It was 52 years ago last month.
February 21 to be exact.
That was the day the town of Inverness was changed forever by one of the strongest tornados in the state’s recorded history.
The EF5 long track twister was one of multiple tornados during a two-day outbreak that left hundreds of people dead across multiple states, 28 in Sunflower County alone.
A smaller part of the town of Moorhead was obliterated that day, as well, but no community took the brunt of the system like Inverness.
There were few precedents for a tornado as strong as that one, and until last Friday night, even the strongest storms over the last 50-plus years paled in comparison.
“Nothing ever compared to Inverness,” former Enterprise-Tocsin publisher Jim Abbott told The E-T on Tuesday, a few days after an EF4 tornado had nearly the same impact in Rolling Fork, Silver City and towns as far north as Amory in Monroe County. “Now you have something. The one that hit Rolling Fork, yes, had to be the same (intensity).”
Abbott was a young publisher in early 1971. He had been hired to lead The E-T a few months before. A couple years prior, Abbott had served his country in east Asia.
“The destruction, the debris, it looked like bombs had hit,” Abbott said of the aftermath in Inverness. “It reminded me of Vietnam, which I had been there like two years before that.”
The impact of the Inverness disaster can still be felt today.
Some of that impact of course is the lasting trauma left by the tornado, but many were also impacted, in a positive way, by the spirit of Inverness and the surrounding communities in the days, weeks and months that followed the storm.
From Disaster, a Lifelong Friendship
That inspiration from over a half century ago could be felt in Rolling Fork (Sharkey County) and in Silver City (Humphreys County) hours after Friday night’s twister.
Sookie’s Catering owner Gary Lott was among the hundreds of volunteers who showed up in Silver City last Saturday. The Indianola caterer has been providing food during disasters for the past two decades, but his first experience in emergency response was as a young man in February 1971.
“I was standing in my driveway at my parents’ house,” Lott said of that Sunday afternoon. “I was just looking out, and I saw this funnel, tornado, that looked like it was about three miles tall. It was just unbelievable. By the time I got in my vehicle and went to the service station, they said that a tornado had just hit Inverness.”
Lott got in his car and headed toward the disaster area.
“At that point, I was looking to help,” he said. “I ended up going to Inverness, and I started helping them. Then, I ended up at the Sunflower County hospital emergency room. I was taking people from the ambulances into the emergency room.”
One of those victims was Shirley Walker.
Just 17 at the time, Walker was married and had twin sons, Barry and Bruce (both survived the tornado). The family lived in the country, outside of Inverness.
Walker was seriously injured, particularly in her legs. She eventually lost both limbs.
“Gary Lott was the first person I laid eyes on,” Walker said.
The Walker home had been blown away by the storm, but a heavy 1957 automobile, she said, had not been taken. Her husband at the time laid her in the backseat of the non-working car. He then rescued Walker’s seriously injured cousin out of a nearby field and placed him in the car as well before going on foot for help.
Eventually, word got back to paramedics that there were injured people in the country.
Walker said Lott was one of the two men who rescued her and her cousin.
“Gary was a good comfort, because he would talk to me,” she said. “He said, ‘Both of y’all are going to be alright. We’ve got y’all. We’re on the way to take you to the hospital. We’re going to get you there, and you’re going to be safe.’”
Walker was soon transported to a hospital in Jackson, where she spent three months recovering after the amputation of both of her legs.
“I dreamed about the tornado, once I was in the hospital,” she said. “I laid up in my bed, about every other night, and I dreamed about the tornado, the wind coming in the house and just blowing me from side to side.”
Just recently, Walker celebrated her 70th birthday, and the caterer for the big event was none other than her friend and rescuer Gary Lott.
“I love him so much, just like he’s my own brother,” Walker said. “We’re always going to hug and talk. That’s the kind of relationship we’ve got.”
When Lott heard about last week’s devastation, he knew that he was going to either Silver City or Rolling Fork to do just what he did in 1971, and that was to help.
“When I heard about it, we just started pulling stuff that we had out of our freezers and refrigerators, loading it up and going,” Lott said. “During that time, I put out on my Facebook page if anybody was interested in helping in any way, with money or volunteering, here’s my Venmo number, or the church’s number.”
Lott said the response was quick and led to him being able to provide a “hearty meal” for many of those who were helping in Silver City.
“I just felt like I needed to help,” Lott said. “What’s amazing about that is that the people who are sending money to help, they don’t care about their name being said, anything like that. They’re sending money, and they’re coming by, dropping money.”
Shirley Walker’s twin sons Bruce and Barry were featured in The Enterprise-Tocsin’s February 25, 1971 edition. When this photo was taken, they were being cared for by Mr. and Mrs. James Kinman. To the right, Walker celebrates her 70th birthday with her friend Gary Lott, who helped save her life after the Inverness tornado.
Picking up the Pieces
Randy Randall, retired chief operations officer at Planters Bank, was a high school senior in 1971.
“After classes and sports, I worked at the drugstore in Inverness, known as Day’s Drugstore,” Randall said of the business that was owned at the time by pharmacist Kirby Day.
“We locked up the drugstore on Saturday night, and all was well, and of course we were closed Sunday morning, all day Sunday, and the tornado hit Sunday afternoon,” he said.
Randall was about four miles from Inverness at his family’s home in Baird when he got the call that Sunday evening from his boss.
He managed to gain access to the mangled town to help salvage what he could from the rubble.
“There was nothing left,” Randall said. “The store was completely leveled… I just remember crawling through the rubble and trying to help him save some of his prescriptions, his medicines.”
