“WHAT THE TORNADO LEFT…”

By Patricia A. Nell

 

Americus is located in Sumter County an off the tourist area of Southwest Georgia.  It claims Dan Reeves the former coach of the Atlanta Falcons as one of its distinguished alumni although I do not think he has been back there since his high school years and most of us who follow the National Football League Central Division do not think he was an outstanding coach nor cheer for the Falcons.  For the past 5-6 years I have spent varying amounts of time during the winter about 8 miles from the town.  One cannot just train dogs and sometimes it rains allowing for an interest in the heritage and culture of the region to evolve.

 

Georgia is the largest state in land East of the Mississippi River.  It was the last of the Thirteen Colonies to be established prior to the American Revolution and the fourth to sign the Constitution.  As one of the original seven Confederate States it was the last of the eleven to be readmitted to the United States on July 15, 1877.  Like most States it can be divided by politics and economic development.  But Georgia is also divided by its diverse landscape with geographic climate forces that produce areas of different cultures as well as economics.  The Southeast’s lower Atlantic costal plain is sparsely populated and known for its tracts of slash pine and the Okefenokee Swamp.  The upper costal plain of Southwest GA is separated from the lower plain by the Flint River but when driving south of Macon one tends to think of the division being marked by Interstate 75 with its snowbird traffic from the Midwest and heavy truck usage.  The strip, between I 75 and the Flint River, is home to small poverty ridden communities subjected to an inordinate number of calamities with tornados and fires leading the list.  The rest of the southwest costal plain is known for its cotton, peanuts, vegetables and pecan groves.  The more prosperous plantations are located around Thomasville with the area between there and the Florida border home to many of the surviving parabellum homes and secluded estates.

 

Albany and Columbus, home to Fort Benning, are the largest cities in this quadrant.  For anyone who has been to Albany it has retained some of the atmosphere of a southern town but urban renewal has not been kind to the city.  Three of the major industries are the Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, Proctor and Gamble, and a large Miller brewing plant built on the old Turner AF Base site. If you go north on Highway 19 you will enter Lee County a county slowly starting to prosper as the bedroom county to Albany.  Its major town is Leesburg with its new schools, new post office and nice small library.  Strip malls are surely to soon arrive although their financial fate will be determined by the economic development of Albany.

 

Sumter county lies just to the north of Lee county, bordered on the east by the Flint River, to the north by Schley county and to the west by two counties, Webster and Randolph.  Most of the county is heavily tilled until you hit the western counties and from there on it is hills covered with trees, a few scattered trailer homes and few cross roads.  The rare towns are typical old villages that catered to share croppers and now support the lumber industry.  Sumter County was separated from Lee County in 1831 and located the county seat in Americus by 1832.  The post office was established in 1833.  There was ample water in the area for farming, good soil and trees for construction.  A narrow gauge railroad with a connector to Eufula, Alabama, was delivering US mail by 1854.  Rail traffic to Atlanta did not develop until well after the Civil War but railroad traffic East-West from Eufula to Savannaha was available immediately after the war.  Lumber, cotton, and cattle were the major commodities to leave the area.  Cotton continued until the soil was depleted.  Peanut shipments came much later.  Americus was the focal point for development of railroads in southwest Georgia.

 

There is more to the history of the county and Americus than the railroad but the rails were its reason for existing and thriving.  Twelve miles to the northeast along one of the railroad lines is the village of Andersonville and across the road the infamous Civil War prison of the same name.  The railroad made it convenient to bring in prisoners and the prison was built straddling Sweetwater Creek originally a source of clean water.  The prison existed for only 14 months and was designed to hold 10,000 prisoners.  Over 45,000 prisoners arrived of whom 12,912 died.  The Weekly Sumter Republic wrote a chronicle of the prison documenting daily deaths and incoming prison population.  Capt. Henry Wirz, keeper of the prison, was convicted of war crimes and hung November10, 1868.  The site became a National Cemetery July 26, 1865 with graves marked by Clara Barton and ex-prisoner Dorene Atwater.

 

Taking Highway 49 as the route to Andersonville out of Americus you will pass Souther Field established during World War I as a military air-training base.  Charles A. Lindberg took his first solo flight in 1923 from the field.  As a military air training base it was reactivated during World War II and trained over 4000 pilots for the Royal Air Force and US Army Air Force.  Today all that remains of the military and historic past is a few hangers, a statue of Lindberg and a plaque commemorative to the military.

