By Jack Brymer | June 7, 1973
Brent has “ceased to exist as an Alabama municipality for all practical purposes,” the Birmingham newspaper reported. It was a “hell-filled period of roaring sound,” another story read. A columnist reported, “For just a few minutes Sunday night, God must have gone berserk.”
Such was the response to a devastating tornado that slammed into Brent Sunday evening, May 27, killing four persons, injuring scores of others and leaving a path of death and destruction through a large part of central Alabama.
However, the tragic event could have been much worse for Brent had it not been for the alertness of the Youth Choir director and interim past of the Baptist church.
The nightmarish experience began just minutes after Church Training was dismissed. Ass members were leaving their departments, the electrical power failed darkening the building at the dusk hour. However, a special service honoring high school seniors had been planned so the choir assembled, and people began filing into the auditorium.’
The Youth Choir left the darkened choir room and gathered just outside a side entrance to the auditorium for a last-minute rehearsal. Suddenly, the choir’s director, Jerry Pow, commanded the choir to be quiet. He heard a roar.
Pow told choir members to get to the basement and open the windows. Then he dashed to the front of the building warning of the approaching storm.
Dr. Arthur Walker, vice-president for administrative affairs at Samford University and interim pastor of the church at the time of the tornado rushed into the auditorium and urged the congregation to assemble in the basement because “a terrible roar is coming,” He held an outside door open to provide light for the stairway until the winds tore it loose.
Within seconds the fierce tornado had leveled the auditorium, sparing only the front entrance and steeple. Within minutes the entire town of Brent lay in rubble.
Andrew Mitchell, reportedly in his mid-sixties and with poor eyesight, was crushed to death when a wall caved in on him. He was just a few feet from the basement stairway. Another man narrowly escaped death and suffered a broken shoulder and collarbone.
Pow and John Meigs, both college students, found two small children waiting for their parents in the vestibule just as the storm hit. They threw the youngsters to the floor and lay on top of them as the building collapsed. The parsonage, next to the church, was damaged, although the extent of the damage is not determined. McGowin officially began as pastor on last Sunday. Walker had been serving as interim pastor.
The congregation agreed to meet last Thursday at 10:00 a.m. to begin cleaning and reconstruction of another auditorium.
While the Brent congregation suffered the most severe damage of the storm, other churches in the path of the deadly tornado felt its fury indirectly through losses of lives and property of church members. Other churches, although not directly involved, set up shelter areas and continue to assist storm victims.
