Come and remember tornado victims on April 28

Published 2:00 am Sunday, April 19, 2015

Limestone County residents are invited to gather around the community’s tornado memorial on April 28 to remember our most-recent victims of nature. Etched now in the memorial stone are the names of 60-year-old Dorothy Hollis and her son, 34-year-old Earl Hollis, who were killed last April 28 when a deadly tornado devastated the Coxey community west of Athens.

The ceremony will be at 10 a.m. at Bethel Church of Christ Cemetery. The service will also mark the four-year anniversary of the April 27, 2011, tornado outbreak that killed four people in Limestone County.

Email newsletter signup

Members of the Tornado Remembrance and Awareness Committee — the group that erected the monument after the 2011 tornadoes — had hoped to never have to add more names to the memorial, which in 2012 already listed 30 people killed by tornadoes in Limestone County’s history. Now the monument lists 32 victims from six tornado outbreaks, including:

• May 26, 1924: George Collins, Ethel Collins, James Lewis Collins, Sam Lee Collins, Charles Delbert Collins, Edna Lizzie Collins, Verna Lue Collins and Annie Bell Collins.

• Feb. 15, 1939: Josie Emma Crutcher.

• April 3, 1974: Louise Cain, Thomas Lee Cain, Willie Alvis Carter, Helen Carter, Teresa Carter, Lillian Green, Amos Green, Elizabeth Hawkins, Herman Lambert, Patsy P. Lovell, Rosie L. Maclin, Hetty Ruth McGlocklin, Sandra Ruth McGlocklin, James Walter McGlocklin, Nobia L. Ruffin and Mary Elizabeth Smith.

• May 18, 1995: Chuck Dale.

• April 27, 2011: Jan Turner McElyea, Janice Peden Riddle, Glen Riddle and Shannon Sampson.

• April 28, 2014: Dorothy Hollis and Earl Hollis.

The families of the 32 victims are invited to attend as well as first responders, emergency personnel and anyone else who wishes to remember. Call Kelly Kazek at 256-348-1348 or Rebekah Davis at 256-233-6404 for information.