by Al Gibson, Clinton County News/Publisher
In my tenure of well over four decades now with the Clinton County News, I’ve covered countless events that have shaped the lives of this area’s residents, but the one event that forever left an impression on me, was my first true involvement with the business of reporting the news.

It was just another day for a young, teen-aged boy in his sophomore year of high school. At least it was supposed to be just another day.
A member of the Clinton County High School golf team – a sport that then was played in the spring of the year rather than the fall as it is now, I had spent the hours after school as I normally did, either competing in a high school golf match, or, as had been the case that particular day,working on my game with practice at our home course, the 76 Falls Country Club.
I was on the back side of the golf course, somewhere around the tee for Hole 5 when I noticed the storm clouds gathering in the distance and decided to head for the clubhouse.
Although I was 16 already, I had only at the time earned a driver’s learner’s permit – still a couple of weeks away from that coveted driver’s license and the freedoms it would supposedly bring.
That meant, of course, I was to wait at the clubhouse for one of my parents, usually my mother, to pick me up and on this day, when I made it to the clubhouse, I discovered that calling home to alert my parents that I was ready to be picked up, wouldn’t be possible.  I was the only person left at the course.
The clubhouse was locked tight and no other people were in sight.  Cellular telephones were still decades from being invented and as I looked around and scanned the empty parking lot and approaching ominous clouds and strong winds, I  decided to take refuge in the only available area I could see – a stairwell on the west side of the clubhouse that led to the basement.
As long as I live, I will never forget the calm that moved into the area nor that strange rose color that filled the skies just minutes before I hunkered down in that concrete stairwell, peeking over the wall to the northwest horizon, and watching the storm move across the area in what appeared to be just beyond the boundaries of the golf course.
It was just minutes after that, and before the heavy rains moved into the area, Mom, Nell B. Gibson, pulled into the parking lot and I made my way, with my clubs, to the car to tell her about the storm I had just witnessed.
As we drove the five miles back to Albany and our home on Cross Street, she said there were reports of some strong storms being possible, and I made note that I was pretty sure I had already watched a pretty strong event before she arrived.
It was just minutes after we arrived home that emergency vehicles began moving past our house, and reports of the damage that had occurred began coming in.
I had been raised in the building that still houses the Clinton County News, from a toddler through that current sophomore year of high school, and I had already picked up the hobby of photography and was often found  in the darkroom processing film and photographs for use in the Clinton County News.
As the sky turned dark that evening, Dad, A.B. Gibson, founder and then Editor of the newspaper, instructed me to grab my camera and we would go out to see just how serious the damage was.
Armed with a practically new 35mm Pentax Spotmatic camera, a Honeywell Pressmaster strobe flash and about a dozen rolls of film, I quickly jumped into the driver’s seat of our green Ford Econoline window van, and headed off toward 76 Falls, the area where he had heard the damage was the most devastating.
As we made our way into the storm struck area, we soon discovered hordes of people, most of whom he knew, clearing the roads of downed trees, directing traffic and warning of dangerous surroundings ahead.
Realizing that we weren’t at all equipped for any rescue work, and knowing that with the dark of night now preventing any meaningful photography success, Dad decided we would not only be in the way of the rescue efforts, but would likely have better luck in the daylight hours of taking photographs and covering the damage that had been caused by the storm.
It was the next morning that we began working our way through the areas hit the hardest.  Me with the camera and Dad with a notebook and ink pen, talking to people about what they had been through, the damage on their property, and where else in the area they had heard of more damage.
At one point after touring through the Green Grove and Burkesville Road areas of damage, we headed toward the Ida Community where several homes had been destroyed.
The large home that had belonged to Albany Attorney and former State Senator Jim Hicks was in shambles and one of his vehicles, that had been in the driveway, was now up on its side against what was left of part of the structure.
As we scanned that area, it looked more like that of a circus atmosphere than a part of our normal home county.
Parts of buildings and homes were scattered across the fields and fence rows were littered with clothing.  Hay bales were tossed across fields like Cheerios and the barns that had housed them were gone – strewn across the countryside like a set of Lincoln Logs.
It was in this location that I noticed several cars that had been tossed around like small Matchbox toys, landing hundreds of feet away in a fence row. In another nearby field, an oil drilling derrick that had been in operation the day before, along with the truck it was attached to, lay overturned.
All the while, people searched through the rubble, hoping to find some of their possessions intact and salvageable, perhaps some clothing or a photo album or some other piece of memorabilia that had just a few hours earlier been up on the mantle in the family room that now no longer existed.
Other volunteers worked to clear the rubble away from homes, some were spotted on rooftops of homes that still were standing and, all the while, the traffic traveling in both directions on U.S. 127 and the adjoining Hwy. 1590 at the intersection near the Hicks home was practically bumper to bumper with the curious from the area trying to see the damage for themselves.
