41. Down on the Farm

41. Down on the Farm
August 20, 2009
Hurricane Camille –an Unbelievable Night of Horror
This is the bridge across Tye River on Route 56 adjoining our farm. Most of our fruit at that time was grown
about five miles west; beyond the cars that are shown on the far bank. This is the sight I saw in the early
morning hours of August 20, 1969. All sorts of debris has caught in the bridge. When I saw pieces of our
large red barn lodged in the bridge steel and both of the approaches to the bridge washed out I thought then,
Photo courtesy of the Richmond Times Dispatch
something terrible has happened.
Hurricane Camille, better known to Nelson County residents as “The Flood”, came on the
night of August 19, 1969, “like a thief in the night.” The hurricane had not been
forecast; we thought it was a dying storm somewhere west of us. The weatherman was
predicting an 80% chance of rain, not unusual since it had been a wet summer all along.
Another day of rain didn’t really matter.
I was busy picking the last of the peaches. They were ripening faster than we could pick
them; we had arranged for an extra picking crew to come the next day, August 20, to help
us get caught up. Sometimes a rain shower in picking season was a relief because the
peach fuzz doesn’t itch as much when it is wet. We had crawler tractors to pull the slides
and wagons on rain-soaked hillsides. We had no cell phones then, no hand-held radios,
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just word-of-mouth and telephone messages. Only sheriffs, police and electricity
providers had two-way radios.
On the evening of August 19, eighteen-year-old Teresa Wood of Massies Mill and a
friend went to a revival at Mount Paran Baptist Church in Montebello. During the revival
it began to thunder, lightning and pour rain. Warren Raines, a neighbor of Teresa’s
family, was spending the evening sitting with his dad on their front porch, watching it
rain. Mr. Raines was in charge of the large warehouse at Miller Chemical Company in
Massies Mill, which furnished spray chemicals and packing supplies to area orchardists.
Forty miles to the east in Appomattox, Roy Massie was on duty as the dispatcher at the
Area Headquarters of the Virginia State Police. He was in charge of police
communications for sixteen area counties, and the only man in the office after 10 p.m.
All communications between troopers had to be routed through Roy’s desk; there was no
means of direct contact between the troopers. Things were routine until about 9:50 that
evening, when someone called in that there had been a rockslide on Route 6, just north of
Woods Mill in Nelson County. As the night wore on and calls continued to come in, Roy
realized that something very big was happening in Nelson County. He called his
supervisor for help.
Bill Whitehead, the Nelson County Sheriff, was at home that evening. He heard that the
Piney River Fire Department was pumping water out of basements. Ronald Wood, a
deputy, reported that Loren Campbell, who lived in a bottom along the Piney River at
Lowesville, was pleading for help because he was surrounded by water and needed help
to get out. Because the roads were covered with water, the local fire department was
afraid of unseen road wash-outs. They told Loren they could not get to him, and to get up
on his roof, which is where he spent the night.
Curtis Matthews, a likeable logger and musician who lived near Woods Mill, heard the
telephone party line ring at 11 p.m. In those days, you could hear the phone ring for
everyone on your line. Curtis knew that a call at that time of night meant something must
be wrong. He picked up the receiver and listened. It was a neighbor calling another
neighbor, “Jack, you better get your dogs out of the lot, the creek is rising powerful fast,
and it is going to drown your dogs.” Jack Spencer lived just below Curtis, and right
above the forks of Muddy Creek and Davis Creek, near Route 29. By the time Curtis got
there to help, some of the dogs had already drowned. Curtis helped rescue the others out
of the flooding water.
Further upstream on Davis Creek, in a narrow mountain valley, was where many of the
Huffman, Harvey, Perry and Wood families lived. Survivors Tom and Adelaide Huffman
recalled later, “It was just another rainy day; then about three o’clock in the night was
when the storm was the worst. You could hear the rocks tumbling, rocks hitting against
rocks. The ground slid with trees in it.” Davis Creek, once just a little, peaceful stream,
at times is hardly more than a trickle. They went on, “Some people estimated from the
watermarks that the water, trees and debris were about 50 feet deep in places.”
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At Nash, a mountain crossroads at the forks of the Tye River, Johnny Coffey lived with
his 90-year-old mother near the
river. Johnny had been a cook
aboard the USS Pennyslvania,
stationed at Pearl Harbor, on
December 7, 1941. When the
Japanese bombed his battleship,
he suffered injuries from being
blown overboard, and spent
long stretches of time in naval
hospitals. Johnny helped save
his mother on the night of
Camille by helping her get
upstairs as the downstairs
flooded. Did the Lord save
Johnny at Pearl Harbor in order
that he could save his mother
28 years later?
Jake and Colleen Thompson, Grace
Buzz Thompson, a 38-year-old Korean War veteran, was
Bibb, and Buzz Thompson about 1962
spending the night at the home of Hampton Thompson, north
Photo courtesy of Colleen Thompson
of Lovingston. Mrs. Thompson, her daughter Grace, her
daughter-in-law Colleen, and Colleen’s three children were all
there too at the home in Eades Hollow. Some were sleeping in the house, others were
sleeping in a travel trailer parked outside the home. During the night, Colleen woke up
and noticed that there was water in the travel trailer, floodwater from a small nearby
creek. Seeing the situation, Buzz began to help the others to safety. First he took Grace,
then her mother, and finally, Colleen’s blind ten-year-old son, Eddie. Buzz who was now
exhausted, returned to get more, and he paused to rest, holding on to a porch column.
