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Eye of the Storm

Principal, students huddled in school

XENIA | The birds alerted him; they were flying in circles.

Central Junior High School Principal Bob Williams had driven just 100 feet when the unusual flight of the birds caught his attention. The former science teacher parked his 1972 green Thunderbird in an alley near the school and hurried back inside.

"I thought, birds fly in the eye of a storm where it's sunny and calm. They get caught in the center," he said.

On April 3, 1974, just before 4:40 p.m., most of Central's students had left for the day. Williams knew a few, just returned from track practice, lingered in the three-story building on Church Street, where the Golden Age Senior Center now stands.

"They had come in earlier and said there was a tornado warning. I told them to get their things and get home."

Williams, too, was anxious to get home to his wife Ann, then eight months pregnant.

There wasn't time. Williams herded about six students and a coach onto the steps that led to the boiler room, located half underground.

"I looked up and there was a skylight right above us. I'd been down in the boiler room many times and never realized it was there," Williams said. "I thought, we need to get away from that window, but I knew there was gas in the boiler room."

Williams decided to move the group into a hallway. When he opened the door, two people, about 20 years old, clad in bright orange vests bearing the Civil Defense emblem were standing there. He remembers their warning.

Get down and pray.

"Through the grace of God, we stayed behind that door," Williams said.

Moments later, bits of plaster pummelled them. Williams sat with his face tucked between his legs and his hands laced behind his head.

Outside, Central's assistant principal, Norwood E. Golden, also sought shelter. He had been walking toward his car when the darkening sky, booming thunder and fierce winds swathed the school.

"I watched the wind peel shingles off the Masonic Temple and pull a tree slowly out of the ground," Golden said.

He took refuge in a concrete stairwell and used a 3.5-foot-by-4-foot piece of sheet metal — blown into the school yard by the wind — to shield himself from flying debris. An adult and teenager joined him under the makeshift shelter.

"I was worried bricks (from Central's upper floors) would bury us," he said.

The tornado's path of destruction, that included Central, was 4 1/2 miles long and almost three-fourths of a mile wide.

Williams said he did not hear the freight train-like roar described by many. The incessant rattle of venetian blinds marked the passage of the storm through the school. When the clatter ceased, Williams found windows blown out and hallways littered with debris.

"I don't know how those two young people came to be there to stop me from taking the kids out of the stairway. Had I done that, there would have been a much greater probability of injury," Williams said.

In the chaos after the storm, the two who convinced Williams to stay behind the boiler room door, disappeared.

"I've not found anyone who knew the civil defense had been activated," Williams said. "For every person who lost their life in the tornado, there are probably 100 who through some miraculous event, their lives were spared."

The Central building stood for two years, but could never again be used as a school.

"Everybody said it should be torn down, but the insurance company," Williams said.

Golden, too, escaped unharmed though he would later learn his Arrowhead home had been destroyed.

"The revelation of the magnitude of the tornado's effect were astonishing to me," he said.

Golden still has the piece of sheet metal that shielded him from debris that terrible day.

"I don't know why, but I just couldn't get rid of it," he said.

Contact Joanne Huist Smith at 225-2362.

On television

Thirty years ago Saturday, a tornado hit Xenia, destroying buildings and taking lives. April 2 we'll hear from one survivor and the effect it had on his life. The story on Newscenter 7, beginning at 5.