Terrible Tuesday Revisted

   I couldn't let this day go by without mentioning that today is a dubious anniversary. It's not a day I celebrate but simply remember with a profound humbleness and some sadness too. It is hard for me to believe this is the 30th anniversary of the Lawton-Wichita Falls tornadoes. If you were there you understand. It was a day I will never forget. I have run into several survivors over the years and the one thing we all have in common is that we all remember the most minute details of portions of that day.
  My friend Dane Daniel reminded me of that this morning on Facebook about the impact that day had on all of us. He was there too. He understands.
   As for me, I had just taken over the Operations Manager duties of KLAW radio. The station had changed formats from Rock/Disco/Whatever it was to country music less than ten days prior. When the management changed format, the entire staff walked out...quit...vanished. I got hired to clean up the mess. I inherited a radio operation with one full time DJ and several part time high school kids. That was my air staff. Fortunately, I brought a trusted friend and co-worker, Al Smith with me from my previous operation at KSEY in Seymour, TX. He was a rock. We worked well together for many years.
  We both settled into our new duties and began to make changes to the operation that would enable our success in the months and years to come. One of the things that needed addressing was the station van. With the format change,it was obvious the van needed a whole new paint scheme. So one of the first things we did was take it to a paint & body shop to get a new design. I went by the shop on the morning of April 10th, '79 with plans of picking up the van.  After inspecting the new paint job we debated about leaving the van there for another couple of days because if you looked very very closely, there were a couple of tell tail signs of the previous paint scheme under the new one. We almost left the van there but finally decided that it really wasn't worth the hassle. I drove the van back to the radio station and parked it.
  That whole day the weather was cloudy, very very humid and at times there was almost a fog during the day and visibility was diminished.  It was after 3pm when we got our first indications of the trouble to come. Richard Adkins at the Civil Defense Unit which happened to be right across the street from  the radio station notified everyone in the media via a hot line installed at all the media outlets. Our first indication of bad weather was him telling us about a tornado that had just torn up Vernon, TX; killing 11 or 12 people. What I remember about that was that one of the fatalities was child who was supposedly a decendent of the famous indian Quanah Parker. Vernon is about 85 miles to our SW.
  From that moment on, Adkins did a wonderful job of keeping us informed and up to date about the progress of the storm. Understand weather technology such as radar was still just coming on the media scene and was not widely available. I'm sure most of the information we got that day came from the fabulous network of mobile storm spotters stationed throughout the area.
  After the second or third phone call on the hot line, I had enough information to begin to make some informed decisions about what we needed to be doing to begin to prepare for what was coming our way. I walked into our closet sized newsroom on the third floor of the Security Bank Building. On the wall was a map of OK. It showed enough of Texas that I could draw a straight line from Vernon to Lawton. Doing a little 4th grade math I figured that if the storm continued on the present course and the current rate, I determined we would get hit by the storm at or about 4:50 or 5 o'clock.
  It was just before straight up 5 o'clock when Richard Adkins made his final phone call to tell us that the tornado was going to come into the SW area of the city and exit out the east side of town. I walked over to Al Smith who was on the air at the time and I tapped him on the shoulder and said, "This is it."
He faded the song down and he cracked the microphone open for me and I spoke.
  I began, "Ladies & gentlemen, we have just been informed by Richard Adkins at Civil Defense & Preparedness that we have a tornado on the ground and it will enter the city within 10 minutes. You need to go to a place of safety. This is not a drill. Do not panic but you do need to take some positive action right now. If you are in a mobile home, you need to get to a more secure location. If you have a storm cellar, now is the time to get to it...." There was more but you get the picture.
  I moved the office staff and some others into the stairwell between floors. Al & I stayed in or near the control room. I do recall us moving around the office some. In fact at one point I remember leaning out of the window looking for the tornado. Yes, that was totally stupid. Fact is, if we had looked out of the General Manager's office window, we would have seen it as it passed not 6 blocks from us. It passed just south of Central Mall which was being built at the time. If I recall some of the roof collapsed where JC Penny was being built.
   The tornado hit us at about 5:05. At that very moment, unknown to us another tornado was just getting cranked up in Seymour, TX about 52 miles SW of Wichita Falls. This storm would build and work it's way up Highway 277/82 and would explode over Wichita Falls as a killing monster. This tornado would expand to a half mile wide and would destroy everything in its path for at least 6 miles. 20,000 people became instantly homeless in ten minutes...some 20% off the city of roughly 100,000.
  I believe the Lawton tornado made the national news at 6pm. Nobody talked about Lawton after that. What happened in Lawton was dwarfed by everything that happened in Wichita Falls. For me it was a physical experience to see what happened in both places. Tornadoes have a way of taking life out of context. You see things tossed together that your mind finds almost impossible to put together. I actually saw blades of straw driven into a fence post at 90 degree angles. The WF storm finally played itself out near Waurika, OK as I recall. The paint & body shop where I picked up the van not 7 hours earlier was gone...nothing left but a bathroom and a cement slab. The 3 men who survived in the bathroom recounted how they heard us on the radio telling them to take cover. They we saved their lives. When I read their story in the Lawton Constitution the next day, the hair came up on my arms. We made a difference. it mattered that I was there.
  I could go on for several hours about that day. I still think of the people who lost their lives that day in Vernon, Lawton and Wichita Falls. Those of us who were there remember. I remember parts of that day as if it was yesterday. Thank you for letting me ramble on this 30th anniversary of an important day in my life. That one day had the biggest and most profound impact on my professional career--more than any other day of my 31 years in the business. That one day made me realize that what I did for a living really mattered. That single day colored the way I did my job and approached my career from that day forward.  If you were there, I'd love to hear from you.