The sirens went off right about the time the local Weather came on and broadcasted that a tornado was confirmed on the ground at Memorial Stadium, headed in the direction of our house. My dad (a police officer), brother and I went outside and looked in the direction towards the stadium and saw it. A massive cloud that took up the entire horizon with a cylindrical mass to the ground. It was not shaped like a funnel at all. It was maybe 2 miles away at this time. We could see large pieces of debris in the air and the roof tops of houses hundreds of feet in the air spinning like leaves. Dad looked at me and said, "Get your keys and your Mother". My car was at the end of the driveway, had everyone blocked. In less than 30 seconds we were in the car hauling [censored]. My brother and I were in the back of my 2 door Buick Regal, Dad driving and mom in the front. We headed up McNiel St. towards SW Parkway, made it and hit a left to try and outrun it. There was traffic and Dad was doing all he could to get us out of it. Between McNiel and Rhea Road is when we started getting hit. It sounded like we were getting hit by a hundred shotgun blasts all at once, I looked behind me and to this day get chills thinking about it. The funnel cloud was on the ground, spinning about 200 yards behind us. About 100 yards behind us houses along the drainage ditch houses were going up in the air as if a bomb was hitting them. Houses shredded and flying into the air like the grass clippings I blow off the sidewalk. I'm calling out to Dad the distance, 200 yards Dad, go, go.....my Momn is screaming like a hysterical child, Dad like a laser looking straight ahead and getting us through traffic. Things got really scary at Kemp and SW. Pkwy. it was closer but seemed to take a very slight curve and in a straight line towards Sikes Mall. We nearly got caught up in at at this intersection, electric lines down in front of us sparking as they hit the ground, heavier debris is hitting the car and the windows on the passenger side knocked out, we were down low in the seats and not hit by the glass, a trash dumpster hits the side of the car, some contact with other cars as I saw the roof come off of a furniture store right behind us. From a distance of 100 or so yards I saw buildings, houses, cars flying in the air like toys, all as my car was taking a pounding, the noise was like a roaring wave. We headed out of town, the turn the storm took sent it to Sikes Mall where my brother was in the Movie Theater taking cover, and a friend of mine since the 1st grade lost her life at the other end of the Mall. Five minutes later, we drive back. In the parking lot of K Mart was a liquor store that sat very close to the road. We drove right by it as we neared the intersection where we were nearly stuck. It was flattened, probably a second or two after we got through. We had to park my beat up car a mile from the house and walk the rest of the way. The neighborhood that I grew up in and had seen a few minutes earlier looked like a mile wide dozer path had been through. Houses one block from us, levelled. Ours, in tact with roof damage. Huge trees in the front yard down.

As I recall, four classmates from my highschool lost their lives that day, I can recall the names of three........Had school been in session, the loss of life at the Jr. High I had previously attended would have been numerous. It was totally shredded. My brother that survived the tornado in the mall would be killed in a construction accident two years later on the site of a building destroyed in the tornado.