Clay County AlArchives News.....Quarles Family 1932 Tornado  March 30, 1932
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Linda Ayres http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00031.html#0007674 August 21, 2023, 3:53 pm

Our Mountain Home March 30, 1932
Hugh Lawrence Quarles, 28, instructor of Mathematics at the University of 
Mississippi, was "resting well" in Citizen's hospital Friday after a narrow 
escape from death in the tornado at his home at Coleta, near Chandler Springs. 
At home for the Easter holidays, he, with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. R. L.
Quarles, and his brother, A.D. Quarles, were seated in the living room, ready to 
retire, when they heard the noise of the approaching cyclone. Looking out a 
window he saw in lightning flashes that giant trees were being flattened on a 
hill back of the house. 
Before anyone had time to get into their clothing, the twister struck the house, 
wrecking it completely, and hurling the four occupants hundreds of feet away. 
Mrs. Quarles was killed, the father and Hugh Quarles were seriously injured, and 
A. D. Quarles received minor injuries. 
Picking themselves up out of the wreckage, the two sons began a search for their 
mother. They were unable to find the body, so Hugh, barefooted, and his pajamas 
half torn from his body, started across the mountains to the home of another 
brother while A. D. went in another direction for aid.
Weak from loss of blood as a result of a large wound in his back and cuts in the 
abdomen and about the head, be struggled through the driving rain, crawling 
under trees that had been leveled by the tornado and fighting his way through 
the underbrush. At intervals he was forced on account of loss of blood to stop 
and rest. 
When he arrived at the home of his brother after a mile and a half journey 
through the dense woods, he told them briefly what had happened, then collapsed. 
He was in a critical condition for hours before he received medical aid. The 
body of Mrs. Quarles found several hundred feet from the home in, a wooded 
section. The young man's automobile, in which he had travelled from Mississippi, 
had been in a garage in the rear of the house. It was blown to the opposite side 
of the house and left balanced upright on the shattered end of a large tree that 
had been broken in two by the cyclone. 
Young Mr. Quarles was brought here Thursday night in an Usrey ambulance. He was 
reported considerably improved Friday morning.



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