 

To the west of Americus built along the East-West Railroad corridor is Plaines, GA, home of the 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter.  The village is noted for its high school where both the President and his wife, Roselyn, graduated.   The school is now a museum.  The railroad station remains as a tourist attraction and the Carters have maintained a home and ties in the community.  Peanuts are the major crop shipped by rail from the siding as they have been for many years.

 

Americus isn’t much different from many United States cities and towns established around the first half of the 19th century.  They were farming communities and usually located along a railroad line.  The town was surveyed in July 1832 from the cotton yard of the Southwestern Railroad Depot right after Sumter County was split off Lee County.  The first family, Mrs. Sheppard and her sons the Tiners, ran the first house of public entertainment.  By 1846 the census had increased to 177 and by 1854 the Council for the Government of the City was elected.  The year 1854 was a big year for Americus.  The press news was the Southwest Railroad connection to Savannah and the arrival of the first US mail by rail.  The census report published by the Sumter Republic was 405 blacks worth $194,900 as slaves and 744 whites owning real estate valued at $264,895.  Politics were a big issue at the time especially the “No Nothing” party.  This party was strong in the South for several years and dominated the politics of Americus.  Some of its ideology persisted for many years.

 

The Civil War had a profound affect on the county and city with members of almost every family joining one of several units.  Some of the units had colorful names: Sumter Guards, Americus Volunteer Rifles and Zolicoffee Riflemen.  The Muckalee Guards and Sumter Flying Artillery served at Gettysburg while the Sumter Light Guard fought at Chancellorsville and Sharpsburg.  Pensions were few and far between although the need for pensions was discussed well into the 1890s by the leaders of the community.  The last Confederate widow’s pension was paid in Sumter County in 1952.  The number of slaves donated from the county to the Confederacy was not recorded but significant food and money was collected and provided for the Army.  The women of Americus took food and provided medical care to the prisoners at Andersonville.  Because of the railroad lines three hospitals for confederate soldiers were established with one burned in 1864.  Sherman’s Army passed some 30-50 miles North of the county sparing it from the foraging of his troops.  After the war Federal troops were stationed in Americus and left January 23, 1866.  In the two weeks before the troops for provost duty arrived cock fighting was instituted and the word “nigger” was introduced.  On February 8, 1866 the new troops arrived.  They were “colored troops”.   Ku Klux Klan recruitment flourished as did a hatred of anything Federal.  The newspaper kept track of lynchings and one case of an individual being “tared and feathered” for marrying an ex-slave.

 

There are parallels to the novel Down Town written by Ferrol Sams about people in Fayette County just south of Atlanta and the people who built Americus as incorporated in the book, A History of Sumter County Georgia, edited by James F. Cox.  Down Town was also a farming community until suburbia exploded at the end of the 20th Century and it became according to novelist Sams very diverse and tolerant.  Americus has attempted to change but this quotation from the introduction to the Cox history published in 1983 lingers on: “The history was written by those young men who gallantly fought for the Southern cause… and listened to General Lee at Appomattox Court House on the fateful Easter Sunday in 1865 when Southern arms were defeated but Southern spirit never stood so tall.”  To some extent there is an undercurrent of “the myth of the lost cause” in Americus today.  The people I have talked with would contest this but most of those I have met are not native to the area.

 

The population of Americus grew slowly with a few families dominating during the expansion.  There was a rapid change in census figures from 1880 to 1910 and a decrease in population in the 1920s with the exodus of blacks north and whites to Florida.  In the 1800s cotton was king and the city prospered.  A fire in 1853 burned a good portion of the city and the main cotton warehouse burned down during the Civil War.  It was rebuilt as the Loveless Block and still stands today.  Between 1885 and 1886 the railroad changed from narrow gauge to standard. The railroads suffered from the same problems as all railroads in the United States did in the 1890s with ownership changing frequently, bankruptcy and other ills.

 

The Chamber of Commerce became active in praising the education of its citizens and the low cost of labor.  By 1893 the county had 70 free schools, 34 for whites and 36 for blacks.  There were almost twice as many black students who went to school for 6 months while whites went for 10 months in Americus where the ratio was less skewed.  A boarding school was established in 1910 and became a Normal school in 1926.  It became part of the state university system in 1932 and a 4 year college in 1964.  Today it is  Georgia Southwest State University and has several masters programs as well as a large library named after Jimmy Carter’s father.  The first private K-12 school was not established until the 1960s and has a dwindling population with the last grade now at the 8th grade level.  The public schools are considered to be academically superior accounting for the decline in enrollment.

