TODAY THE ANNIVERSARY OF DEADLIEST TORNADO

Ellington farmer Sam Flowers was the first to die in the black storm of the nation's deadliest tornado 75 years ago today.

Before it was over, the tornado, more than a mile wide at times, howled across parts of Missouri, Illinois and Indiana in 3 1/2 hours, killing 695 people. It wiped out four towns, devastated others and injured some 2,000 people.

Flowers was walking home on gravel Highway 21 when the tornado touched down just north of Ellington around 1 p.m. on March 18, 1925, and began its deadly journey.

The massive tornado killed 11 people and injured hundreds in Southeast Missouri. The human toll in Illinois and Indiana was catastrophic. It killed hundreds in Illinois and at least 71 in Indiana.

"It was so big, it was so nasty. It just looked like a cloud eating the ground as it went along," said Joseph Schaefer, director of the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.

After the twister crossed the Mississippi River and entered Illinois, it obliterated the small town of Gorham, killing 34.

Over a 40-minute span, it killed 541 people as it ripped through Murphysboro, De Soto and West Frankfort. In Murphysboro alone, 234 people were killed.

More than 600 people were dead by the time the storm, packing 300 mph winds, crossed into Indiana. The tornado demolished the town of Griffin, churned up 45 farms and destroyed much of Princeton.

Property damage along the path of the storm totaled about $16.5 million.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch described the tornado in its March 20, 1925 edition. "The heavens seemed to open, pouring down a flood. The day grew black.... Then the air was filled with 10,000 things. Boards, poles, cans, garments, stoves, whole sides of the little frame houses, in some cases the houses themselves, were picked up and smashed to earth. And living beings, too."

Central Missouri State University writing instructor and author Matt Chaney has written about the tornado.

"It is regarded as kind of a classic tornado," he said. "It is legendary among scientists."

Chaney researched the tornado's path through Reynolds, Iron, Madison, Bollinger and Perry counties in Missouri.

His book, "Legends in Missouri," includes a chapter on the 1925 Tri-State Tornado.

In Missouri, the hardest-hit communities were the mining towns of Annapolis and Leadanna in Iron County, and Biehle in Perry County.

Farms, homes and forests were reduced to ruins in a straight track from the Current River to the Mississippi River.

Several grade schools were destroyed. At Conrad School in Bollinger County, 17 students and their teacher were blown from the splintered structure. Some were seriously injured, but none died.

At Garner School near Lixville, 10-year-old Trula Henry was fatally injured, dying a week later at a Cape Girardeau hospital.

Biehle area farmer Joe Blechle managed to reach his house just as the tornado hit. The tornado picked up the house and threw it 75 feet into a creek, killing Blechle.

Chaney said people in the path of the storm didn't realize it was a tornado until it was almost upon them.

"It was like a huge column of very black smoke," said Chaney. "It was just a wicked, sinister storm.

"It was a cloak and dagger storm," said Chaney, who has talked to a number of survivors. "You didn't know what was there."

Chaney said the tornado strafed the town of Biehle with flying livestock and timber and hit a Catholic church there. "The steeple was ripped out and stabbed into the ground seven feet deep," Chaney said.

North of Altenburg, the tornado picked up a two-story country school house, carried it over treetops and dropped it in a ravine. Miraculously, no one in the school was killed.

Edmund Weber was one of the schoolchildren. He lives near where the school once stood.

Weber said he was 9 years old when the storm struck. The tornado picked up Weber and dropped him and a classmate in the road. Their fellow classmates ended up in the ravine.

Weber remembers the blowing wind. "In those days, we just didn't know nothing about it," Weber said of tornadoes.

Angela Atkins of Fairfield, Ill., is writing a book on the horrific tornado.

A newspaper reporter, Atkins' interest was sparked by a newspaper article she wrote on the Tri-State Tornado.

Last July, she began researching the topic. A single mother with three children, Atkins took her children with her when she visited Ellington to begin tracing the tornado's destructive path.

History professor Dr. Frank Nickell became interested in her work. Nickell directs Southeast Missouri State University's Center for Regional History, which plans to publish Atkins' book later this year.

Atkins' research led her to interview 47 survivors. Their statements indicate that the tornado had three vortexes within a larger funnel cloud, essentially three little tornadoes inside the mammoth tornado.

Atkins said that accounts for "the hideous amount of destruction" in the tri-state region.

Many of the survivors thought the world had ended, Atkins said.

The survivors she has talked with ranged in age from 4 to 20 years of age at the time of the tornado. Today, they are in their mid-80s, on average.

Atkins said she wanted to write the book partly to preserve the stories of the survivors before they died.

The storm changed the face of the region forever. "The Great Depression followed and some of the communities never recovered," she said.

Gravestones in some of the region's cemeteries are reminders of the terrible tornado.

Atkins hopes to use some of the money from the sale of her book to have the stones restored.

"I want people to remember this date like it is etched in those stones," she said. "People have got to remember this storm."

Some information for this story was provided by The Associated Press.

EVENTS MARKING 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF TRI-STATE TORNADO

Today, from 1-3 p.m., the National Weather Service will mark the 75th anniversary of the 1925 Tri-State Tornado with a ceremony at the Murphysboro (Ill.) Middle School, 2125 Spruce Street. A number of survivors have been invited to attend. Event is open to the public

Sunday, at 2 p.m., Missouri author Matt Chaney will discuss the Tri-State Tornado at the Marble Hill Senior Citizens Nutritional Center, 503 Third Street. Survivors of the tornado and their families are urged to attend the open discussion. The event is sponsored by the Bollinger County Historical Society and is open to the public.