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  • Angela Mason of Calhoun signs a copy of her book “Death Rides the Sky,” for a fan at GenKota Winery on Saturday. Mason wrote the book following the path of the March 18, 1925, Tri-State Tornado, which killed almost 700 people and injured thousands and destroyed towns from Missouri to Indiana, including Murphysboro. RORYE O’CONNOR/REGISTER-NEWS

    Book signing
January 23, 2012

Angela Mason visits for book signing

By RORYE O’CONNOR rorye.oconnor@register-news.com

MT. VERNON — — Angela Mason visited Mt. Vernon Saturday to talk about her book, “Death Rides the Sky.”

“Death Rides the Sky” follows the path of the devastating March 18, 1925, Tri-State Tornado, which damaged and destroyed several Southern Illinois towns, killing hundreds of people from Missouri to Indiana.

Mason, a Calhoun resident, wrote the book in 1999 after the newspaper she worked for at the time ran a special section remembering the anniversary of the disaster.

“My grandpa was a farmer in Wayne County, and the man who later became his father in law was one of the few people with a telephone,” she said. “When the tornado hit in Enfield, they called him, because they knew he had a strong mule team, so he went down there with his mule team and helped pull up the houses.”

Mason said until she was 19 years old, she wasn’t aware of the history of the tornado, which killed at least 695 people and injured thousands more.

“I wasn’t a writer then, but then when I became a journalist, we were doing a special section for the anniversary,” she said. “It turned out to be something beyond what we could comprehend. People said there just wasn’t enough information available about the tornado.”

Mason said the book took her 12 years to have published, due to difficulty with publishers and being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

The book sat on the shelf gathering dust from 2002 until 2011, she said.

Mason visited with those who came to purchase her book at GenKota Winery on Saturday, and said she enjoyed meeting with several survivors of the Tri-State Tornado.

Truman Price of Centralia was one such survivor who came to buy the book.

Price, who was four years old at the time of the tornado, lived in Griffin, Ind., which according to a graphic from “Illinois Tornadoes” by John W. Wilson and Stanley W. Changnon Jr., was nearly destroyed.

“I remember it got dark, the clouds were rolling just like waves over the tops of the houses across the street,” he said. “My big sister was 18 years old at the time, and she grabbed my arm and had me strung along behind her. I remember telling her years later that my arm still hurt.”

Price said his family of about six people took shelter in their two-bedroom house when the tornado hit.

“My sister-in-law had a broken leg,” he said. “My dad covered me with his body, and the chimney fell on him, but it didn’t seem to hurt him any. One of my brothers was trying to hold the back door closed, but it turned out to be a waste of time, because the whole house got lifted off.”

He said his family and many others whose houses were destroyed during the disaster lived in Army tents for as long as six months while new houses were built.

Mason said she plans a follow-up coffee table book, because she has many more photos given to her by survivors that have never been published bedore.

“So many people gave me pictures because they put them away, they weren’t able to deal with or talk about it then,” she said. “I realize there aren’t many survivors left.”

“Death Rides the Sky,” published by Black Oak Media based in Rockford on Jan. 16, is available at barnesandnoble.com and amazon.com, both as a hard copy and electronic copy.

For more information, visit deathridesthesky.com or blackoakmedia.com.

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