NICK DAVIS MONUMENT &  CEMETERY, (Nick Davis Road), LIMESTONE COUNTY, ALABAMA

The anatomy of a super storm and the Nick Davis cemetery in its path

The Storm Damage before any effort. Somewhere among that fallen twisted brush is a fallen monument: 9575/9576/9577/9578/9579/9580/9581/9582
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Stone under repair and other shots of the still disheveled cemetery: 5204/5205/5206/5207/5208/5209/5210/5211/5212/5213/5214/5215
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Monument visited by the secret angel (to me) with a crane so now we have a standing stone and repaired broken corner: 5283/5284/5285/5286/5287/5288

This cemetery was completely destroyed in the fierce F-5 Tornado of 27 Apr 2011. 5204 This powerful storm swept in from eastern Mississippi all the way to the northwest to Madison County AL about 90 miles away and killed some 50 people. Since I live within 3 miles of this place after the tornado I came here to visualize the extent of the damage. It was terrible. The big monument was fallen and buried in among about 50 tones of fallen trees and other debris. That is to say nothing about three homes within 500 yards of this place which were completely demolished. I pondered that situation and told as many folks about it as would listen to me allowing time for the taking care of the terrible situation that the people in the neighborhood suffered. As a type A impatient person I finally got tired of the usual waiting around and went there with every tool in my arsenal and started clearing the logs and tree limbs that completely engulfed this site. I piled the brush and cut up the logs into small pieces so I could lift them. I carried all that out next to the road for the Storm Damage crew to haul away. After several hours of Chain saw & bush whacker work and and piling brush I had the debris cleared off the monument and a pathway cleared out to the road so one could walk back to the fallen cemetery monument. 5229

So by now the public could at least see that there was a very large monument in there and that the tall spire was lying on the ground and needed attention. 5219 So I took another break and called the FEMA storm damage people and anyone else that would listen. By that time several weeks had passed and all the neighbors who had suffered immensely had been given help so I  did not feel guilty for putting monuments to the dead above  survivors.

It was about there that I realized Mr. Superman was not so super by himself and that I would never clean this up and reset a 5 ton monument by myself with no major heavy equipment.
I also noticed a large chunk of the corner was broken off the monument very near where the inscription resided and actually the inscription was chipped. These were lying on the ground nearby. This might even cause the inscription to peel off even more if something was not done. 5220 This old retired doer with much time on his hands spring into action again. I went back home and dug up my supplies of white concrete, hydrated lime and white sand. I came back with the tools to make up a soft 500 lbs per sq inch concrete mixture that would adhere to the stone (and hopefully last). I had been taught this process by Dan Sumner Allen IV who was an understudy of the historical caretakers based at Middle Tennessee State U. I made the repairs and formed the substance on and it adhered very well. In which case I shaped it into the original form to fill the fracture. I went back a couple of times to make sure it did not dry too quickly and set up cracking. I even sanded it some to smooth the roughness out. 5222 Thus the repair looked sound and still does, but the truth is in the hundreds of years it is supposed to last, but I do know the soft mortars adhere better and flex with the weather better than anything else.

Thanks to a secret helping angel I went back there one day and found that the monument was standing again. Someone had brought in a crane and lifted it back onto the base. They also did some grounds repair but more was needed to bring the site up to the original look.

Now we had a standing stone 5284 that looked about as good as the original but as stated the area was still fraught with holes in the ground from fallen trees and old root balls etc. That all just took away from the appearance of the historic monument. I kept doing small things myself to make some difference and then one day several months later the mysterious angel visited the place again and graded the surface and pushed up all the tree stumps and hauled them off so that today the Nick Davis Monument is again about as good as new. Since I was never there when they were it was is still is a mystery who did the pick up of the stone and final clearing and grading of the site. (For the final clearing I have no photo.)

By C. Wayne Austin  updated 16 Sep 2013.