On an afternoon last November, the sky turned eerily bright, giving the trees and houses the two-dimensional look of a picture book.

It is a sign people here fear and respect.

In the living room of Donnie and Felica Powers’ Athens home, Mark Levine felt its power.

“A tornado warning was in effect,” he recalled. “It was an eerie feeling to be talking to these people who had gone through tornadoes and nearly lost their lives while there was an imminent threat of a tornado.”



Levine, a poet and writer for The New York Times magazine and other publications, has spent more than a year interviewing people who experienced the devastating series of tornadoes on April 3-4, 1974.

He has a contract to write a book about the outbreak, in which 148 tornadoes crossed 13 states in a matter of hours.

The outbreak of storms was the largest in number and scope ever recorded.

Levine’s proposal for the book outlined coverage of towns in three states hit hard by tornadoes, but he was so affected by Limestone County that local stories now figure prominently in the book.

“After all the time I spent in all these places, I found the most interesting, freshest material and most colorful environment in Limestone County,” he said by telephone recently. “I think the people I’ve talked to down there are just better storytellers than people I’ve met other places.”

Although Levine has spent more time than expected researching and writing the book, he plans to finish the manuscript this summer.

“I’m what’s holding everything up here,” he said from the University of Iowa, where he spends part of each year teaching poetry. “I was supposed to be finished at the end of 2005.”

Publishers typically take up to a year to have a finished product in bookstores.

“The most optimistic would be spring of 2007, but I would be surprised,” he said.

A film project could result from the book.

“A movie or a mini series,” Levine said. “There has from the very beginning been some interest in that, but we haven’t made any deal yet.”

Limestone at heart of story

Levine figures that while visiting Limestone County, he sampled the barbecue at every local restaurant. And while he found most to be memorable, he discovered it was the people here who stayed uppermost in his mind.

“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about them and trying to tell their stories,” he said. “They may have spent an hour or two hours talking to me, but I’ve thought about them all the time.”

Levine visited Limestone County about “half a dozen times,” he said, coming most recently in November to interview the Powerses, who were injured when tornadoes devastated their neighborhoods.

Donnie, then 18, and Felica, then 15, were dating at the time, and were riding in Donnie’s red Mustang. Donnie was sucked through the window; Felica was still inside the car when the storm passed.

Not realizing how seriously she was injured, she began to search for Donnie.

Felica spent six weeks in the hospital. Donnie was taken to the hospital in a hearse, the only available transportation, but was not as badly injured as people first thought.

“Donnie and Felica Powers are two of the central characters,” Levine said. He borrowed the couple’s Ardmore High School yearbook and some wedding photos for his research. “They were quite an attractive and appealing couple of their time.”

And who would play them in a movie version of the book?

Levine laughed. “You could definitely see some movie stars in those roles,” he said.

Donnie, who is retired as transportation and maintenance director for Limestone County Schools, said he is proud to have his story in the book.

“We’re very excited about Mark coming from New York and showing interest in the tornadoes here in Limestone County,” he said. Donnie said he described to the writer his childhood fear of tornadoes and visits to his grandfather’s storm shelter, as well as his and Felica’s decision to marry within months of the storms.

“We married in December, “ Donnie said. “We had planned on getting married, but I don’t think we’d have gotten married so early if the tornadoes hadn’t hit. It shows how much we did love each other, especially after the storm hit.”

Change in focus

Although Levine has written three books of poetry, his interest in journalism grew. It was a quirk of fate that led him to the tornado story.

“A friend of mine, who is also a writer and who had been an editor of mine, happened to come across a Web site devoted to April 4, 1974,” Levine said. “I’ve always been interested in interactions between people and their landscape, their environment, and people who undergo sudden and traumatic change.”

He quickly became fascinated with the event.

Levine said he initially planned to write a book about three areas hit by the storms, including hard-hit Xenia, Ohio. He would set the stories against a backdrop of the tumult of the storms and the decade’s events.

“It’s actually one of the great, nearly forgotten natural disasters in recent American history,” he said. “In the 1970s, a lot of cultural stuff was happening: Vietnam ending, Nixon’s impeachment. There was a major cultural transition.”

Shifts also occurred closer to home.

“Limestone County went from being more isolated, a rural place, to being more connected to the outside world,” he said. “It seemed to me there were shifts and upheavals occurring both locally and nationally, which would make an interesting background against which to tell this story of this one day of disaster.”

Soon the stories from Limestone County emerged as the book’s heart.

“The attempt is to write a non-fiction book that will read with some of the drama and interest and excitement of a novel,” he said. “That’s a big part of the challenge: create a kind of social and cultural history of very brief time and not to have it read like some textbook, but something people can get caught up in, who these people are and what happened to them.”

Katrina effect

When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast last August, Levine worried if interest in his book would diminish.

“Katrina was such a huge disaster, I wondered if it would eclipse a story about previous disasters,” he said. “The opposite happened. Publishers have much greater interest in telling this story now.”

The two disasters demonstrate changes in the country’s preparedness, he said.

“The elements of this story become an interesting way of looking at what’s happened more recently,” Levine said. “It raises questions of preparedness, response to a disaster, how we manage to do it.”

He said Limestone Countians were the sturdy sort, the kind who rebuilt and stayed after the tornadoes.

He is frustrated by the fact that he could not interview everyone with a story to tell.

“The possibilities are endless,” he said. “There are still thousands of people in Limestone County who were there in 1974, and there are only so many one can talk to.”

But he managed to find some long-forgotten items, including a tape recording of a live radio broadcast during the tornadoes.

Bill Dunnavant, former owner of WZYP radio station, helped Levine find the recording.

“Working on the book has been a very rewarding experience, and I’ve been very grateful for the friendliness and candor of those with whom I’ve spoken,” Levine said.