 

For Americus the 1890s was the period of building.  Beautiful Victorian style homes were built along Church Street and Oak Grove Cemetery continued its restoration with the planting of cedar trees.  Graves for Confederate soldiers had been moved to Oak Grove in the 1880s.  In 1891 plans were made for Americus to become a Winter Resort destination.  Never mind that Americus still has a winter season when it freezes, is the rainy season, is devoid of much entertainment. The leaders thought people from Atlanta would come to the resort.  The magnificent Windsor Hotel was constructed on the site of the old county court house.  It was 5 stories tall with a social center on the top floor, huge fireplace in the foyer, open staircases and retail spaces on the first floor.  The hotel was soon occupied by traveling salesmen, not tourists as hoped.  A footnote to the description added the vast beer consumption at the premises.

 

Americus and Sumter County remained rather stagnant economically and population wise after the failure to become a tourist center along with the financial woes of the railroads coupled with the depletion of soil fertility from cotton.  Many farm commodities continued to leave the area.  Citizens contributed their services and wares to the two World Wars and suffered through the depression with the rest of the country.  In the 1990s there was resurgence in development with the arrival of strip malls and Wal-Mart.  The medical facilities expanded and became a regional center with the nearest referral support some 50 miles away.  Fortunately urban renewal had not torn down all of the old buildings lining Lamar and Forsythe streets.  The Windsor Hotel was restored to its elegance with fire safety kept in mind.  The Rylander Theater had a return of its stage and became available for a variety of performances.  Reese Park acquired a gazebo and the old Reese Park School now used for government purposes was expanded with an addition on the back.  Oak Grove Cemetery’s old cedars were groomed and the area surrounded by a wrought iron fence.  The historic homes on Church and Lee streets acquired historic recognition allowing markers to be displayed as did some of the Churches in hope again of Americus becoming a tourist destination.

 

Americus has had few physical disasters during its life.  There were a few fires especially early in its history.  In April 1898 a tornado two miles long and 400 yards wide struck the area with damage unrecorded.  In 1994 it had a great flood with over 20 inches of rain and Muckalee Creek became a raging torrent killing 15 people in the county.  All of that changed March 1, 2007 when a weather system that had swept from the Midwest down to the south hit Alabama where a school collapsed and moved on to Georgia. 

 

On March 1, 2007 Georgia experienced the wrath of Mother Nature when over 14 twisters were reported in the state.  They ranged in fury from Fujita scale EF0 to EF3 with at least 13 touching the ground.  None were as severe as the one to hit Americus and Sumter County as an EF3 with wind gusts from 136 to 165 miles per hour.   Its origin was in Webster County where it extended from Chambliss, 37 miles northeast reaching a width of 1 mile over Americus and proceeding on for another 17 miles.  Its path was parallel to HWY 49 sometimes skipping and skirting obstacles but not diminishing in strength along its way.  It picked up pieces of the highway, tossed house trailers, cars and tractor-trailers around, reduced a radio communications tower from 1600 feet to 150 feet.  Pecan trees, notoriously shallow rooters, were picked up and tossed around like matchsticks.  Oak trees were treated with equal distain.  The pine trees that had their tops clipped by the twisting winds northeast of Americus looked like naked ship spars reducing their crop value to brush piles requiring disposal.  And then there is the destruction in Americus.

 

At the time of the tornado the population was about 17,000 (about 58% black and 37% white) and fortunately loss of life was limited to two people.  Over 200 homes were destroyed and the cost was estimated at over $100 million.  The twister came from the southwest uprooting a few trees, toppling chimneys and damaging roofs.  Its reach broadened as it approached Lee Street with its many oak trees and beautiful old homes toppling the trees onto roofs, destroying newer attachments such as sunroom and garages either by crushing them with mighty oaks or simply tearing them to shreds.  It continued through the gardens taking the back off Reese School, the gazebo and all of the trees in Reese Park, crossed Church Street and continuing to widen swept down the hill taking with it some modest houses, the strips of shops on Lamar Street, the old cedar trees and wrought iron fence in Oak Grove cemetery, all of the supportive medical facilities on that street from doctors and dentist offices to optometrists facilities.  For some reason a few buildings were spared in the block between Lamar and Forsyth perhaps so the twister could really turn its force onto the 143 bed Sumter Regional Medical Center.

