Former O’Tuck Students Reflect On 1942 Tornado

By David Howell

Editor

O’TUCKOLOFA – The former O’Tuckolofa School students ranged in age from 81 to 95 and numbered eight at Saturday’s annual school reunion. Their life-long connection is a long-gone country school blown away by a deadly tornado on March 16, 1942.

Their reunion has been held on the second Saturday in August at O’Tuckolofa Church for decades and the memories of the tornado and its aftermath are ever-present. But this year marked the 75th year since the storm, a milestone as the group gets smaller and smaller. 

The tornado was part of a deadly, late-winter outbreak recorded across the southeast on March 16 and 17, 1942. By some accounts, the outbreak is considered the fifth-most widespread in terms of violent tornadoes in the nation, killing 153 people and injuring at least 1,284 in seven different states during the two-day period.

In Mississippi, the March 16 tornadoes were blamed for 85 deaths. Sixteen of those fatalities were in Yalobusha County as the storm flattened an estimated 10 square miles injuring dozens, destroying 63 homes, damaging 56 homes and sweeping away more than 100 barns, cribs and other outbuildings. 

One of those fatalities was the school’s superintendent, E.V. Ferrell, who was holding his five-month old twin daughter when the storm struck, killing both of them.  His wife, Marilyn Ferrell and other twin daughter survived the storm.

“He told the teachers to tell us to get out of the building,” Kenneth Mixon recalled about that long-ago afternoon and the death of his first superintendent as he was nearing completion of the first grade. 

“The buses were waiting outside. I learned today that the buses were here (early) because Camp Ground School had let out early because the storm was coming. Two o’clock,” Mixon added. 

O’Tuckolofa School only went up to the eighth grade and the older kids were bused to Camp Ground School . And, as Mixon explained, the buses returned early that day from Camp Ground because of the ominous skies. 

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Later in the conversation the group estimated there were over 100 students attending the eight grades at the school who were dismissed early by the superintendent before the storm hit.

“It was a bunch of us because when we got out for recess, that hill would be covered over,” Mixon added, pointing to the hill after part of the group visited the site of the old school, located directly across Hwy. 315 from O’Tuckolofa Church on property owned by Sammie Sutherland and Tim Sutherland.

The only remnant of the school are a set of steps that led to the school, but the visit brought back memories. 

“I was looking for the tree out there where I used to hide because all of the children called me ‘Cotton Top.’ I went running and hid behind a tree and cried,” Flora (Raley) Mills recalled as the stories flowed.

Mixon recalled a new book satchel he left behind in the school, just like he was instructed when they were told to make a hasty exit.

“I thought a lot of it,” Mixon added. “They found my book satchel and it was not torn up.” 

“It was in a field, past Hawkins Crossing,” Mills added. “That was about five miles from here.”

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Mixon lived across the bottom and was among students who left on one of the school buses before the storm hit. He escaped unscathed but Del (Barber) Aven wasn’t as lucky.

Aven lived with her family just across the road from the schoolhouse and rode out the storm in her father’s store. 

“Eight of us were in the store,” Aven said.  “My daddy hollered and said ‘get on the floor.’ Of course my grandmother and granddaddy were praying.”

The store lifted up and everything came crashing down.

“There was molasses everywhere,” Aven said. Her injuries included crushed ribs, a broken collar bone and a punctured lung and she spent months recovering in a Memphis hospital, missing the next year of school. 

“We lived out here a while after the storm but then we moved to Water Valley. My daddy became the sheriff, Forrest Barber,” Aven continued. 

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Like Mixon, Majorie (Edwards) Reid also counts herself fortunate. She was in the 10th grade, one of the older students bused home from the high school Camp Ground school before the storm hit.

She made it home and hunkered down. 

“We got in our storm house at home. My dad had made it. We were okay and the house didn’t get hurt. But the school all went, it was bad,” Reid recalled. 

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The stories continued as another former O’Tuckolofa student, Dennis McMinn, shared his input.

“I think about that day and how Mr. Ferrell let us out early,” McMinn recalled when he was a fifth grade student at the store. 

He traced the route they left that afternoon, past Newsom’s store, over to Delay Road and then to the home of Fern and Robert  Ward near town. 

 “All of us tried to get in her storm house. The storm got a little bit off of of their house We didn’t know all of this happened over here until the next morning. We didn’t have any communications, the radio was out,” McMinn said.

The next morning they loaded up in a 1936 Ford truck and came to the school to survey the damage.

“It wasn’t anything left but the floor of the school. It was a terrible, terrible day, I never will forget it. Some of our friends got hurt,” McMinn continued. “Mr. Ferrell was smart enough to let us out of school, maybe 30 minutes or an hour before that thing hit. That is just amazing.”

Ironically McMinn said it was the second time his family had faced the wrath of a storm, the first being before he was born when his parents lived near Jumper’s Chapel Road.

“They were always scared of storms, and this one did not help any. We moved a lot back in those days, it was hard times. When we moved to a new place, the first thing my daddy would do it build a storm house. Every place we ever went, we had a good storm house,” McMinn said.

For many of the students, the disaster affected their lives for years to come. When school cranked back up in the fall of 1942, they were dispersed to different schools in the county including Water Valley and Jeff Davis.

And over 75 years later as the reunion came to a close on Saturday, organizer Lisa Bollinger  read the names of the victims killed in the storm who were listed in the Herald’s March 19 edition, printed days after the storm:

W.B. Williams, 67

Patsy Joe Williams, 5

Tommy Andrew Williams, 3

E.V. Ferrell, 36

Carolyn Ferrell, 5 months

Thomas Van Winkle, 32

Mrs. Louise Maynor, 27

Robt. Hilliard, 65

Pomp Hilliard, 70 

Mollie McGraw, 75

Jim Jeffries, 40

Kate Mae Smith, 6

Geneva Smith, 8

Wife of Frank Harper, 35

Harper child, 10

The final fatality was recorded in the next edition of the Herald, March 26, 1942, with the death of Daniel Meadows, who died at a local hospital several days after the storm.