Tragedy, heroes and hope

There is not much to be said today that hasn’t been said over the last 25 years about the tornado of May 31, 1985 ,that swept across the Mahoning and Shenango valleys. It changed the landscape for years and hundreds of lives forever.

But some events not only bear repeating, they demand it.

A quarter of a century has passed, and in that time thousands who were in Newton Falls or Niles or Wheatland that day and had a first-hand look at the devastation that can be wrought by one of the most powerful forces of nature have died or moved away. Others have been born or moved here. Such generational changes affect a community’s memory, and so it falls to institutions — newspapers, television and radio stations, historical societies and libraries — to refresh those memories. What some might see as living in the past is actually a part of preserving history on a personal level — one reader, listener or visitor at a time.

As Ed Runyan’s stories on Page One shows, it’s still relatively easy to find first-hand witnesses to the events of the last day of May 1985. There are even a few members of The Vindicator staff who were reporters, photographers or editors then. That will become increasingly less so in years to come — there will be few weathermen, police officers or reporters with first-hand accounts for the 40th anniversary, let alone the 50th. There will be a dramatically smaller number of residents who lived through that day. Their memories will become clouded or embellished with time.

Worth remembering

Some stories must be preserved. Among them is that of David Kostka, 36, of Farrell, who had been married for only a month. He threw his body over his 7-year-old niece and a 10-year-old boy in a ditch near a Wheatland Little League field, protecting them from the worst of the tornado’s pounding before being pulled to his death. There were other stories of lesser acts of heroism and countless stories of kindness from friends, neighbors and strangers. Those stories deserve to be remembered and repeated from time to time. Different people found different ways of making a difference. In Coalburg, two women adopted seven baby birds orphaned by the storm, feeding them with eye droppers. There’s a long line between saving children and nursing pre-fledglings, but each act of concern and kindness helps define how people react during and after a tragedy.

Twenty-five years ago, Newton Falls was the starting point of a string of tornadoes that swept through parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Ontario, Canada, during an eight-hour period. The statistics are readily available: at least 88 people killed, more than 1,000 injured by about 40 funnel clouds during an eight-hour period. One of the first and the largest of those reached internal speeds of 300 mph, high enough to turn homes into splinters and to crush the life out of people who were in its way.

Nineteen of those people were in Trumbull and Mercer counties. Hundreds of homes and businesses here were destroyed. This is a day to remember that, to mourn again those who were lost, to honor the heroes large and small and to marvel at the ability of people to rebuild their homes, businesses and lives. It’s also a time to remember all the help this area received from near and far, and to rededicate ourselves to help others when natural disasters strike their towns as the storms of May 31, 1985, struck ours.