Stories from the April 16, 1998 Tornado

Our story is not as dramatic or frightening as most of the individuals living in Nashville on the afternoon of April 16th; still imagine sitting in your living room on a beautiful spring afternoon in North Texas, watching CNN and waiting to celebrate a birthday. All of a sudden the Breaking News announcement comes across the television and the reporter says, “Breaking News – a line of severe thunderstorms have spawned tornadoes in and across Nashville, Tennessee…. hardest hit is the area of East Nashville.” My husband had come home early that day in preparation of his birthday and we sat stunned when we heard the news announcement. An aunt and uncle lived in the Brentwood area at that time, and our immediate thought was to call them to make sure they were ok and find out what the status was in the city. We were able to reach our family with no delay in phone service and my aunt reported that they had not had bad weather in the Brentwood area. Living in tornado alley as parts of Texas are called we were well aware of the awesome destruction of even a small tornado let alone one the magnitude of the one that hit Nashville.

Our next concern was the house we owned in East Nashville on Fatherland Street. It had been leased but the tenants had recently moved out so at least we did not have the worry of people being injured or worse. Fortunately we had met the neighbors across the street and we called them never stopping to think that if things were as bad as the news reports we would never get through on the phone. To our great surprise Rob Clifton answered and told us that it looked like our house across the street was ok. It was certainly still standing and did not appear to have suffered too much damage. He was rather quick with his conversation and said that things were getting bad again and he needed to get to a secure location. He would call us back with further news. Well we never heard anything further that night and when we tried to call back – the calls would not go through. We didn’t know until days later the extent of the damage. When we talked about coming into town from Texas, we were advised that we probably would not be able to get into the neighborhood. Trees and power lines were down all over the neighborhood and it looked like a war zone according to the Cliftons.

When we came to Nashville 2 weeks later to view the damage to our house, trees were still down all over the neighborhood. It looked like a giant game of Pick up Sticks. Wires were hanging from poles; roofs had blue tarps covering large holes in houses, and fences had fallen down with no boundaries and our neighbor’s garage roof was in our backyard. Fortunately E.O. Coggin had a generator and phone service, which he made available to us. (What a way to meet your neighbors). Our beautiful, old house at 909 Fatherland Street was miraculously spared any major damage. We do believe we were one of the few people in East Nashville that did not get a new roof out of the tragedy.

We moved into our house in Nashville approximately 1 year later and the transformation to the East side has been incredible. It is amazing the good that has come out of one horrible afternoon on April 16th, 1998.

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