 

The center handled 900 deliveries a year, many of the infants are offspring of migrant workers, and had a neonatal intensive care unit and critical care center.  The emergency room was already seeing patients who had sustained injuries from the tornado when the building was hit.  Trees, cement blocks, and large rocks were blown through its walls.  Air conditioners were ripped off the roof and all of the ambulances and emergency equipment were destroyed within seconds.  Fortunately, thanks to the prompt action of the nurses and aids on duty no patients sustained injury and arrangements were made to transfer the patients from the intensive care and those in labor to 3 other hospitals in the area.  All supporting medical clinics on Forsyth were destroyed as was the Red Cross facility and its equipment and the Salvation Army disaster equipment storage area was damaged resulting in loss of more emergency equipment.

 

The tornado was not finished.  Forsyth Street has several strip malls along its north side and as hwy 49 turns off there is the new Winn-Dixie Market Place.  The latter was totally destroyed and the other strip severely damaged.  In the area between and just behind these malls was Hudson and East Jefferson streets where most of the homes were destroyed and the two people were killed.  Highway 49 is where there are a number of estates with large newer homes.  The trees became spars and many of the homes sustained some damage but most just seemed to need sheds replaced and roofing work done.  Perhaps I did not perceive the degree of damage done to them because of their distance from the road and what I had seen driving out.  To listen to the people who live in those homes the damage was severe although they admitted they could still live in their houses.  Not true of the small homes near the hospital and in back of Winn-Dixie and across Jefferson St.  This area was devastated with not just roofs missing but entire structures reduced to splinters. 

 

What was left?  Driving into Americus from the southwest I noticed a swath of uprooted pecan trees on both sides of highway 19 but most of lovely old historic estate it hit was spared.  On Lamar Street the Rylander Theater lights glowed as did the magnificent towers and balconies of the Windsor Hotel.  Harvey’s grocery store was open and a little mall where it will be relocated was unscathed.  The library seemed to be OK and its disc for WI-FI seemed undamaged but the strip mall 100 feet away was gone as were all of the buildings across from the strip mall.  For some reason the fast food joints except for Zaxby’s and Wendy’s barely had their signs damaged and were opened as soon as electricity was restored to serve the tree and lineman who were working to provide power and access to the area.   Despite other tornadoes in the area help arrived almost immediately and the National Guard was called in to prevent looting as well as enforce a curfew.  A few other building were relatively unscathed including Fastenal, a veterinary clinic and one pharmacy.  It seemed as if damage was selected for new structures and the poor.  The old historic homes could all be restored with repaired or replaced roofs, windows, chimneys and paint.  Landscaping can be done over time.  Unfortunately the magnificent 100year, towering oak trees are gone.  Pines grow fast but oak does not.  The less fortunate on Hudson and Jefferson have not faired as well with the homes requiring replacement.  Lee, Church, Lamar, and Forsyth streets were cleared of debris within days.  A recycling and sorting center was opened next to Souther Field which had escaped damage as had Andersonville. The side streets remained unopened for weeks with a few streets not having power restored for well over a week.  The schools, University, motels, Wal-Mart, Habitat for Humanity, fair grounds and municipal buildings were all spared providing a base for rebuilding.  Tents were set up to provide emergency first aid.  Winn-Dixie brought in a trailer to serve as another pharmacy and the variety of foods sold at Harvey’s expanded as did the quality.  The motels, restaurants and bars were packed and making money.  If however, you needed medical care there was a problem.  The doctors’ offices were destroyed and the nearest hospitals and most doctors are in Albany where Medicare, Medicaid and no insurance patients are not always welcome.  Within weeks some resourceful people decided to make a MASH Unit out of the buildings on the fair grounds across the street from the hospital as a temporary clinic and hospital facility until a new more modern facility could be built.  In Southwest Georgia things do not happen fast but the plan was to have the temporary facility available before winter because tents and trailers are inadequate for long-term complex medical care.

 

When I returned to Americus this past January I was amazed at the progress that had been made.  Lee St. showed little evidence of the damage it had received.  All of the fallen oaks were gone and the stumps were not evident.  Few homes sported blue tarps on their roofs and those that did were being repaired.  The biggest shock was to learn that the library was closed.  When inspected 9 months after the tornado it was learned that part of the structure had been moved off the foundation.  The books were to be moved to a closed shirt factory in 3 weeks but the move proceeded slowly and the facility did not actually reopen for 6 weeks.  The local WI-FI coffee shop was also closed.  At the University the James E. Carter Library is not signed and parking is austere for visitors.  I was unable to locate it despite several trips to the campus and other visitors did not know where it was either.  I should have looked harder for students to ask for directions.  The Regional Hospital was just starting to be removed by demolition crews.  Medical care was improving with the opening of the Mayo Medical Plaza and the fair grounds was beginning to look like an interim facility, pavilion style with 76 bed capacity in the rehabbed show barns.  Plans for the new permanent facility to open the end of 2010 were underway.  There were still empty concrete slabs along Lamar St. and debris could still be seen behind the now removed Winn-Dixie Market.

