Jackson County IL Archives News.....MEMORIAL RITES SAID TO OUR DEAD TODAY. MINISTERS BID SUFFERING, PUT GOD INTO THEIR PLAN OF BUILDING A GREATER CITY March 22, 1925
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Mary Riseling riseling@insightbb.com July 15, 2006, 9:13 pm

The Murphysboro Daily Republican-Era. Murphysboro, IL March 22, 1925


    God's will be done.

    Bear ye one another's burdens.

    Bury our dead,  Then take God into the plan of men for a new and better and
cleaner city to rise from the ruins of its misfortunes and the vale of its tears.

    Thus bade the ministry of Murphysboro Sunday afternoon even as the clang of
hearse and ambulance and fire wagon echoed the distress of the community high to
the heavens of a sunlit March day.

    Two thousand stood there-mothers and fathers.  Some homeless.  Some
childless.  Eyes wet and eyes too dry to cry.  While they were told of the amaze
of the nation that a people, their dead yet unburied, could turn with such
determination to the rebuilding of abode and place of industry.

    Rev. WM. BEATMAN of the First Lutheran Church spoke of faith and hope and
love as the oldest theme of Christian message.  He said we can but mourn our
dead, but can not stand idle at this crucial time, or give way to our sadness,
but must go forward and do what God would have us do.  He bade our people stand
on their feet firmly with their hearts in what there is to be done for our homes
and our plants and not forget the God of our fathers.

    Rev. A. F. HAYNES of the Centenary M. E. spoke of the time as a challenge
and said "He that believeth in me, tho he die, yet he liveth again."

    Rev. Wm. A. HARTUNG of the Christian bade the populace bury its dead and
then turn about face to God and the problems through which he would pilot a
determined people to surcease from their sorrows and their goal of a greater
town, with more of God in it.

    Rev. Fred SCHNEIDER of the Evangelical Lutheran kept almost wholly to the
scripture.

    Rev. Ralph W. LLOYD of the Presbyterian said it was not the time for talking
but for doing.  He bade the people bear their own burdens and those of one
another.  He spoke of the devastated homes, the spent lives as the burden here
and said the disaster had left a fellowship of sorrow devoid of color, of rich
or poor-one people who must now fulfill the law of Christ for their own salvation.

    Rev. Fr. GOELZ pinned his faith of the salvation of the city and its hearts
bowed down to faith and hope and love and bade the people physically, mentally,
morally, and spiritually to the realization of a new Murphysboro.

    Rev. H. T. ABBOTT of the First Baptist told how the storm broke over a
service in his church Wednesday as he was quoting from the scripture: "Yea,
though ye walk in the valley and the shadow--."  He said perhaps the Baptists of
the city had given more lives than other denominations.  His message in
stentorian tones was for the rehabilitation of souls as well as the city through
the spirit of brotherhood and co-operation.  The fire following the storm he
related to God's word to "Stand in the fiery furnace."

    Rev. Victor FROHNE of the Lutheran Evangelical said the maimed and scarred
asked "Why?" and answered them in the scriptural promise that severest worldly
trials are not to be compared with the "glories sometime to be revealed in us"
and that "Some day we shall understand."

        Rev. J. A. McFALL of the American A.M.E. church told of the casualties
coming to 22 colored citizens and offered co-operation on the part of his people.
    Rev. HAMLET, former pastor here at the Centenary M.E., bade the people not
believe God, angered at them, had cast his sorrow upon them.  He said it was not
God who hurt Murphysboro's babies.

    Rev. McKOWN of the First M.E. church, president of the Ministerial
Association, chairman of the memorial service, prayed in conclusion that God
give the courage, be in the homes of our sorrowing, in the name of the Father,
Son and Holy Ghost.  Amen.
    Nearer My God to Thee and Rock of Ages were sung.
    

OTHER INFORMATION

    Cooper STOUT, merchant-banker all but disemboweled in the Wednesday storm,
died in St. Andrew's late Sunday morning.  Other deaths:  Wm. HUNZIKER and
Ernest J. SMITH.

    Will MORGAN, colored musician, was shot through the leg by a militia
lieutenant at 11 a.m. Sheriff C. E. WHITE, who had Morgan taken to a hospital,
alleged the shooting was unprovoked and followed a peremptory order to Morgan to
leave the porch of a resort on Bridge Street.

    A special train via the I. C. for St. Louis this mid-afternoon was given
right-of-way out of Murphysboro with fifty-one most seriously injured, 40 from
St. Andrew's hospital, 7 from Eagles Club and 4 from Masonic Temple.

    Tents are issuing to hundreds of homeless.  Other homeless hundreds are
waiting for further word on sanitation before deciding where to pitch their
tents.  Logan Park is becoming tented.

