We lined up along the first floor hallway and complained about being awakened at 4 in the morning. Approximately 10 minutes later, we began to hear thunder. The lights flickered three times. Right when they went out, we heard the roar. All I heard was someone yell, "Get down!" That didn’t need to be said, because when I looked down the hall, heads were going down in succession. Everyone went completely flat against the floor, (lying) like interlocking puzzle pieces.

     The tornado didn’t sound like a freight train. It sounded like a bowling alley, because you heard crashing. It was a giant roar with things crashing against each other. Afterward, (no one) said a word.

     Once the tornado had passed, there was this eerie change of air. It felt like all of the air was being sucked out of the hallway, and it got cooler. Then the fire alarm went off. We had to stuff blankets into the airhorns to deaden the sound.

     For 45 minutes after the tornado hit, we didn’t know what had happened or if there were going to be more. Then it turned into somewhat of a nervous party atmosphere. Someone had a battery-operated radio and turned it on. We were trying to find a local station to find out what was going on, but all we could find was music. So, somebody turned up the music, and a couple of people started dancing with the fire alarms still going off. At this point, there was a "snowstorm mindset." People were thinking in terms of "Hey, classes are going to be cancelled!"

     At about 6:30 a.m., they let us outside. Dr. (Sal) Rinella and his wife were at the door to make sure we were OK. We had to wade through a tree lodged in the doorway, and that’s when I understood the damage. I saw the cars in the parking lot, looking like they had just played leap frog, and I knew that my car was alone in the faculty parking lot. I saw it in the distance—my little red car sitting uphill next to Harned Hall. And in my optimistic mind, I thought, it could be OK. But as I walked closer, I could tell it wasn’t.

     When we made it into the campus, we went to the center where the Green Man (The Sentinel) stands. All you could see was the Green Man’s head above the fallen sycamores. Someone yelled, "The Green Man abides!" And people started cheering about that, because they were looking for some semblance of what we remembered of the campus. That’s when the party atmosphere changed completely. One person said, "The tornado’s not cool anymore."

     Losing Harvill (Hall) is like losing a family or community. I was like a big brother there, and people still come to me to talk about how much they miss Harvill. In some ways, it’s been as traumatic for them to be separated as it was to have gone through the tornado.

     But I still see people from Harvill running across campus to ask each other, "Where are you now? How are you doing? There will always be a bond there."

Reprinted by permission of "Our City" and Rebecca Mackey (’96).