I was a senior in High School at the time. Sitting at our kitchen window I saw half the roof of a new tobacco blow over our house. We had two new tobacco barns. One was full of tobacco and it was flipped. The other was destroyed. Five barns(years older) remained standing.
Nancy Coley Edwards class of ‘55.
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I think I was a Senior that year, the wind hit our home and it was just vibrating, the whole house shook from top to bottom I thought for sure it was a goner , my sister Kathie was much younger and was terrified at the whole thing--and of course I was not sure myself that we would survive!
I would not want to go through such an event ever again!
Wayne Morris
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Hurricane Hazel passed directly over our house - I was 12 years old. I was at school that day and they sent every body home before lunch and the hurricane arrived that mid-afternoon. When the eye of the Hurricane came over the wind stopped blowing, the sum came out and the birds started singing. We thought the storm had passed because we had no electricity; so no radio and I don't think we had a telephone yet. I remember walking under a large oak tree in our front yard, with the sun shinning, and I got wet from the water still falling from the leaves.
Daddy said “lets ride around the farm and check for damage”; so, daddy, mother and I got in the truck and we were inside Stanley Moore's appliance store at Red Oak when the backside hit. The wind was blowing in the opposite direction and I saw it blow over a large oak tree in front of the store. I can still see the tree roots popping up out of the ground as it went over!!
On the way home daddy and I had to pull some tree branches off the highway and at home we discovered it had blown down our Chaney-ball (china-berry) tree and had blown a ceiling man-hole cover on top of our kitchen table. I think Hazel blew down all the Chaney-ball and weeping willow trees in Nash County.
The over-flow pipe at our fish pond could not handle the water and water was running around the dam. The dam was designed this way to keep the dam from busting. Hundreds of bream and bass fish were being washed out into the pasture beside the pond. The hogs were eating the live fish as fast as possible.
Michael May '61
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I remember the wind and the rain. Daddy was afraid the oak tree and pecan trees would come down on the house. He took us to the lunchroom at Red Oak School, which was located in the basement. We saw tin ripped off the roof of a house and wrapped around a truck. During the eye we went back home. Uncle Russ’s front porch was gone. We had limbs down in the yard and tin lifted up on buildings. The grape vine was rolled up like a jelly roll on its frame. We went back to the lunchroom for 2nd part of storm. When we returned home, the grapevine was rolled up like a jelly roll in the opposite direction. I was young but I have never forgotten Hurricane Hazel.
Carol Edwards Williford
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Hurricane Hazel was probably the most thrilling experience of my young life. It was most unusual for a hurricane in that the wind and the rain were separate. Torrential rain fell the night before the arrival of the big wind during the day. While lots of people were taking refuge in the school building, the most substantial structure in the community, I was able to go out onto the ball field at the height of the storm and try to fall down into the wind, and it couldn't be done, all the time staying completely dry because there was no rain.
On one of my forays I went back to check on our house, which stood between the school and the Baptist Church, entering the front door and proceeding to the back porch, which was screened in. Just as I got to the back porch, the chicken house that stood beside the chaneyball tree* across the road came rolling right for me, and I beat a hasty retreat into the house.
Just like Michael's daddy, ours got faked out by the eye of the storm. I remember walking almost up to TB Faulkner's house, exploring the damage and noticing, curiously, that there were clouds on the horizon no matter which direction you looked, but if you looked up, the sky was cloudless. When I got back to the house, Daddy suggested that we drive over to the county school office in Nashville and report on the damage, and Joseph and I got in the car with him. As we were waiting in the car for his return from the office in Nashiville, the wind began to pick back up. When Daddy got back to the car, we were pretty eager to get back home. The wind was coming from the left of us as we proceeded down the road, and blowing ever harder. Before we got to the Wells' house, we were blocked by the roof of a tobacco barn, rafters and all, that had blown into the road. The three of us got out of the car to push it out of our path, but the hurricane did it for us. A gust of wind got under it, picking it up high into the air and depositing it quite a distance away in the field to our right. Then we drove home without further incident.
* What we all knew as a chaneyball tree is apparently officially a chinaberry tree. At least that's what this web site says. I have no fondness for them, because we knew the one beside the chicken house as the "switch tree." That's where our dear, sweet mother harvested switches to use for our punishment--always richly deserved, of course. Sometimes, adding insult to injury, we had to harvest our own switches as in, "Go get me a switch." I remember one year a flock of colorful migratory cedar waxwings alighted in that tree. Actually, what we called chaneyball trees might have been small-leafed privets. Small plants with the same leaves and made-for-switch branches infest the perimeter of our property in Northern Virginia, and the naturalist at the local park identifiied them as a smalled-leaf privet. Like the chinaberry, it is an invasive species. Wouldn't you know?
Gary David Martin '61