    The dead at Gorham at 11 a.m. today numbered 38.  The wounded are in
hospitals in Dupo, Cairo and East St. Louis.  Miles DEMPSTER has been made
chairman of relief.  C.I.P.S. plant workmen and officials rushed to Gorham's
relief and are putting up a Red Cross tent colony for the homeless.

    The official death list at 10 o'clock Sunday morning had mounted to 192. 
The increase crawled over night from 184, the total carried by The Independent
Saturday following a Red Cross check of fatalities up to 2 o'clock, duplication
eliminated.
    As Murphysboro turns to the public memorial for her dead today, thousands
teemed in the down-town district and other thousands besieged guards at the
city's gates-sightseers from this and neighboring states.  Trains disgorged
hundreds.  

    By tonight fully two thirds of the dead will have been interred.

    General Chairman I. K. LEVY of the Storm Relief Committee, President F. E.
ROBISON of the Chamber of Commerce and others in close touch with the situation
and the volume of relief assured from the outside world, declared early Sunday
morning that Southern Illinois shall see a "new Murphysboro-a new building and a
new home and contents for those destroyed."

    "Our industries are not to penalize Murphysboro just because of her
misfortunes," Chairman LEVY declared.

    Vice President NORRIS of the M & O Railroad Company has committed himself
that the railroad, its shops destroyed, will do "everything within its power for
Murphysboro."

    The Brown Shoe Company, Inc., has officially stated it will rebuild and
resume work at the earliest opportunity.

    Secretary F. E. ROBISON of the Murphysboro Paving Brick Plant announces: 
"We will resume manufacturing at once electric power is restored.  The storm did
not touch our plant.  We are assured power within a few days."

    The Isco-Bautz Silica Company is rebuilding its wrecked engine house
preparatory to resuming.

    Hundreds of skilled workers and laborers are being organized for the
greatest building boom Southern Illinois has ever known.

    Metropolitan press observers predicted Sunday that America will raise all in
all a benefit fund of approximately $8,000,000.  They credit Chicago's maximum
of $700,000.

    Murphysboro came through another night to Saturday morning with a splendid
organization doing wonders for relief.  The need is so great and of such scope
that it seems remarkable how succor is reaching out to many who were hopeless of
being reached so soon.  Confronting the various committees however remains a
seemingly endless task.

    Reports of serious looting over night were labeled false by officers and by
Ray WILHOIT, Centralia fire chief, who hurried here with fifteen special police.
 These men are working out of the sheriff's office and police headquarters. 
WILHOIT declared today that six prowlers were picked up over night and two of
them put to work in the Elks kitchen.

    "Two additional National Guard troops have arrived," Mr. WILHOIT said. 
"This means we can extend protection farther through the city and cut down
patrol territory to a safe limit.  We will have two men on the beat of every
five blocks from now on."

    Centralia remained a beehive of activity yesterday and last night for the
relief of the stricken in this district.  Five monster trucks of food and
clothing left Centralia yesterday, three coming to Murphysboro.

    From Cairo north to Springfield and even Chicago, cities and villages are
rushing relief here.  Murphysboro, being the quick of the stricken area, is
naturally the central point of concentration relief supplies and the
organization here is shooting out all sorts of relief to other points in the area.

    A graver note was found late yesterday when pioneer relief workers forging
through the district northeast of Murphysboro found a trail of distress gripping
many homes in the path of the cyclone.  Steps were taken for intensive work in
the area.  Nursing and sheltering and feeding took on a new momentum farther in
the countryside today.

    Explorers not only found homes down and dead and injured, but came upon part
of an Iron Mountain train swept off the track to the north and east.

    Explorations are extending northeast to DeSoto and southwest into the Gorham
country.  Gorham and vicinity were hard hit and literally cut off from the
world.  Many of the Gorham injured were taken to East St. Louis hospitals.  The
death list in the town and immediate countryside is reported nearly seventy-five.

    Stories of survivors in East St. Louis declare a wall of water literally
battered the town as the giant wind came.  Other reports from the southwest
declare that for miles the storm followed Big Muddy river and left a tangled
havoc in the timberland up the valley.

    Murphysboro, DeSoto and Gorham may in the final count check 400 dead and
2,000 wounded.  Press association men and special writers for metropolitan
newspapers declare in all their experience they have come upon nothing
comparable to the wound across the heart of Southern Illinois.  Some of these
writers arrived here from DeSoto and Gorham with tales of horrors, only to be
silenced by a round of local morgues and a glimpse of the completeness of a
devastation which exposed to view from the heart of Murphysboro the countryside
itself over a plain of acre upon acre littered with what had been homes.

    Fire raged from 17th to 16th streets and from Spruce on the south many
blocks north to Gartside, leaving standing only the Texaco oil station at Spruce
and 16th.  This in only one of the several terrible scars flames accounted for.

