MAYFIELD, Ky. — It was the most exhausting week of their life.
An EF4 tornado destroyed nearly every building in downtown Mayfield on Dec. 10, 2021, including the home of the Mayfield Messenger newspaper. They lost their building, but didn’t lose their spirit.
There isn’t much left in Mayfield’s downtown to stop the wind. The centuries-old buildings lining 7th Street are gone. What was left after the storm was torn down last fall: the courthouse, the American Legion, the theater, and the home of the town’s newspaper, the Mayfield Messenger.
“It was an exhausting edition to put out. That’s for sure,” Areia Hathcock said. She’s been the general manager of the Messenger since 2017.
The storm hit late at night on Friday, Dec. 10 and the next edition of the bi-weekly paper would hit stands that Wednesday the 15th. It was an edition that chronicled the deadliest night in Mayfield’s history.
Hathcock said covering the aftermath of the storm took a lot of help from the Paducah Sun staff and other local contributors, like Berry Craig, an area historian.
The coverage didn’t stop even though the Messenger’s building was destroyed. In fact, every building the paper has ever called home in Mayfield was in the storm's path.
“Well, the Messenger has been there for almost 150 years; a unique story there is it’s been housed in three locations and all three of those were demolished by the tornado. They were in about a block radius of each other,” Hathcock explained.
The Messenger has moved to an office in Benton and has never missed a deadline. Its small staff has spent the last year chronicling Mayfield’s recovery and finding endless examples of selflessness.
“You can hear stories of that night, of neighbors helping neighbors pull people out of the rubble and I would say that is the best thing that’s come out of this,” Hathcock said.
She and her staff are publishing a special anniversary edition on Saturday, Dec. 10, 2022, creating a record of the city’s trials and triumphs over the course of an unforgettable year.