Location: DeKalb, Tennessee, United States

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Holmes Creek School |
STORM BLAST RIPS MIDDLE TENNESSEE[1]
Climax Reached in DeKalb in Wrecking Rural School, Killing Several Children. Many Counties Struck
Reports this morning from half a dozen or more countless regarding the storm which struck Middle Tennessee early Tuesday afternoon indicate that it swept in great semicircle about Nashville, hitting on the west in Cheatham; on the south in Williamson, Maury, Marshall and Rutherford; on the east in Wilson, and reaching the climax of it's destruction in DeKalb on the southeast, where four school children perished when the Holmes Creek school went over under the force of the wind, and two more were probably fatally injured.
Schools throughout the section seem to have been the especial target of the storm.
At other points in the storm Area, so far as reports indicate this morning, the damage was confined to the destruction of frame buildings, including a number of country churches, the unroofing of homes, uprooting of forest and shade trees, the wrecking of lines of electrical communication and the devastation of lawns, some of them the most beautiful in the section.
The storm came without any particular warning, and in places where accompanied by hail. Reports from some quarters indicate that it was of only a few minutes duration but the winds were at work while the hurricane lasted. here in Nashville the wind during Tuesday forenoon was from the south, and about noon and for two hours thereafter it came from the southwest. About 2 o'clock there was sudden shift to the west and northwest and it was the fierce northwest blat to which the damage done is attributed. The maximum velocity here was about five miles.
SCHOOL CHILDREN PERISH
Smithville, Tenn., Jan 25(special) - One of the worst disasters that ever befell DeKalb County occurred Tuesday when a terrific storm, coming up without warning, blew over the rural school on Holmes Creek while the children were at their lessons, killing four outright and probably fatally injuring a fifth. The dead are:
The injured include Aubrey Smith, 14, and Sam Cripps, 7, not expected to live, and H. Grady Carter, teacher ankle broken and numerous cuts and bruises.
The seven-year-old brother of Aubrey Smith was saved from death because he leaped toward the center of the room as the wind struck. The central portion of the ceiling and roof were propped up by some object leaving a scant space in which he crouched.
The children, thrown into panic, were forced to extricate themselves. Their young teacher was himself Injured and unable to assist them.
Telephone connection between the neighborhood, which is six miles north of Smithville, went out with the storm, but a resident of the section mounted his horse and brought the news here. Doctors were rushed to the scene of the disaster at once and medical attention given the injured and the dead bodies removed from the wreckage.
Sources
- ↑ Nashville Banner, January 25, 1928, Page 1. via Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/article/nashville-banner-dekalb-county-4-childr/130669523/ : accessed August 25, 2023), clip page for DeKalb county, 4 children die in storm by user trixnbun
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