How's Your Luck on Friday the 13th?

Black cats, bad pennies, broken mirrors and other bad luck trolls could be waiting behind any corner today.
This is the day the superstitious dread when Friday and the number 13 coincide on the calendar. The law of averages demand that good things are bound to happen, even on the unluckiest of days. Yet that knowledge is little comfort to the people who take great pains to avoid cracks in the sidewalk or wait under a ladder. Some will not even begin a trip on a Friday, especially if it falls on the 13th.
For the superstitious, the kids at Camp Crystal Lake in the Friday the 13th movies had it easy. They know the corners could have worse dangers in store for them today.
For centuries, otherwise sensible, intelligent people have held special fear in their hearts for both the day and the number. The explanation for the association of Friday the 13th with bad luck is the belief that Christ was crucified on a Friday and the fact that there were 13 men present at the Last Supper.
Another legend from the 17th century says that witches and warlocks gathered on the Friday before the Sabbath and the 13th attendant was considered Satan.
Centuries later, there are still events such as breaking a mirror, spilling salt or having a black cat cross one's path that seem especially ominous on Friday the 13th.
People try, consciously and unconsciously, all kinds of methods to break their bad luck spells and hopefully invite good fortune. Some look for four-leaf clovers, horseshoes and pennies with Lincoln facing up. Others knock on wood, rub a rabbit's foot or carry silver dollars in their pocket, all designed to invite good luck on the day most associated with the bad.

Nature's Day of Reckoning

When hurricane forecasters first named Hurricane Opal, it was basically a formality in the second-most active hurricane season in history. Opal seemed like just another weak, underdeveloped late-season storm.
But on the night of Oct. 4, 1995, Hurricane Opal cut a wide swath of destruction in the Wiregrass, pounding the area for more than five hours with winds in excess of 80 mph, before heading north and causing more than $200 million of damage in Alabama alone.
The more than $2 billion of damage Hurricane Opal left in Alabama and Florida made it the third most costly hurricane in history, behind Andrew in 1992 and Hugo in 1989.
Today, The Dothan Eagle remembers the impact the hurricane made on the Wiregrass during the first week of October 1995.

