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1 2 6 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 4.14 I pulled onto Tird Street and then shifted over to Second for the short drive to Sixth and Broadway. Te radio reported the ensuing pandemonium as I drove through the now- empty streets of Old Louisville. Te tornado was pushing north and eastward through the Highlands, Cherokee Park and moving toward St. Matthews. I worried. My 85-year-old grandmother was at home near Seneca Park. But the lashing rains refocused my attention on the streets, and before I knew it I was back in the newspaper building, where things seemed remarkably normal on a day when, outside, chaos ruled. Te world of newspapers in 1974 was closer to the one Ben Franklin knew than to the one that exists today. Stories were written on typewriters (we had just been introduced to IBM Selectrics a few months before), editors still marked them up with soft-lead pencils, and carbon-paper copies were put on "spikes" — sharp nails embedded in a lead base for record-keeping purposes. Type was "hot," set in lead strips called slugs and put together by seasoned craftsmen. Banks of linotype opera- tors typed the stories and created the lead slugs. And an intricate system was responsible for putting all the pieces together. (Engraving did the photos; the layout men assembled the pages on heavy steel carts.) An army of copy editors, copy clerks and others were respon- sible for taking the words we reporters put on paper and transforming them into the stories that would greet readers on their front porch the following morning. O urs was a formidable tradition. Just a year earlier, Time magazine's survey of publishers, journalism educators and others placed the Courier-Journal third among the nation's newspapers for its quality and public service — just behind the New York Times and Washington Post. A few months later, Carol Sutton, who got her frst job at the newspaper as a secretary, would become the frst female managing editor of a major Ameri- can daily. And we were dependable. Not once in our history had we failed to publish — not even in 1937, when the newspaper pressroom was inundated by foodwater and the staf worked by candlelight while the printing operation was moved to Shelbyville. In 1937 and again when tragedy struck in 1974, it was not only the newspaper but also radio that kept the city together and informed and, as much as possible, unafraid. Helicopter trafc reporters were something fairly new that year, and both WHAS and WAVE had top announcers. Lt. Dick Tong commanded WAVE's trafc copter, and Dick Gilbert piloted Skywatch 84 for WHAS. Both men would perform valiant service that afternoon. It would not be until days later that I heard the story about what happened on the rooftop of the newspaper building as the storm ap- proached. A few of our photographers had clambered out to a rooftop deck to witness the tornado's approach. Larry Spitzer, one of the C-J's best photographers, was poised with camera ready as the black cloud approached from the south, moving behind the 800 apart- ment building and First Unitarian Church. His colleague, Bill Luster, stood beside him watching the scene along with Richard Nu- gent Jr., another staf photographer. But Larry seemed to freeze. Te enormity of the situa- tion seemed overpowering, even for a camera- man who delighted in rushing of to fres and other calamities. "Push the button, Larry!" Rich called out. "Shoot the S.O.B.!"And Larry did. He rapidly pressed the shutter several times. Te photo he captured is perhaps the one iconic image everyone now remembers from April 3, 1974. Tat night my assignment was to fnd out the extent of damage and the number of deaths in Kentucky. Colleague Howard Fine- man was responsible for Indiana. Our jobs were simple: Call down the list of correspon- dents and funeral homes in the state and ask how many deaths have been reported. And fnd out the names, and whatever else you can get. I remember my ominous list. Every death confrmed got a line. At fve, it went through the center, like this: IIII . By night's end my total would be 71 for the Bluegrass State. Te Indiana toll would be 44. Te Kentucky total included the devastating toll at Brandenburg, where 31 people perished. At about 9:45 that night Howard and I both took a break as the "four star," or early Kentucky edition, went to press. It had been so intense. But in all of the years I was in and around the newsroom, I never knew such a quiet and reverent moment. We were surrounded by tragedy. Many of the other reporters were sent out of the ofce to explore the devastated city, but we simply worked away through the evening in the safe confnes of the newsroom. Outside, our staf battled all sorts of problems, including downed trees, dif- fcult security and a new element: cold. A cold front passed through the city with the storm, and afterward temperatures plunged and snow furries followed. Occasionally there were moments of levity. Logan Shaw, the veteran "cop shop" reporter, called from his ofce at City Hall, where he pronounced: "Te wind she blew up; the town she blew down. Santa Maria!" Around 10 p.m. big trays of sandwiches, platters of cheese, pickles and vegetables and so forth arrived. Although downtown had been spared any damage as the twister missed it by a few miles, there was no time for the workforce to break for supper. Before long, we had the early edition of the Courier-Journal (Vol. 238, No. 94; 72 pages; 10 cents) on our desks and were hard at work updating, adding and taking dictation over the phone from reporters and others who were calling the news by phone. Te result was a masterpiece, one that still looks powerful 40 years later. In time we would realize the full scope of the storm that we experienced here. It was up to that time the largest outbreak of tornadoes in American history. Between April 3 and 4, 148 tornadoes were confrmed in 13 states, ranging from Mississippi all the way to upstate New York and Canada. Te storms produced by that giant system remain the most powerful ever recorded. In modern dollars, the damage well exceeded a billion. Hundreds of people in Louisville were left homeless or experienced severe damage. Tirty years later, Louisville publisher and writer Bill Butler collected many of their stories in a book published in 2004 called Tornado: A Look Back at Louis- ville's Dark Day. Tese accounts remain every bit as vivid today as they did 10 years ago. (Butler Books is reissuing the book in soft- cover this month to mark the anniversary.) On a recent afternoon I was playing an on- line recording of the WHAS coverage (which you can listen to as well at lkyradio.com in the WHAS section). A young woman was work- ing in the next room and, although I didn't realize it, she was listening intently. "Tat's not happening now, is it?" she asked with more than a touch of fear in her voice. I reassured her it was not, but in the process became fully aware of how these vivid radio reports, which helped save lives and prepare people for un- imaginable hardship, keep the moment alive so many years later. Tere is no better way to commemorate Louisville's darkest day than to listen to those broadcasts. Keith Runyon will take part in a Tursday, April 3, panel discussion on the '74 tornado at the Louisville Free Public Library starting at 6 p.m. I remember my ominous list. Every death confrmed got a line. At fve, it went through the center, like this: IIII . By night's end my total would be 71 for the Bluegrass State. 112-128.indd 126 3/19/14 5:40 PM