Aftermath

From this side of the editor's desk it is very apparent that the whole tragic story of the Warren tornado can never be written. But it is also apparent that Warren has grown in stature through the dire experience it faced so nobly. No one could witness through three long days the continual processions bearing storm victims to their last resting place without a thought for the ones who were gone and a pang of sympathy for the bereaved. And few could dismiss an awareness of their own unpreparedness had they so suddenly been hurled into eternity. A reflection common to many was expressed by one volunteer lending loving hands to the preparation of a torn body for the last mile of the way: "This is what makes Christians out of people." In churches in continual demand for services, ministers performed funeral rites unceasingly. All denominational bars were down and each victim was given a dignified burial, though it often was necessary to delay the last words that those sentences being pronounced at an adjoining grave might be finished uninterrupted. In the First Baptist Church the choir director donned her robe at 9:30 on the morning of the Thursday when 10 (not sure--could be 19) persons were buried in Warren and took it off again after a service conducted at 4 in the afternoon. During the day a relay of choir members had joined her. While the pastor of the church was at the cemetery, from his pulpit other members of the Warren Ministerial Alliance, not officiating at the moment in homes or their own churches, said to the next family what comforting words could be found. The fact that in today's world the reception of news is not a matter of distance but of receptivity was proved by an incident which followed the tornado of January 3. In Germany a young soldier named Stephens, on duty in the American zone, heard the first report of the devastation of Warren, Arkansas. Fearing for his wife who lives near Banks, he immediately called her parents in McGehee. Not have been "tuned in," they had not yet heard of the disaster. From Paris, France came an inquiry from the family of Mrs. Ernest Sangster--before people as near as Forrest City, for instance, could get word to or from Warren. And up in New York state ye editor's welfare was looked into by the daily she cut her teeth on (more scars to her teeth than to the Times, of course). By teletyping around, the staff finally got into communication with the AP man who got through by phone with those first questions. Mostly, though, the lines clogged with vital messages formed a barricade which rendered "incommunicado" Warrenites and their relatives and friends. By early Tuesday morning anxiety driven absentees of Warren's families, unable to bear the suspense longer, hurried along every incoming highway. Fears of some were confirmed: Others were relieved to find the horrible disaster slightly less extreme the first broadcast indicated. From the Eagle Democrat: Jan. 20, 1949