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Survivors recall
1974 tornado 50 years later By LEAH SANDER Staff Writer Connie Walley was cooking dinner the evening of Wednesday, April 3, 1974, despite an oncoming storm. “I remember the electricity kept going on and off,” she said. Walley, who lived then along Ninth Street in Rochester, said she didn’t consider a tornado might be coming her way. Walley, who still resides in Rochester, was one of several people who shared their memories of the tornado in connection with its 50th anniversary. Six people were killed in Fulton County in the storm, part of the socalled “Super Outbreak,” which occurred on April 3 and 4 of 1974. According to the National Weather Service’s website, the tornado which hit Rochester and later Talma actually began southwest of Monticello and traveled 109 miles to southeast of LaGrange. It was “up to one-half mile” wide and was rated as an F4 on the former Fujita Scale. Walley said it was her husband who advised the family to get to safety. “’I’m hearing a constant roar,’” she said of what her husband said,
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telling her and the couple’s children to get to the basement. Across town in their home near the Fulton County Fairgrounds, Kris (Pedigo) Carr said her mother, Gay Pedigo, had also been making dinner. Carr, still of Rochester, and then a teenager, had been on the phone trying to find out who was going to a local dance. She said the tornado seemed to have “come out of nowhere.” It was her brother, Bobby Pedigo, who helped get the family to the basement. “It sounded like a train whistle, extremely loud,” said Carr. Over at his home on the Talma-Athens Road near Talma, Don Craig had planned to play basketball at the Talma School gym before the storm stopped him. Craig, who lives now just outside Mentone, said he was home with his wife, three children and a neighbor kid. “My wife was looking out the kitchen window and said, ‘Do you think a tornado is coming?’” recalled Craig. As the family didn’t Continued on page 2
CEMETERY DAMAGE — The devastation at IOOF Cemetery along Third Street in Rochester is shown after the April 3, 1974, tornado in Fulton County. Photo provided by the Fulton County Historical Society. TORNADO’S WAKE — The remnants of the Talma School gym are shown following the April 3, 1974, tornado which went through Fulton County. Don Craig recalls he was originally set to play basketball there that night with friends before the storm stopped him. Photo provided by the Fulton County Historical Society.
STORM DAMAGE — Kim (Pedigo) Sunde shares this photo of her childhood home near the Fulton County Fairgrounds in Rochester, which was severely damaged in the April 3, 1974, tornado which hit Fulton County. “It sounded like a train whistle, extremely loud,” recalled Sunde’s sister Kris (Pedigo) Carr of the tornado, which killed six in Fulton County and traveled 109 miles from southwest of Monticello to southeast of LaGrange.
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