For weeks, Randall continued to aid with the cleanup process, as well as helping Day restore operations to help anyone in the community who had medical needs.
“I went back down there for weeks and helped him salvage whatever he could underneath all the rubble,” he said. “Within a few weeks, the government got us a mobile trailer brought in, and we made a makeshift drugstore.”
When Randall drove through Silver City this past week and saw images coming out of Rolling Fork, there was only one comparison to the devastation.
“I felt like that when I drove into Inverness that night and saw the devastation, I felt like it was a war zone, and I’ve since been through Silver City this weekend, I have not been to Rolling Fork, but it truly is such a parallel to what we experienced there that year,” Randall said. “It’s amazing the parallel between it and what you see now in Rolling Fork and in Silver City… seeing what I’ve seen this week, it’s an eerie correlation, taking me back a little over 50 years.”
Almost immediately this past weekend, Randall’s Planters Bank family was able to play a role in supplying tornado victims with essential items.
“We try to do what we consider the spirit of our bank to be, and that’s to be there for our communities,” Randall said. “So grateful for the spirit of our bank team. Within no time Saturday morning, getting together and developing a game plan and executing to let those people in Rolling Fork and Silver City know we wanted to be there for them.”
Pictured left is an image captured by Jim Abbott on February 22, 1971 of the former site of Day’s Drugstore in Inverness where Randy Randall worked at the time.. Today, Planters Bank is located on that site, according to Randall. To the right, Randall’s Planters Bank family prepares supplies for the relief effort for Rolling Fork and Silver City this past weekend.
A Lasting Impact
Sunflower County emergency responder Stan Bennett was 16 years old, living with his family in Inverness when the tornado hit. That was also his first experience with a large-scale natural disaster.
“It blew our house away,” Bennett, who worked both Silver City and Rolling Fork this past weekend told The E-T this week. “I’m out there trying to help locate people, and the only clothes I had was the clothes on my back, because our house blew away… It impacted me. That’s one reason why I’m passionate about helping people today. I actually thought about it, standing there by myself Saturday. I said, ‘Damn, this looks like home,’ thinking about the ’71 tornado.”
Bennett was part of a strike team that had been organized by Sunflower County Emergency Management Agency Director Mitch Ramage last Friday, ahead of the deadly storm.
Bennett, along with other first responders, left the base in Inverness as soon as they heard Silver City had been leveled.
At around 3 a.m. on Saturday, Bennett was contacted by the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency and was asked to assemble a K-9 team, he said.
“So, I’m on the phone at 3 o’clock in the morning, calling people saying, ‘I need you here in a couple of hours,’” Bennett said. “I actually go from Friday morning until Saturday night before I touched a bed.”
Bennett called multiple people across the state and assembled a half dozen K-9s and handlers.
He eventually ended up in Rolling Fork, where he was quickly reminded of the desolation he personally experienced 52 years ago.
“It’s about the same, let me put it like that,” Bennett said. “I’m not going to say one was worse than the other. I saw things in Inverness that happened that I didn’t see in Rolling Fork, and I saw things in Rolling Fork that I didn’t see in Inverness.”
Bennett said he saw an 18-wheeler this past weekend that had apparently been lifted into the air and dropped on a home, killing an occupant.
“I didn’t see things like that in Inverness, but in Inverness, I did see the boxcars on the railroad tracks blown over,” he said. “I saw broom straws drove in light poles. I didn’t see that in Rolling Fork.”
Bennett’s team of cadaver dogs helped to clear areas along Highway 61 in Rolling Fork, where many of the town’s businesses are nothing but rubble.
Pictured left is Sunflower County Rescue at work during the recovery efforts after the Inverness tornado. Photo by Jim Abbott. To the right is Jo Ellen Reid, with K-9 Xena working near the site of the former Family Dollar store in Rolling Fork this past weekend. Photo provided by Stan Bennett.
Tragedy and Hope
As for Shirley Walker, watching last Friday night’s tornado warnings on local television led her to pray and to action.
“When (Delta News meteorologist) Christopher Mathis said there was a tornado, bad, and he said it was a big tornado, and he said it was dangerous, I said, ‘Oh Lord, those folks have a problem,’” Walker said. “After everything went through, he said it was headed to Belzoni. I had a friend down in Belzoni, so I called down there to check on him…He said he was in his hallway.”
As the first images came across from Rolling Fork, her worst fears were confirmed.
“When I saw that, it brought everything back to me,” Walker said. “It brought back all the hurt, the trauma that I went through…I can kind of relate with the people… My mind just went back on it to ’71 when I was in one. I said, ‘I hope don’t all the people get killed,’ but I knew there was going to be some tragedies.”
Walker said she feels a great deal of empathy for the survivors of last week’s storms.
“You just have to stay prayed up. Talk to somebody about it, because you’re going to have some trauma,” Walker said, adding that she never felt anger about losing her limbs. “I just thank the Lord that I never did feel angry about the tornado. I lost my legs, and I was 17 years old at the time. I never did get depressed. I accepted it. If you don’t accept (it), it’s going to be hard.”
Walker said it is essential to talk to God and to loved ones.
“Trust in the Lord, pray daily and talk to your friends,” she said. “Don’t get depressed about it. Talk to somebody, because it’s going to be bad.”
Randy Randall, who sifted through the rubble after the Inverness tornado echoed that the key to the future for the victims and the communities now suffering is rooted in faith.
“Lean on the Lord, look up and move forward,” he said.
