Angela Mason
On an ordinary Wednesday in the pre-spring days of 1925, folks in the Midwest were going about their business as they usually did: children attending school, farmers preparing the fields, coal miners underground and merchants in their stores, each with their own concerns and cares about their lives and the events in it. Little did they know that between 1 and 4:30 p.m. on March 18, those lives were going to be changed irretrievably and forever in an event that defined the weather in the central U.S. From the hills of the southeastern Ozarks to the plains of the Hoosier heartland and across the developing communities of southern Illinois, the Tri-State Tornado, the most deadly tornadic event on record, destroyed cities, devoured whole farms, and set the record for the most deaths, injuries, and damage monetarily, a record which remains standing to this day. This is the story as told directly by nearly four dozen survivors or those involved in the aftermath of the mighty storm, in the most comprehensive account of the Tri-State Tornado ever to be compiled. Much of it is told through the eyes of children, as many of them were when a killer swept down from the skies and carved a path through the lives of thousands of individuals linked by this singular event.. But more than accounts of what happened in the communities and villages of the nation's heartland on March 18, 1925, this is the story of the resolve and the spirit of the American people, who, with little in the way of organized relief, emerged from this great disaster and pulled together for themselves, their families, their neighbors and complete strangers-many of whom were left with nothing, not even the clothes on their backs-and who left an example of endurance in the face of hardship, and an inspiration for all in the decades to come.
