The victims' memorial in Radcliff. Michael Clevenger / The Courier-Journal
Few American churches in modern times have had to face the pastoral emergency that Martha and Tennison faced as senior pastors at Radcliff First Assembly of God in May 1988.
Twenty-five years ago today, a bus filled with youths and adult chaperones returning from Kings Island was rammed by a wrong-way drunken driver on Interstate 71. The resulting fire claimed 27 lives, 24 of them children.
My story on Radcliff’s recovery from that tragedy appears here, and here are links to other stories and videos in our 25-year lookback.
The Tennisons now live in Missouri and work as evangelists.
While in some respects the Radcliff area has been a transient community due to the many deployments in and out of Fort Knox, it also has families with deep roots. When Martha Tennison was a teenager, she recalled, she used to babysit for John Pearman, who was killed while driving the bus.
She recalled:
“There has not been a day go by that my husband and I haven’t thought of it. … But the grace and the power of God helped us to go on with life. The past can never be forgotten, but we go on to live in the present with his hope.”
She said her husband preached shortly after the crash on a theme that has always stayed with her — to trust God’s love, word and grace. “God is too loving to be cruel,” she said.
