Correspondent photo / Karla Dines Niles native Kelli Izzo shared her memories of the May 31, 1985, tornado Wednesday evening at the McKinley Birthplace Home in a program hosted by the McKinley Memorial Library. The Niles Historical Society displayed photos of the aftermath of the tornado.

Forty years after the May 31, 1985, tornado swept through Niles, residents gathered Wednesday evening at the McKinley Birthplace Home to remember the storm that forever changed their town.

The event featured Niles native and tornado survivor Kelli Izzo, who shared her harrowing experience with a standing-room-only crowd.

Many attendees brought memories of their own, reflecting a common theme: how the community came together following that tragedy to help one another.

The Niles Historical Society displayed photos from the storm’s aftermath. The McKinley Memorial Library hosted the program.

Izzo, a Niles native, received a master’s degree in education at Kent State University and is now an assistant principal at Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School near Cleveland.

Izzo recalled how the storm struck on the first day of her summer vacation as an 8-year-old. Her father, Fred Kearney, then editor of the Niles Daily Times, had warned her mother to watch the weather while he attended a meeting.

Izzo said something seemed to be off. The family’s Cocker Spaniel, Bridget, kept hiding and seemed afraid of something. The air was very still, but there was a thickness in the air and a metallic smell.

Izzo, her mother, and two sisters, Heather and Heidi, were heading home from the mall when the skies turned ominously still.

“Even now, decades later, I remember the car ride home. The sun started to dim and the clouds thickened. I looked out the window and noticed how quiet everything had become,” said Izzo.

When her mother, a former police dispatcher, spotted swirling debris in the sky, she did not panic and calmly turned into the parking lot at the Convenient Food Mart.

It was the closest place they could take cover.

At first, they seemed like a mother and her daughters sheltering from the storm. But then the wind began to pick up. People started yelling. An employee told people to get to the back of the store.

The storm hit. The building and roof collapsed and Izzo lost consciousness.

“It happened quickly, but slowly, but that is how trauma works. A tornado does not sound like wind. It sounds like everything is being ripped apart at once. And then there was silence,” said Izzo.

When Izzo regained consciousness, she could hear pop cans hissing, her sister’s voice faint through the debris. The air reeked of Slice soda, plaster and metal.

Two firefighters and a policeman pulled them from the rubble of the building.

Izzo was uninjured, except for a piece of glass stuck in her ankle. Her mother had shielded her with her body.

Meanwhile, Izzo’s father left his meeting and raced to the scene, unaware of the location of his family.

“But in that moment, with his notebook in his hand, which he always had with him, he was just a reporter there for a front-page story”, said Izzo.

“The site shocked even seasoned reporters, who wrote, ‘It was hard to believe anyone got out of that building,'” said Izzo.

When Kearney returned home, his son Patrick met him at the door and told him that one of his sisters had been hurt. The power and phone lines were down, but their home was unscathed.

The family was treated at Warren General Hospital, which had lost power and used flashlights to triage patients. Heather, the oldest sister, needed stitches in her shoulder. The rest were treated for minor injuries.

The physical wounds healed, “but there was a deeper wound that none of us could see yet. It is always there and we realized that later,” said Izzo.

“To this day, where there is a tornado watch, I can tell by the smell in the air if it is going to be bad”, said Izzo.