Maryland Centenarian Remembers 1926 La Plata Tornado
“I was there for that!”
July 17, 2023, Alberta “Bertie” Cross Decker of Glendale, Arizona turned 100 years old, but her memory hasn’t aged a minute. In a phone interview with a local journalist, she shared memories of growing up on the Cross Family Farm in North Keys, Maryland. Bertie detailed farm chores, plump tobacco worms, and life before modern technologies such as tornado warnings that might have saved lives when an F-4 twister struck a nearby town in 1926.
Though Bertie was only 3 years old at the time, her recall is extraordinary. Daughter Linda Kempster added that when there are extreme weather reports on the news and comments like, “We haven’t seen a storm like this since 1923!” her mother replies, “I remember that. I was there for that!”
November 9, 1926
The La Plata Tornado struck Southern Maryland on the afternoon of November 9 just after 2 PM. Its destructive effects extended in a 30-mile radius as it trailed across the east coast peninsula for 18 miles. This means it could easily affect the Cross Farm located only 16 miles away from the port city, “as the crow flies” (21 miles by road).
Bertie remembers sitting on the kitchen floor of the home where five generations have lived and farmed since 1902, starting with George & Hattie Cross.
When the skies darkened and winds sped up, little Bertie began to cry. Her mother, Alberta, ran outside to chase the chickens into their henhouse and her grandmother, Hattie, was probably in her room saying prayers.
“The wind was whipping around and, my, the linoleum on the kitchen floor was blowing around, lifting up,” Bertie shared. Once the floor tiles were several inches in the air, then she says they started moving. Her story resonates like a poltergeist.
When asked why she did not retreat to a storm shelter or basement, Bertie replied, “I didn’t have a basement.” That feature was not dug out until later in her life.
Next, a torrent of rain fell on the Maryland farmstead. “We didn’t get the brunt of [the storm], but we had heavy rain,” Bertie continued. The deluge soaked their prized tobacco fields and the winds ripped through the wide leaves that would cost their annual income.
When all had finally calmed, foreign debris littered their new moat. “We had planks of wood floating out there from some other area.” Bertie said her father recognized the markings on the wood from businesses in other cities.
“And the children…” Bertie paused to remember what happened to students at La Plata Elementary, 30 minutes south of the Cross Farm.
La Plata Elementary Goes Flying
“It [the tornado] picked up the whole schoolhouse with the teachers and children inside,” Bertie explained. 59 children, to be exact.
In a November 11, 1926 interview with Maryland Independent, Miss Ethel Graves, a surviving teacher, lamented, “We had no experience in this area. We had no warning whatsoever.”
When the weather turned for the worse, Graves, 22, prepared to evacuate her students but when the glass windows busted in, it caused a panic. One young boy jumped out of a window and ran for his life. Then, like Bertie experienced miles away, Ethel stated, “everything in the room about me had been pulled up by some unseen hooks.” Without further notice, “we were flying through the air.”
Centrifugal forces sent everything into a spin. After seeing her students pass by her more than once, Ethel lost consciousness.
The two-room, wood-framed schoolhouse wasn’t built to withstand the F-4 cyclone that ripped it off its foundation. The tornado cast the schoolhouse in the air like chaff, before dropping it 50 feet away.
Few students were found alive amongst the splinters and rubble. Some children were flung as far as 500 feet away, landing in groves and shrubs. Many sustained cuts and bruising while others were “wrenched” and had fractured skulls, according to the news reports.
“The bodies of the children were found in trees.”
Bertie recalled the haunting news that followed with updates on death and damage tolls. Of the 17 who died instantly or later from injuries, 13 were La Plata students.
Pieces of the schoolhouse were scattered across Southern Maryland; some planks being found 25 miles away in Upper Marlboro and schoolbook pages found 36 miles away in Bowie. It is more than likely that school items were dropped on the Cross Farm as well.
After the wreckage of the schoolhouse was cleaned up, it was replaced in 1928 by the Milton M. Somers school, built of bricks. The names of the 13 young victims are memorialized on a plaque that still hangs in the foyer.
No Chance for Escape
“It’s so easy to think [now], ‘Why didn’t someone warn us?’” Bertie allowed, “But we didn’t have that [technology] back then.”
On further research, the author found it would be another 27 years before tornado predictions and warning systems became nationally available in the U.S.
The first forecasting system was developed in 1948 by Ernest Fawbush and Robert Miller, soldiers stationed at Tinker Army Air Force Base in Oklahoma. After some failed warnings and three years of fine-tuning, an official tornado forecasting center was established at Tinker AFB.
In 1952, a news journalist visited the center and witnessed a prediction in process. He phoned the local television news station and the meteorologist announced a public warning on air. Francis Recheldefer, Chief of the U.S. Weather Bureau berated the news station, citing the legal implications of an uncredentialed reporter’s lead.
Bertie remembers that early television weather reporters were often unqualified to make such predictions and that people would scoff over the reports. She reasoned, “If they get a prediction wrong, then what good is any of it to us?”
Soon, the Oklahoma news station and Weather Bureau came to an agreement about the use of such information and set a precedence for the release of warnings everywhere, but Bertie had already had enough of the east coast. In 1953, Bertie and husband Joe, with daughter Linda, relocated to sunny Arizona, where have they enjoyed a different type of extreme weather ever since.
About the Author
Janelle Molony, M.S.L. is an award-winning freelancer and nonfiction author from Phoenix, Arizona. She has a particular interest in women-centric stories and local history. Her writing has been featured in magazines and journals such as History Nebraska, The Michigan Historical Review, Minnesota Genealogist, Annals of Wyoming, Women’s History, and more.
See more from the author by following on Medium and on social media. More publications by Molony can be found on her official author webpage.
