The named One Day in March

The Reidsville Review
Published: March 19, 2008

The blog, called “One Day in March,” can be accessed at edendailynews.com or reidsvillereview.com. It features contributed videos of the storm and its aftermath, aerial footage after the tornado roared through Stoneville and Mayodan, and weather radar from that day.

Since Saturday, the blog has logged more than 2,000 page views. The site also includes a video, produced by photographer Robert Ross, which accompanies Heather Smith’s in-depth story recounting the day of the storm. The site will also include a series of vignettes, by News Editor Steve Lawson, which feature stories of tragedy, recovery and hope.

As Smith writes, two people died as a result of the storm. Beth Mitchell was 24. The car driven by the Stoneville Elementary third-grade teacher was tossed into a building, killing Beth and critically injuring her mother, Nancy. The storm struck the home of Powell “Roud” Hickman, an elderly Stoneville farmer, throwing him from the house.

As we prepared our stories and videos Saturday, a tornado struck downtown Atlanta, damaging buildings throughout the city and interrupting the Southeastern Conference men’s basketball tournament, which was taking place inside the Georgia Dome. As the building shook and scoreboards swayed inside the huge arena, our thoughts drifted back 10 years—to the people of Stoneville and western Rockingham County.

People new to Rockingham can never fully realize what happened that fateful day, when the skies grew dark and the winds began to blow. Some will never really know what people felt as they raced to check on loved ones, or to take shelter from the imminent storm. But their stories are important, and we believed it necessary to tell them.

Tomorrow, it will have been exactly 10 years since the tornado, a powerful F3, struck our community. Let us never forget the people who were there that day, and especially those who died.