McComb, MS Tornado, Jan 1975

I was surprised to find some in info on this destructive disater and i was so pleased to be able to share this info to my fellow co-workers. you see i was 6 yrs of age when this monster of tornado occured and i had just gotten on the school bus for i was a resident of mccomb miss. at the time. i am now 40 yrs of age and often think about that horrible morning when it happen. where can i find more photos of that tornado?

Frank
i would suggest trying to contact the local newspaper, or library . You may have some luck that way ..
Good hunting
Stu

Researched and Transcribed by Stu Beitler. Thank you, Stu!

I have seen a book related to that tornado. I don't know of anyone that might have it except Bobby Nelson who is my neighbor. I live in the Ruth community and have heard a lot of stories about that tornado. The woman and child lived about 2 miles from where I live. My mother told me about that day. She was on her way to that woman's house for a hair cut that morning and her car ran out of gas.

I have 17 pics that I shot on that fateful morning and afterward. I was staying out of school that year to make money to go to Ole Miss by working for the State Highway Dept. We were preparing to leave the project office about 8:20 a.m. that morning and noticed a blue/black wall of weather proceeding from the SW to the NE with all kinds of debris coming out of the top. It did not appear as a funnel cloud from our vantage point. Being part of Rescue Operations with Pike County Civil Defense/Emergency Management, I immediately responded to the areas hit. Over the next couple of days, I shot these pics. Some of them are now being used as part of SkyWarn Spotter training in the South Mississippi and Louisiana areas.

I remember my mom telling me about it as a little girl.... She was about 18 when it happened. I also remember some family friends of ours who went to North Pike and were injured during the tornado. One of them was hit in the head with a beam and another was hit in the leg. I have seen pictures from the tornado and from the pictures I remember there was a store called Rose's or Rosie's that was torn up and was never rebuilt in that shopping area. Elvis did a charity concert and they reran the pictures in the Enterprise Journal (the office is on Oliver Emmerich Dr.[Just off Delaware Ext.]) for that story I think...

I was a young English teacher at McComb High School when the tornado hit. The day was much too warm for January, and the day was dark and breezy even as we began classes at 8; we knew there was a severe thunderstorm warning in effect but no mention of a tornado. My room faced the standard tall flagpole, and my students and I watched with horror its sudden bending to half its height as ferocious wind gusts hit it. I took the class to the hall, but the tornado had already passed behind the high school. It traveled past the junior high two blocks away but hit Otken Elementary, a modern building only a few years old, which housed the 2nd grade at the time. The last bus had just unloaded its students, most of whom had gone into the building. One little straggler was snatched inside a classroom just as the tornado hit; the teacher, a friend of mine, fell on top of him and saved him from the bricks that broke her back (she did recover). Because the school had had tornado practice drills the week before, not one child or adult was lost, but the school was so damaged that even the steel supports for the columns were twisted like pretzels. Otken had to be demolished. Because of the massive destruction, students had to be held in their schools all day: lines were down, trees blocked streets; school buses had been destroyed or could not travel through the mountains of debris. To top it off, we did not know to what we would be releasing our students -- whether they still had homes, whether their parents were all right. Two things I will never forget: having to keep two brothers in my class all day, until a family member could come for them, without our telling them that we had learned from the police that their father, asleep after a night shift, had been killed when the top story of their apartment building had been completely destroyed, and being forced to stay there myself unable to leave to find my own two little boys, in two different places, without any way to find out if they were safe or not.
I can still tell you exactly what time that classroom clock stopped on, and I can tell you that tornado weather still makes me one jumpy, tense human!

There is a book on the Jan 10 McComb tornado called a day to remember a day to forget. I have it and it is at the McComb Library. I was also 6 at the time of the tornado.

Where could I see your photos. I was a 5th grader living in McComb, My mom, Ms Dawn Libby, now 85, taught school in McComb at the time at Higgins.

Good description. We lived at 518 Missouri Ave. at the time. My mom, Ms. Dawn Libby was teaching school at Higgins. I was at Universal (5th Grade). I had just finished doing a research project on tornadoes for Betty Brumfield and Ben Weathersby at Netterville School (Gifted and Talented Program), It included a slide show with vivid pictures of twisters hovering over dusty towns like Witchita or Oklahoma City. I had sat on the steps of Netterville after school talking with Ben Weathersby (who later opened Ben's Wood Heat). I told Ben, "this town is boring. What we need is a good Tornado. Or at least a bowling alley." That was on January 9th, 1975 about 3:15 in the afternoon. The next morning, January 10th, 1975 just after 8AM....We were running late to school when outside I saw the dark sky and the proverbial sound of a a train mixed with a jet engine. Elvis Presley came to town to sing a benefit concert at McComb High School as he himself survived a tornado as a child in Tupelo. Mama would not let us go as she thought Elvis was "a bad influence." After all, Major Bowles talent hour had not let him on because of his suggestive hip gyrations. We got, as I recall, the bowling alley the next year. Ben remembers this story to this day.-- Andy Libby lives in Hollywood, CA, where he is co-writer of LAs Longest-Running Play.