LOUISVILLE, Ky. — One day after a tornado struck eastern Jefferson County and 50 years after a devastating super tornado outbreak, Mayor Craig Greenberg acknowledged the city's resilience.
"In Louisville," he said, "when something knocks us down, we get back up."
That's as true now as it was when former Louisville Mayor Harvey Sloane saw the city rebuild after a series of catastrophic tornados in 1974.
"This community came together after that. They didn't want to leave. They wanted to stay and make it better," Sloane reflected.
But some never got the opportunity to rebuild; six people from Louisville died due to the outbreak. According to tornado historian Jen Narramore, those people were Bernice Orr, 60; Charles Fleming Spencer, Jr., 64; Walter Brooks, 47; Nathan Bronstein, 71; Theresa Smith, 16; and Cephas Hermansen, 52.
Those lives lost came with lessons.
RELATED: Proffitt Report: Reflecting on when the worst tornado outbreak in U.S. history struck Louisville
"At that time the Weather Service was issuing tornado warnings whenever one was spotted on the ground from a spotter," Mike Kochasic with the National Weather Service (NWS) in Louisville explained. "Now, we can do it with much more lead time because we have the advancement in technology, all lessons learned from 1974."
"I mean, the fact that you can get information from your cellphone. Holy crystal! Well, we didn't have cellphones. This is just a new generation, a new century," the former mayor said.
In 1974, Leatherhead was in business, but not at Bonnycastle and Bardstown Road. Fifty years ago, it was Snyder's Delicatessen. On April 3, when the tornado struck, the owner of Leatherhead, Raymond "Nick" Boone stopped in for a corned beef sandwich.
"I took off running back to my store," he recalled, "1763 Bardstown Road. And by the time I got there, I still had my sandwich in my hand. I went through the front door and I said 'hit the deck! 'Cause there's a tornado coming.'"
At his shop, Boone restitches leather history. From antique tools to celebrity photos, his 57-year-old business is full of details that survive the years. He showed WHAS11 a picture from that old store, before the tornado blew off his sign.
Despite the weather, he's one of many who stayed after the disaster. Although he likes to joke about the tornado blowing him further up Bardstown Road.
He's learned, like the rest of us, about respecting the power of mother nature's fury.
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