For the dozens of historic homes in Columbus, Saturday’s EF-3 tornado was no more than a close call.

There was, however, one exception.

As the tornado bounded across Main Street, plowing its path of destruction through the North Side and East Columbus, it blew down six trees at the home of David Sanders on 1103 Main St.

A towering pecan tree, planted at roughly the same time Sanders’ grandfather built the home to replace an earlier home lost to fire, fell heavily on the east side of the home, smashing the second-floor sun room and, perhaps, jeopardizing the structural integrity of the house.

“We’ll have to have a structural engineer take a look before we know what we can do,” Sanders, 72, said Thursday, as he watched a crane operator finally remove the giant pecan from the home as a half-dozen workers from Bourland Tree Service were busy chain-sawing the trees that fell in the Sanders’ previously pristine back yard. The storm flattened the Sanders’ wooden fencing all the way to Second Avenue North.

Sanders was not at home when the tornado arrived. His wife, Mona, and her caretaker were huddling together on the first floor as the storm siren began to wail. Both were shaken, but not injured, Sanders said.

“It was like a freight train that came out of nowhere,” Sanders said, recounting his wife’s account.

The Sanders’ home was the exception in another way, too.

It is the last remaining old home on Main Street, which was once filled with grand old homes, occupied by the city’s most prominent citizens at the turn of the 20th century.

“Now, it’s a commercial area, but at the turn of the century, Main Street was residential,” said Columbus historian Rufus Ward. “From where the YMCA is all the way down to the train depot, there were large homes on both sides of the street.”

Slowly, that nature of Main Street changed. Sanders said as a child he remembers several of the old homes.

“I could tell you who lived in them, too,” he said.

The original home, owned by Sanders’ great-grandfather, burned in 1917.

Harry Sanders, David’s brother, said the new home was constructed around the one room in the house the fire did not destroy.

“Our daddy was born in that bedroom on the northeast corner of the house,” Harry said. “Because of that, my grandmother wanted to build the new house around that bedroom.”

The current home was completed in 1919.

On at least one occasion, the rebuilt home was mistaken for the hospital, which was then located a block to the west.

“The house and the hospital had the same front,” David said. “I remember one time when I was a kid, I saw this guy standing out by the front door with a bad cut on his arm. He thought our house was the hospital. I took him by his good arm and walked him over the hospital.”

Harry said the pecan tree was planted in 1912 to commemorate the birth of his father.

Because it, too, is a part of the Sanders family history, parts of the tree will be re-purposed.

“My brother, Lee, and my son, Parker, took some of it,” David said. “They’ll do something with it, I think.”

David said he’s not sure what the future of the old home holds.

“What we’re trying to do right now is cover up where the tree fell on the house and stabilize everything,” he said. “When we can get back into house, well, your guess is as good as mine. Right now, I’m just trying to collect my thoughts.”

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

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