Next it was on to Seventy Six and another series of photos of vast and widespread damage.  A view of what had been the Mount Union Christian Church showed the backside of the piano that had once been used in the services there – upside down and destroyed among the rubble.
The park at Seventy Six Falls was destroyed and the trees, still leafless from the winter season, were down on the ground from the top of one hill, through the park and to the top of the next hillside to the east.
That scan of the Seventy Six Falls area ended our first day of storm news gathering, and the plan was to do more of the same the following day – a Friday.
It was at the office, as I prepared more film for the second day of looking at the damage that I got the news I somehow couldn’t believe.
Dad was behind at work with all of the coverage that needed to be dealt with, and another employee and his then right-hand man, Phillip Allen, was planning on taking a camera up in an airplane to make some aerial photographs.
So, if I promised to be careful and not wreck the van, he was going to turn me loose on my own for the morning despite the fact that by driving around, I would be completely illegal on the road.
I jumped at that chance and soon was headed off toward the Seventy Six Falls area to take a few more photos, then on to Piney Woods.
Piney Woods brought even more of the same.  The damage was everywhere and again in this area of northeast Clinton County, it was vast and heartbreaking.
Most of the weekend was spent in the darkroom, a process that was slow and methodical in the days of film, chemicals and photo paper, a process that took place under dimly glowing red safe lights and seemed to take forever.
In the end, that week’s Clinton County News, in addition to the front page coverage, included a four-page special tornado coverage section with several of the photos I had made, as well as a few of the aerial shots Phillip Allen had taken on that Friday.
The front of that special section also contained the death notices and funeral information of those eight Clinton County residents who had lost their lives that night when the tornadoes moved across our county.
It didn’t end with that issue.  The coverage lasted for weeks and weeks and months.  More donations rolled into the county. Buildings were torn down. New construction would garner a few photographs.
HUD mobile homes arrived and for several weeks, people would bring things into the NEWS office to show us and have their picture made.
Documents from miles away that ended up in Clinton County.  A piece of guy wire from a utility pole that had been impacted so hard it looked like a spider web.  A piece of 2 x 4 lumber had been found that had been impaled with  strands of straw from a hay bale.
And, of course, elected officials, local, state and national, would find a way to make a donation, pass a resolution or tour the area to view the reconstruction and always they wanted their photo made and published in the newspaper.
In this business, we refer to those photos as “grip and grin” shots. Someone holds a giant check and everyone smiles for the camera.
Slowly but surely, the tornado related events became fewer and fewer and normalcy returned to our county.
But for those of us who went through what is still considered to be the worst disaster to ever strike Clinton County, the memories remain.
For years, I would stop on that hillside on the Seventy Six Falls Road, get out, and snap a photo of that water trough still stuck high up in that tree.
The last time I photographed it was May 20, 2011 when I was involved in a photo challenge with a group of photography buffs.
It wasn’t the photo I chose for that month to enter, but on a later trip down the road when I noticed the limb had finally broken and the trough was gone, I felt a little sad – sad that perhaps the last physical reminder of that awful day could no longer be viewed by the public.
Youngsters who traveled down the road with parents and grandparents could no longer ask “how’d that get up there” and hear the recount of what had been – and still remains to be – the worst day in Clinton County history.
Jim Huff, whose home sits just a few yards away from where the trough and tree stood for nearly four decades, told me this week (April, 2014) that it finally made it’s way back to the ground one day last summer.
“It was on a Sunday morning and me and the kids walked out to go to church and I looked and it was just laying there on the side of the road,” Huff said.  “You wouldn’t believe how many cars would slow down or stop there on that hill and look up at that.”
As we look back now, 50 years later, a few photographs that are reprinted this week should serve as a reminder to those who witnessed and lived through it, and as a history lesson for those who were too young – or not even born yet.
Since that time, after finishing high school and some time at college, sitting at this desk and thinking back at the events I’ve covered for our readers – fires, murders, meetings, ballgames, elections and even a fire that destroyed our courthouse – I always go back to that stretch of 1974 and working on the coverage of the tornado story when I’m asked what my most memorable event to report was.
It started out as just another day on the golf course for a teenage boy in Clinton County.
It ended up being the most memorable event I’ve worked on in a lifetime of newspaper articles.
It was amazing to watch Clinton County rebuild and to see how our people came together to do whatever was necessary to help their neighbors.  Both on that very April 3, 1974 night, and in the days, weeks, months and years that followed in the rebounding process.
That very first event I worked on remains the one that is the most memorable in my career.

Still, I hope I never have to cover something like that again.