The first week of October 1995 began like any other autumn week in the Wiregrass.
The announcement of the O.J. Simpson Trial verdict on Tuesday, Oct. 3 competed for some of the usual fall conversation with football, festivals, and school. But mostly, people were just busy with their own lives.
Jim Dennis and his wife were anticipating the birth of their first child and Lenard Windham was trying to help organize Ozark's first rodeo scheduled for the weekend.
A Dothan country radio station was gearing up for Wednesday night's Country Music Association Awards. Jeffrey and Paige Dulac had just remodeled their kitchen.
No one gave much thought to the storm making its way through the Gulf of Mexico and quietly mustering unprecedented strength.
By Tuesday afternoon, Hurricane Opal had taken precedence over everything, rudely changing thoughts, schedules and plans a day before its 80-plus mph winds, altered area buildings and landscape, turning the week upside down for Mrs. Dulac and everyone else.
"I was hearing reports the storm was going to hit, and I felt kind of silly because I had never experienced anything like this," Mrs. Dulac said.
"I told our cleaning lady I had to run to the store because I needed more ice and things like that, and I came back and really felt foolish."
Literally overnight, the hurricane had picked up its forward speed in the Gulf of Mexico and dramatically dropped its barometric pressure.
The drama began Tuesday as the storm continued its path toward the Florida Panhandle.
Wiregrass American Red Cross chapter director Mary Turner calls her volunteers.
At Flowers Hospital, Randy Taylor checks the parking lot to remove any loose objects that could become flying debris, while Dennis does the same at Extendicare Health Center.
The Extendicare assistant administrator has other concerns: his wife is eight months, three weeks pregnant and her doctor tells the couple that the drop in barometric pressure that accompanies a hurricane can sometimes cause premature labor. Kaitlyn Dennis is born nine days after the hurricane on Oct. 13, a day after her parents attended Bob Dylan's hurricane relief concert in the Dothan Civic Center.
Meanwhile, Windham makes storm preparations on his 2,500-acre Skipperville farm. He feeds the cattle early in the day, so they will be on safer ground among the trees during the storm. He also puts all loose objects in the barns and nails down the roofs of his chicken houses.
The real fun begins in Wednesday's early morning hours when a 1:45 a.m. telephone call interrupts Mrs. Turner's sleep, summoning her, disaster services director Irene Hearn and other officials to a meeting at Dothan-Houston County Emergency Management Agency at 2 a.m.
At 8, the first shelter in the area opens at Westgate Recreation Center and the first evacuees begin arriving at 11.
At 9, Hot Country 96.9, which one day earlier had been planning a major promotional contest in conjunction with Wednesday night's Country Music Awards, begins broadcasting hurricane updates every 15 minutes.
By early afternoon, store shelves begin to empty as residents were snatching all the fresh water, batteries and other supplies needed to ride out the storm. Lines of cars are on the highways, especially U.S. 231 South, and at gas pumps.
Emergency rooms are busy during the day, treating accident victims trying to get as far north as possible ahead of the storm. Hospital activity decreases as the hurricane draws closer, said Janie Powell, Marilyn McKissack and Jennifer Johnson, patient care services director, emergency room manager and manager of labor and delivery, respectively.
Meanwhile, the weather had deteriorated. A tornado touches down in Cottonwood and another funnel cloud is spotted near Daleville at Cairns Army Airfield.
At 3 p.m., 96.9 plays its last record and begins wall-to-wall hurricane coverage.
A second shelter opens at 4 p.m. at the Dothan Civic Center. The city's two main shelters - the civic center and Westgate - sheltered more than 700 people that night.
The eye of Hurricane Opal hits Hurlburt Field, near Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., at 5 p.m., packing wind gusts of up to 144 mph. The storm still has much of that punch when it hits the Wiregrass.
By 7 p.m., Opal knocks out electrical power in the area and begins a five-hour assault on the Wiregrass with winds in excess of 80 mph.
In downtown Dothan, as power is interrupted across the Wiregrass, The Dothan Eagle's presses start printing Thursday morning's edition - some five hours earlier than normal in an effort to beat the possible power outage. As the winds and rain pound the area, the newspaper is able to successfully complete its entire press run and newspapers are delivered with few delays across the area as residents survey the damage at sunrise.
Not long after the heaviest winds hit the area, the Dulacs lose one of their two trees at their Girard Avenue home in Dothan. Later that night, they find an oak tree had crashed on top of their carport.
In Headland, a tornado dropped a pecan tree on Dennis Daughtry's mobile home while he's sleeping in the back bedroom about 8:30 p.m. He rushed outside to disconnect his electricity, gas and water and rode out the rest of the storm at a neighbor's home. For months after the hurricane, Daughtry would live in a tent while awaiting FEMA assistance.
During the worst of the storm, the only connection to the outside world is the radio and only two stations were able to continue broadcasting throughout the night. WDJR uses the services of Tom Nebel (then at WTVY and now the station's general manager) and begins taking calls from residents throughout the Wiregrass reporting conditions and damage in their area.
"I'm in Dothan," one of the station's more than 500 callers that night tells WDJR's Jerry Broadway and Mitch English. "It's raining really hard. The wind is blowing. There are trees down. I can tell the power lines are down."
After WTVY was knocked off the air for what is believed to be the first time in the station's 40-year history, Nebel started doing full-time breaks with WDJR. After 7:30 p.m., he remained on the line for the next five hours.
Three or four times during the night, Broadway braves the winds to re-fuel WDJR's generator.
"You haven't lived until you've poured gas in a generator with the wind blowing 90 mph," Broadway said. "But it was scary enough just being in here listening to the wind howl and when our heavy, metal back door blew off between 10-11, it sounded like someone had fired a shotgun at the end of the hall. I thought the roof had caved in on us.
"It was the longest night I've ever spent with the exception of the night my first child was born. It was just a wild night. I'm glad I had the opportunity to do it and I hope I never have the opportunity again."
The next day, crews are busy on the streets with clean-up as residents do the same at their homes. There is little damage to Windham's and wife Bonn's home.
His farm is another story. When he inspects the damage at 4 a.m., following the hurricane, Windham finds one of his 300 cows has been killed, along with almost 2,000 of his 9,000 chickens. There was damage to the roofs of all 10 of his chicken houses. Windham later found a hay barn had been blown into the highway.
"That night, sitting at the house listening to the wind, I had absolutely no idea it was that bad," Windham said. "We had hardly a limb fall out of our pecan trees there. But everywhere else, it was just devastating."
In the shelters, people no longer in fear for their lives now turn their anxieties toward their homes and loved ones.
It was now a matter of cleaning up the damage and trying to get life back to normal. High school football games were played that Friday night and Ozark held its jamboree and rodeo that weekend.

