Jan. 10, 1975, began like any other morning in Pike County, but that all changed just as kids had gotten settled into their desks at school and the work day started getting underway in earnest.
A tornado touched down around Percy Quin State Park at 8:20 a.m. and made its way northeast, tracking through McComb and not relenting until it had reached Lincoln County, killing nine people along the way.
In McComb, the twister made its appearance near Park Drive and Hart Road, hitting Otken Elementary, the Southwest Mall shopping center and the National Guard Armory, then winding through neighborhoods on the way to Edgewood Park, Burglund, just missing McComb First Baptist Church and Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center, which had become abuzz with activity treating the injured.
At Community Parks, 20-month-old Dexter Baker and 56-year-old Dorsey Cameron were killed.
The tornado spared most of the buildings on the campus of Southwest Mississippi Community College but hit the newly built North Pike Elementary School with fury.
In all, 84 homes were destroyed and another 99 received major damage, 91 others were partially damaged and 30 or more businesses leveled.
Also killed were Charles Weatherspoon, 25, a student at SMCC who stopped by Community Parks to pick up a friend; and Dale G. Russell, who was killed while driving on Interstate 55. In Lincoln County Herbert A. Savell, 86; Willie Lawrence, 22, and her 19-month-old daughter, Stacy Lawrence; and 62-year-old B.L. Greer and Bernice Greer Sasser, 69 died from the tornado.
The tornado was national news, and Elvis Presley held a benefit concert to aid in the recovery, raising $106,000. In return, the city named one of its thoroughfares after the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
“About two or three months after the tornado, in the spring, I got a call from Col. Tom Parker (Presley’s manager),” former Mayor Johnny Thompson recalled in a 2005 interview. “He said Elvis had been wanting to do something for Mississippi, and he picked McComb because of the storm.”