    Even more amazed, however, are these experience-calloused writers and
photographers, doctors, nurses, and Red Cross workers when, resting momentarily
at headquarters in Elks home, they meet determined men, scores of them, their
necks bowed and determinedly planning on the coals and litter of the catastrophe
a new Murphysboro as a monument to the will and resourcefulness of our people. 
This spirit here among the stricken is spreading like fire itself to the
humblest dweller, whether his dwelling went or not.   Even the ne-er do well is
imbued with the spirit of determination to have part of the reconstruction. 
There remains no chasm between the rich and the poor.  All are impoverished, not
with the sense of property loss, but with that of the lives spent and able
bodies broken.

    Murphysboro in her ruins today stands in the might of a new and
indestructible determination.  Her currying the storm and fire left her clean of
limb and heart to surmount the barrier.  The town that for years has given
voluntarily to the erection of a "Kiddies Christmas Tree" and the bringing of
Santa Clause to every home in need, stands a monument to strength even in its
ruins, not unforgotten by the world, but to be praised for her fortitude in
distress from coast to coast.  Heroic sacrifices is written in deeds of those
who, after a look at their dead or maimed or their hopelessly wrecked homes,
worked on and on in the day and night through the brunt of a veritable hell of
community misfortune, human gods in their right of kindness.

    Dawn found the death toll in Murphysboro well below the 200 mark, but the
finding of bodies mercifully slowing.  This number includes bodies of a number
not actually residents here.

    That more bodies would be found and more fatalities occur in hospitals today
and tonight and tomorrow was a foregone conclusion.  It is believed, however,
that the brunt of the horror is well past and that bodies remaining in the ruins
are few.

    A thousand pitiful stories remain untold.  In fact the true story of all
that happened in Murphysboro, DeSoto, Gorham and the intervening countryside in
the path of the storm never will be told, although tales will be related years
hence to children's children of today of Wednesday, March 18, just five days
after Friday the Thirteenth, 1925.

    Friday saw the Daily Independent issuing its first regular edition since the
storm.  There was a pitiful note in the voice of the carrier boy as he drew his
allotment of copies.  Carriers in the west and north ends took out bags
pitifully small and light, and went bravely about their task of ferreting out
their routes where nearly all was devastation.

    Beginning Thursday The Independent laboriously issued bulletins on the dead
and injured, setting type by hand, these issues were of incalculable value to
thousands searching the ruins and morgues and hospitals for their loved ones. 
Lists of injured were far from complete as those under emergency treatment were
sought most.

    Thousand and thousands of these small hand bills went through the presses as
soon as power was restored on a circuit including The Independent and the
Masonic Temple.  Power was restored principally for the healing of water for the
Masonic Home hospital.

    The minute gas was piped to this plant, edition issues were resumed.  Even
before that a special order had been flashed through for gasoline torches to
melt type metal for linotypes.

    The schools of the city will be open for pupils on or about March 30, in
order to care for the daytime activities of hundreds of boys and girls. 
Definite notice will be given through The Independent next week.  The Lincoln
and Washington and High School will be opened.

    Joseph N. SLETTEN, Executive Secretary of the National Funeral Directors'
Association, Chicago, arrived here yesterday to take charge of the matter of
grave registration and to cooperate with the local funeral directors in the
burial of the dead.  Embalmers and funeral directors from all parts of the state
are here and have volunteered their services.  Every victim of the
storm-regardless of race, creed or financial condition will be given a good
funeral.  Everybody is being embalmed.  In some cases of poverty, caskets are
furnished by the Red Cross.  Crews of grave diggers from Carbondale, Herrin, and
other cities are digging graves.  Every body is being buried in an individual
grave.

    A squad of militia is on duty at the cemetery to direct traffic, and squads
of laborers are cleaning all streets leading to the cemetery.

    Many were buried yesterday, but most of the funerals will be Saturday and
Sunday, pending the arrival of friends and relatives from all parts of the
United States.

    Mr. SLETTEN has organized a graves registration system in charge of a
committee of citizens.

    All funeral directors are giving sick and wounded preference over the dead
when it comes to the moving of them in ambulances.  At least 40 funeral cars and
ambulances are in the city today.

    Ten refrigerator cars were sent from St. Louis to the storm devastated area
for the storage of unidentified dead.  The shipment also included 100 cases of
embalming fluid and 100 coffins.  The shipment will be distributed in the three
states where the damage was greatest.

    Lines of automobiles and trucks stretching for miles passed through here at
5 a.m. today carrying supplies for storm sufferers.  Five cars of nurses left
Harrisburg today to assist in carrying for the injured.


Additional Comments:

The above stories were published in an Extra Edition of the Murphysboro Daily
Independent published at 5:20 p.m. on March 22, 1925.

Widely considered the most devastating and powerful tornado in American history,
the Great Tri-State Tornado ripped through Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana on
March 18, 1925. In its 219-mile-long wake it left four completely destroyed
towns, six severely damaged ones, 15,000 destroyed homes, and 2,000 injured.
Most significantly, 695 people were killed, a record for a single tornado.

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