Press & Reviews
Writer on the Storm: Bechtel Follows Path
This article by David A. Maurer was published in the Charlottesville Daily Progress.
In the twilight of an August evening 12 years ago, Thomas Huffman made his way across the Oak Hill Baptist Cemetery in Nelson County.
The slender, bespectacled man stopped in front of two long rows of granite markers, each of which bore his family name. As he walked by each tombstone he pointed and quietly said, “sixty-nine.”
The tragic events of a single night, Aug. 19, 1969, caused Huffman soul-scouring anguish. In the roar and darkness of unimaginable fury, 22 members of his family were swept away by the merciless ferocity generated by the remnants of Hurricane Camille.
The storm took the lives of an estimated 325 people, more than 120 of them from Nelson County.
In the weeks and months after the worst natural disaster in inland Virginia’s history, Paige and Jerry Simpson, former editor and reporter for The Daily Progress, recorded eyewitness accounts of the cataclysm from area residents.
In 1970 the Simpsons published their findings in the book “Torn Land.” More than 30 years later, that book became a stepping-off point for a more wide-ranging account of the storm by local writer Stefan Bechtel.