 

I returned to Wisconsin for a month and went back to Georgia to pick up the travel trailer.  During that time the demolition of the old hospital really got underway.  A new building supply opened and the Library was finally open a few more hours a day and 5 days a week.  It did not have WI-FI but did have a few computers for use if you had a local library card.  An open computer was rarely available.  As I prepared to return home I thought about what had happened to Americus.  The spirit of the town and hopes are still there as well as some of the inequities.  There is a subtle undercurrent of racism shown by the shunning of most whites to shop at Harvey’s even after the main store moved to a newly refurbished larger building.  No one ever identified the two citizens who had died in the tornado as being black and the area where debris remained and there was little reconstruction was mostly part of the black community.  The restoration of local medical care should help the plight of these members of the community.

 

As I drove down Church Street I noticed the work being done on the Reese Park gazebo and across the street the rebuilding of the brick walls torn down on the back of the old Reese school.  A few trees had been planted.  Further down there wasn’t any evidence of the storms left and I entered another black neighborhood with one well maintained home behind iron gates and watched an elegant, dignified black woman exit the front door and be assisted in entering her waiting car.  What a contrast to what was ahead.  In a block I was behind the outdoor museum of International Habitat for Humanity with its display of primitive housing it has helped replace overseas and thought of how much help Jefferson St could use.  Next are remnants of a cotton warehouse and a depot for a commuter train.  Across the railroad tracks, well fenced, is a fine old plantation style house with a Confederate battle flag flying and a faded sign on the door Ku Klux Klan—Keep Out.  If you stop and listen to the hum of the tracks from approaching trains that no longer stop you can almost hear the chant “…tote that bail…” from the days when cotton was king.

 

Epilogue: Unlike Downtown and Fayette County, Sumter County and Americus struggles in its desire to grow.   The community continues to surprise in many respects: the prompt response to the destruction of the tornado and restored power allowing the Guard to leave within a week and the Red Cross not long after, the rapid building of Winn-Dixie mall and emergency medical services come to mind.  The county and town voted for President Elect Obama unlike Lee, Schley, and counties to the east.  The sparcely populated counties, inhabitated mostly by blacks, to the west joined it.  The economic turn down has hit hard.  The main library remains closed and the new hospital is on hold due to funding issues and questions about support from Phoebe Putney Hospital in Albany.  Winn Dixie grocery is open but not the rest of the small mall.  Reese Park gazebo and the old school are totally restored.  Oak Grove Cemetery has a new fence and landscaping but Jefferson Street remains unrestored.  Aspirations for the community remain high but still seem to cling to the past in the concentration on reconstruction of the 1890s era.

 

 

 

 

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

Cox, Jack F. (In Association With the Sumter Historic Preservation Society).  History of Sumter County Georgia.  Roswell, GA: W. H. Wolfe Association, 1983.

(1)            Ibid. vii

McUmber, Jon Kenneth.  “Cottonballs to Cannonballs”.  1977.

Times Recorder. “As I Was In 1894.”

Carter, Mrs. Hugh H. Sr. (As told by). “A History of the Railroad in Plains GA.”   July 26, 1886.

Gurr, Charles Stephan. “The Windsor of Victorian America.”  1942.

Cheokes, Anna Morailakis.  “The Windsor of Americus.” 1991

Davenport, R. F. (Population Statistics).  “History of the Americus GA Post Office.”  December 8, 1931.

Anderson, Alan.  “Chronology of Americus and Sumter County.” (no date as to when or where paper given)

Chamber of Commerce: Americus and Sumter County.  200l ED.

“Tornadoes in Central Georgia-Tracks.” National Weather Service Forecast Office. Peachtree City, GA. March 1, 2007

Americus Times Recorder.  Path of Fury. (A booklet edited and published in 2007)

Sams, Ferrol.  Down Town, The Journal of James Aloysius Holcombe, Jr., for Ephraim Holcombe Mookinfoos.  Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2007.

Wikipedia for encyclopedic information.