Devil Wind Brewery, Xenia, Ohio, released a seasonal beer it calls Whitney Wheat. It’s named after the late Gil Whitney, a former WHIO-TV weatherman who saw a “hook,” the signature of a tornado on early weather radar, and gave Xenia residents in many neighborhoods warnings that a massive tornado was bearing down on them. Those warnings are credited with saving thousands of lives.
The massive tornado killed 32, left more than 1,300 wounded, and destroyed more than 300 homes and half the buildings in the city, including nearly every public school.
Whitney died in 1982 of Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He was 42.