From Joy to Sorrow Judy Garland's Music Still Touches Lives

Some people feel their hearts skip a beat when they see a sunrise. Others might feel a personal connection by spotting the leap of a dolphin above the ocean. The hearbroken found it in the voice of Judy Garland.
Her name has been linked as much with her tragic story as with the enormous music library she left behind. But another segment of the population found comfort through the years with Garland's soulful sound. Her soul-piercing voice, despite the pain she obviously carried in her own heart, found a way to express the rainbow of emotions - from joy to sorrow - that life often brings.
There's even a flower named after her - the Judy Garland Timeless Rose - with its vibrant mix of cheerful yellow and red-hot crimson blooms.
Then, of course, there was also the movie.
"Many trauma treatment centers have pictures of Dorothy, with all of 'The Wizard of Oz' characters around her," said Darlene Dezso, a Dothan social worker who specializes in childhood trauma.
"I definitely think there's a cognitive and soulful connection between many people who experienced abuse in childhood and the movie, mainly because Dorothy had been wounded and was searching herself. Many people I work with are really searching, trying to make sense of their suffering. But all the time healing is within them, just as Dorothy came to find that it was always within herself."
It's no secret that Dothan's Patti Rutland Simpson is a big "Wizard of Oz" fan. She named her dance studio, which she's operated in Dothan for 15 years, after the movie. Pictures of Dorothy dominate the walls of the Honeysuckle Road studio, along with a curio cabinet with "Oz" memorabilia.
Simpson is also writing a book, "Finding Oz," about her recovery from divorce that uses lessons from the movie with chapter themes such as "There's a Storm Brewing," "Courage," "Use Your Brain," and "Stay Out of the Poppy Field."
"I think the reason the movie has been such a success for as long as it has is every person from young to old can relate to it," Simpson said. "It's magic for the children, but also contains lessons for us adults."
Perhaps it's appropriate that the star of the most successful children's movie of all time has a children's museum named for her in Garland's hometown.
John Kelsch, director of The Judy Garland Children's Museum in Grand Rapids, Minn., said it was only natural.
"Judy Garland had a lifelong interest in children," Keltsch said. "She always made a point of visiting children's hospitals and even made a movie with Burt Lancaster, "A Child is Waiting," that broke ground because it was the first film that dealt with mental retardation.
"But it wasn't just children. Judy was always interested in people who don't have the capacities most of us take for granted. I really don't want to speculate on why people feel the way they do about her. Judy just touched everybody."
There are also millions of people who were touched by "Oz." A book by Joy Miller and Marianne Ripper, "Following the Yellow Brick Road - The Adult Child's Personal Journey Through Oz," details the characteristics and needs that children of dysfunctional families share with characters in the movie.
Michella Lee is also a big "Oz" fan. As a local counselor, she sometimes asks clients to talk about the "Oz" character they identify with the most.
"I was probably 11 or 12 when I first saw it, and intially what really touched me was the loyalty portrayed in the characters and the longing I felt for that kind of loyalty," Lee said. "Later, I realized what Dorothy was really in search of was herself. But I related mostly to the lion, when people had all these expectations of you being big and brave, while internally, all the time he was walking around petrified.
"I think the movie also demonstrates how futile it is to depend on someone else to meet your needs and make you happy."
The 1998 Dothan High School production of "The Wizard of Oz" touched a Dothan minister to the point of writing his next sermon on universal lessons he saw in the story. Dr. Lawson Bryan, senior minister of First United Methodist Church, said he saw something in the scarecrow, tin man, cowardly lion and the little lost girl from Kansas, with which his entire congregation could relate the following Sunday.
Perhaps partly because of the troubles Garland had in her off-camera life, many people most acutely in touch with their pain seem to feel a connection with the emotions expressed in many of her songs.
"The song, "Over the Rainbow" is a big reflection of that because she sung it with such sensitivity and from her soul," Dezso said. "The words to that song touch the hearts of people who have been wounded.
"Dorothy was a wounded, lost child and was quite aware of her feelings. She expressed a lot of the bravery, intellect and intuition that the scarecrow, tin man and cowardly lion had, yet thought they didn't."