-Cline.
Carrie Price was eight months pregnant the
day the tornado hit the Price farm. Her husband was severely injured, and
she was frightened and confused. She looked in the direction of the small
home she, her husband and young daughter shared nearby and it was still standing,
seemingly unharmed. She wondered why they fled the small house to go to
the larger one. They thought it would be safer. They were very
wrong.
The patriarch of the family, James D.
Price helped removed his son Henry from the tree. He prepared his wife
for the mortician. Then he left the group to be by himself and with his
thoughts. He lost his wife, and a daughter-in-law that day, plus five
field hands that also had to be prepared for the mortician. When he returned, the farm was busy with
neighbors and others from the area who came to help retrieve what they could
for his family. They also brought food
and drink for the Price family, along with moral support.
My
grandmother, Carrie Price, told me the area looked like a war zone.
Carrie went into shock briefly but understood her new
responsibilities would not allow for such a thing. Her dreams were blown
away along with the Price house and its contents. On the 23rd of June, Carrie
gave birth to her second daughter, Beulah Virginia Price. Her husband saw
her briefly before he sure come to infection caused by his injuries. He
died June 25, 1916.
My
Mother was always terrified of storms of any kind. Is it any wonder? The
wind took more than her father and grandmother in 1916; it took her feeling of security
for most of her life; it also made a widow of twenty-two-year-old Carrie Price. The
thought of the loss of her husband and the unknown future without him to help her
raise two babies overwhelmed her for months. Nothing would ever be the same again.
What would she do?
No comments:
Post a Comment