Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84 Page 85 Page 86 Page 87 Page 88Between Turnrows • 41 Chapter 4 • Disaster On the afternoon of March 15, 1984, a supercell thunderstorm developed over central Arkansas that would change the town of Fisher and Cullum Seeds forever. The thunderstorm quickly developed into a tornado that first touched down in the Greers Ferry area of Cleburne County. When the massive tornado touched down at Greers Ferry Lake about 5:45 p.m., it destroyed a quarter-mile long steel bridge and killed two people. The twister continued on a fifty-mile track, sometimes growing in width to a mile, leaving devastation in its wake. When the tornado hit the town of Fisher about dark on that Thursday afternoon, it destroyed the new Frolic Footwear building, the post office and Cullum Seeds. Five people were killed in the storm and many more were injured. More than half the structures in the town were damaged or destroyed. Farmer Roger Pohlner recalled that afternoon. “It came just before dark. I was at my house on the farm, about two miles from town, and I didn’t know there was a tornado. We had had a lot of wind and rain at the farm, but I didn’t know about the damage,” he says. “My dad called me and asked if we were all right, and that’s the first I heard about the tornado. I drove straight to town. I got there before the police and the rescue workers. By then it was very dark and you couldn’t really see the damage. There were so many power lines down that I had to park at the edge of town and walk in. I got to my parents’ house and it was still standing, but there was a big hole in the roof. The post office had been leveled. The shoe factory was destroyed, the electric substation was de- stroyed, and Cullum Seeds was ‘ground zero.’” Sherman Cullum says, “We had two men working that night when it hit. The 1984 tornado struck Cullum Seeds and the Fisher community in the late evening. The destruction took out a power station located north of Cullum Seeds. The area was without electricity and telephone service throughout the night. Many area residents awoke to the magnitude of the damage the next morning.