XENIA, Ohio - There are few physical reminders of the day 40 years ago when cars blew away, trees splintered, houses vanished and this small western Ohio town became synonymous with tornadoes.

XENIA, Ohio � There are few physical reminders of the day 40 years ago when cars blew away, trees splintered, houses vanished and this small western Ohio town became synonymous with tornadoes.

A small memorial outside Xenia City Hall bears the names of the 32 people killed in the tornado.

A display in the Greene County Historical Society includes a broken golf club; a twisted street sign; and a school clock frozen at 4:39 p.m., the moment the tornado hit it.

And the �Xenia Lives� message, which was placed on T-shirts and bumper stickers after the F5 tornado ripped through the center of town 40 years ago today, is again on signs in a number of windows and government buildings to commemorate the anniversary.

The storm, which came without warning, was one of 148 that swept across several states on April 3-4, 1974, killing more than 330 people in a 16-hour period. It was among the largest outbreaks in U.S. history.

Xenia was hit hardest.

Catherine Wilson, who was 9 years old then, remembers watching the sky.

�The clouds started to pile up,� Wilson, 49, said last week. �And all the birds flew away. And it got really, really quiet.�

When the sky turned a sickly green, she asked her mother if a tornado was going to hit.

Wilson said her mother told her it was only a spring shower. �I think she didn�t want to scare us.�

Then she took Wilson and her younger sister inside and put them in the bathtub. When the tornado hit their house, their mother shielded them.

�I thought it sounded like a jet plane. It was like a deep sigh, but with the wind and all the glass breaking in all the windows, and all the doors slammed shut.�

They screamed prayers at the top of their lungs: �Lord, make this stop, keep us safe!� Then it stopped.

She looked up from the tub and saw blue sky. �On the floor was a purple washcloth that wasn�t ours.�

Wilson, the county historical society�s director, noted that Xenia is Greek for �hospitality to strangers.� At the same time, she said, the Shawnee called it the �place of the devil winds.�

Jim Langan was a young Xenia firefighter when the tornado hit. He said he sprang to work and didn�t stop for three days.

�Running entirely on adrenaline,� said Langan, who dug people out from the rubble, shut off natural-gas lines and extinguished small fires.

One young woman, he recalled, wouldn�t leave her car.

�It was just a plain panic,� said Langan, now 68. �She had a death grip on the steering wheel."

Robert D. Stewart, now 83, was Xenia city manager when the storm struck. It was his wedding anniversary.

He was in his city hall office when he learned that a tornado had touched down south of town. He had time only to call his wife and make sure she was safe before he went to work setting up relief efforts.

He recalled doors crashing and windows rattling. Across the street, an entire city block had been leveled.

Stewart set up an emergency operations center, where his staff worked around the clock to clear roads and coordinate government help.

They used Air Force-supplied aerial photographs to prioritize aid from state and federal agencies.

About 1,200 houses � most built on concrete slabs � were heavily damaged or destroyed, and more than 1,000 people were injured.

�When they rebuilt, if they did, I don�t think they put in basements,� Stewart said. �I don�t know why. It was probably a matter of expense.�

It took another tornado � this one in 2000 � for the city to adopt laws requiring that landscape rocks be larger than 4 inches, �so that they don�t become missiles,� said Brian Forschner, Xenia city planner. Hurricane straps and more nails also are required to secure roofs to new houses.

But neither would have saved Dennis and Mary Ann Louderback�s house in 1974.

Mr. Louderback was at the Thornville grocery, where he worked. His wife carried their then 2-year-old daughter, Mindy, to a neighbor�s house, where they stood on the front porch.

He raced home along Rt. 42, roughly following the storm track along the way. There he met his wife at what was left of their house � a concrete slab.

�It�s taken 40 years to kind of forget,� Mr. Louderback said. �I don�t want to commemorate something so awful.�

Jim Wisecup was 8 and saw excitement, not danger, in the blackened sky that day in 1974.

The storm had already ravaged Xenia and was bearing down on his eastern Green County house 10 miles away. He watched from a basement window.

Four of the family�s 20 coon hounds disappeared. So did three distant relatives who lived nearby.

�The dogs, houses, everything was gone,� he said.

Today, he tells his three children to take every storm warning seriously.

�You really don�t want to be nosing around,� he said. �By the time you see it, it may be too late.�

dnarciso@dispatch.com

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