Back at State Police headquarters, Roy was bombarded with so many calls that he had to
cut off two of the four lines into the office. One trooper reported, “I’m hung up in a
mudslide!” Another said, “Roy, a house trailer just washed across Route 29 in front of
me!” Trooper Lee Bradley call to say, “Two tractor trailers just went down [Rockfish
River], swapping ends. They are not rolling, they are swapping ends!” One trooper
called back to say, “I have to go somewhere and try to get safe.” Roy called other
troopers who set up roadblocks on key highways in order to isolate Nelson County. How
many lives he saved with this wisdom will never be known.
Sheriff Bill Whitehead said that Hat Creek which flowed through his property sounded
like a freight train. He drove out to Route 151 and met Wilson White, a neighbor who
lived a couple of miles upstream. Wilson had Tinker Bryant, the local mail carrier, with
him. Tinker told the sheriff that his house had washed away with his wife and three
daughters in it. They began searching for them, all along the stream banks, but had no
luck. Bill’s radio in his sheriff’s car helped him contact the outside world to give them an
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idea of what was happening in his area. Until a helicopter was able to reach him, mud
slides, washouts, and high water prevented him from getting out to the rest of the county.
Warren Raines and Teresa Wood, their brothers and sisters, and the Raines parents all
tried to escape the rising floodwaters at Massies Mill in the Raines station wagon. The
car stalled, and they began walking to higher ground, but the rising water swept some of
them away. Warren and a brother, and Teresa and a brother, survived the night by
catching onto limbs or clinging onto trees until they were rescued the next day. Warren
lost his mother, his dad, and three siblings before that terrible night ended. Teresa lost a
brother and a sister. Warren recalled the funeral as four members of his family were
buried, “To this day, I will never forget seeing four caskets at the Jonesboro Church,
lined up on the inside of the sanctuary of the church at one time. That is about more than
anybody can stand.”
Curtis Matthews at Woods Mill, after helping save some of Jack Spencer’s dogs, advised
motorists traveling northbound on Route 29 who were stopped near the Davis Creek
bridge, to back up to the safety of higher ground. A tractor trailer who was there backed
up about 100 yards, and Curtis’ tried to get him to go further back, the driver replied “Oh,
I think I’m all right now.” The trailer and driver washed away during the night. The
other motorists who had backed up spent the night at Ridgecrest Church.
Curtis returned home, but as the rain continued and the nearby creek kept rising, he saw
his home was in serious danger and left once again, this time with his wife and son.
About 30 seconds after they left, their home was swept away by an avalanche of water.
Tom and Adelaide Huffman found out later that 22 members of their family perished
during the night. Von Matthews saw a house coming down Davis Creek with someone
riding on top of the house holding a flashlight. That person did not survive the night.
As time went on it seemed that helicopters came from everywhere to help in the search
and rescue efforts and to help carry supplies and personnel to remote areas. Isolated from
most of Nelson County by washouts on the roads, Johnny Coffey, survivor of Pearl
Harbor, escorted his mother in a military helicopter out of the disaster area and to
complete safety.
“We heard the mountain coming down,” Colleen Thompson remembered. In one of the
true miracles of the night, she was washed more than three miles downstream but
survived. One of her children was never found, another was pinned high in a house by a
jutting nail, and little, blind Eddie kept calling through the night for Buzz to come get
him. Buzz told him to sit still, that he was coming back to get him, but Buzz was found
dead several days later in a logjam below the house.
Colleen said it time and again, “Buzz was the real hero of the flood. He was scared to
death of water, yet saved three of us. He came back to the house to get more to safety,
but wading through the floodwaters had made him exhausted. He was standing on the
porch, holding on to one of the porch columns, when the mountainside came down.” In
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the Bible, John15:13 tells us,
“Greater love hath no man than this
that a man lay down his life for his
friends.”
Needless to say, I did not pick many
peaches in the days that followed the
flood. For many, it was a time of
weeping; for others, it was a time of
thankfulness; for all, it became a
time to work together. We were
awed by the work of the Mennonites
who came to help rebuild some of
that which was lost. Governor Mills
Godwin came to the county. He
noted, [Hurricane Camille] was
Bland Harvey stands near his home at Roseland which floated off of its
“the most devastating catastrophe
foundation and was caught in a giant eddy near where Hat Creek flows
to my knowledge in Virginia.”
into the Tye River. The house toppled over and came to rest a few feet
from its old foundation. He was not at home that night.
Photo courtesy of Mrs. Mary Elizabeth DeMille
A highway marker at Woods Mill
sums it up this way,
HURRICANE CAMILLE
“On August 20, 1969, torrential rains following remnants
of Hurricane Camille devastated this area. A rainfall in
excess of 25 inches largely within a 5 hour period swept
away or buried many miles of roads, over 100 bridges and
900 buildings. 114 people died and 87 remain missing.
The damage totaled more than $100,000,000, and Virginia
was declared a disaster area.”
According to the Virginia State Police, 125 of the casualties were in Nelson County,
many were citizens, and others were those passing through the county.
So long for now,
Paul Saunders
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