June 8th 1953 was a spring day not unlike many other Michigan Spring days in early June. The weather was warm, a bit humid and partly sunny. For the most part the events of the day were not terribly uncommon except for the visit from my dear and soon to be departed close friend, Patricia Sue Fender. Her Mother knew her as Patty Sue; to me she was and forever will be, ” Pat ”. Late in the afternoon on that fateful Monday, Pat stopped by my parent’s house at G5219 North Saginaw on her way home from her first day on the job at what was then Citizens Bank. She was very excited about her new job, which she was fortunate enough to have landed even prior to her graduation on June 4th from Beecher High School. Pat was very bright and had made the most of her high school education; she was a real “catch’ for the Citizens Bank. I was at home having arrived from my job at Buick Motor Division in time to be in the driveway washing my car when Pat arrived. We talked about her job, my job and made a plan to be together that evening at her house. We also embraced, kissed and held hands while we talked. She stayed only a few minutes, as she knew I needed to be at GMI for evening classes at 6 pm.

Pat went on home and I went on to my boring accounting classes at GMI. After my classes around 7:45 pm, I ran an errand for my Mother and then proceeded to drive directly to Pat Fender’s house arriving there about 8:20 pm. She greeted me at the back door and we talked for about 5 minutes in the kitchen. Then we moved to the living room to sit together on the family couch, fortunately with the other family members occupied in other rooms of the house. The sky had already darkened considerably by the time I arrived at Pat’s home; by 8:30 pm the wind had really increased in force. Only moments later we went to the front window of the living room to see the wind and lightning and hear, of course, the noise…. freight train sounds mixed with thunder. Seconds later the rear window of the living room blew in and scattered glass all over the carpet. We hit the floor face down, side-by-side with our arms wrapped tightly around each other as if in one final loving embrace. But we were scared. The floor seemingly moved which I knew later was the living room carpet moving laterally across the concrete floor of the house. That was all!

The next thing I knew, I regained consciousness about 100 feet from where the house had been; I never found Pat nor saw her again. As I started to stand up I realized my right leg was severely broken as it collapsed out from beneath me. I sat back down and began to look around still not realizing that I would never see Pat again. The devastation that I could see was immense, trees uprooted, houses gone cars swept away or overturned or both and a devastating silence and near darkness, left behind the terrible tornado. After what seemed liked hours but in reality was only 30-40 minutes, a person came to me whom I later learned was Mrs. Thomas Bell from the other side of Coldwater Road. A group of houses had been spared less than ¼ of a mile east of where I was laying. Mrs. Bell was, I was told later, a registered nurse; she put a tourniquet on my leg to stop the bleeding and doubtless saved my life. Again, I waited for what seem to be many hours to be picked up by some civilian neighbors and loaded onto a mattress in the back of a pickup truck.

From there I was taken to Hurley Hospital where I stayed on a gurney for 2 days. On the third day, I was taken to surgery to repair the compound fracture of my right tibia and spent the next 10 days in a hospital bed at Hurley. Needless to say, I was very depressed not being able to get reliable news of Pat Fender. Finally, the news came and it was all bad; Pat had been killed by the tornado and her family was planning her funeral, as were many other families at that time. I had asked hospital officials to allow me to attend the funeral; they refused. I knew then that my life was ended, too. My life was not ,of course, ended largely to due the magnificent support of my parents, brothers, sisters, school friends and many, many relatives. They all forced me back into the land of the living and helped me to stop feeling sorry for myself.

Since this is my story, I must thank all who came to my emotional support and now after all these years when I am so thankful to be alive to openly thank Mrs. Thomas Bell for stopping the bleeding. Was it not for her, someone else would write his or her memory of that awful night? Thank you Mrs. Bell and thank you my God and Savior. And lastly, I thank Pat for the few years we had together and cherish the happy memories I have of her. She will everlastingly be in my heart and on my mind; and in my memory, always 17 years old.

On that June night in 1953, I was 12 years old. I remember it being hot and very still all day that day, but did not think much of the weather one way or the other. My father had died a few years previous and as a result my mother struggled to support me and my sisters Dorothy (who was 14 at the time) and Marion (who was 10) and my brother Harold (who was 8).

Our house at 2052 Coldwater Road was tiny; there were only 2 bedrooms and no basement. Mama worked as a waitress as many hours as she could just to keep us fed and clothed, so there were no extras of any kind. We have yearned for a TV so badly that she saved up for months to buy one. It was only about a month old the night the tornado hit.

Mama was working so us kids were home alone under my sister Dorothy’s care. I still remember “Robert Montgomery Presents” was just starting when it started to storm outside. Dorothy said we had to turn the TV off because mama said to do that whenever there was lightning and all that. I was irritated because I was all ready to watch my show, but grudgingly turned off the TV and joined my siblings at the dining room table where they were setting up a game of Parcheesi.

Just then hail started crashing through our windows; huge, baseball sized chunks. We were terrified, of course. Dorothy yelled for all of us to get under the dining room table, so we did, since there was no basement to go to. We didn’t even know it was a tornado, we just knew something terrible was happening. The last thing I remember is huddling with my siblings under the table. When I came to, I was buried under 2x4s where our garden had been. The tornado had lifted our house with us in it, and smashed it to bits. It was only by the grace of God that we all survived without a scratch.

If you read Leonard Brush’s personal account, well we lived right across the street from his girlfriend Pat Fender and we all remember how it had been her first day working at the bank, and how awful sad it was that she was killed. He also mentions Mrs. Bell. Well, my siblings and I, in our terror, ran to the Bells house because it was the first house we found that was still standing. The Bells kept us all night. They truly did some good things that night, those folks, helping others the way they did.

We were caked in dirt and the dirt in our hair was an inch thick. We were so afraid without mama, as they would not let her get to us until the next day because of the danger of the downed power lines. I will never forget the devastation I saw in the seconds after I crawled out of the rubble. All the huge old trees, pulled out of the ground, all the roots exposed. All the people injured and covered in blood, all the houses, everything, just flattened.

We lost what few things we had were lost, including the precious TV. We did not get another one for a very long time. Because we were renting the house, one was not rebuilt for us. The Red Cross gave my mother some money and we stayed up north with relatives the rest of the summer while she stayed here and got herself together.

My whole childhood I have always divided into two parts: before the tornado and after the tornado. It really did change our lives. I don’t have any photos of myself before age 12 or any of my father either because it was all lost in the tornado. Yet at the same time, I felt incredibly blessed that God spared us children as we huddled under that table.

God bless all my fellow survivors and the families of those lost.

We lived on the north side of Carpenter Rd. ¼ mile west of Belsey Rd. in a large farmhouse that sits back 170 yards or so from the road. There were mostly open fields behind us to Coldwater Rd. where there were a few farms and scattered houses.

I was only 6 years old but some events stick in one’s memory for the rest of their lives; this was one of them. My mother was getting us kids bathed for the evening when my father rushed into the house shouting to my mother, “Get the kids to the basement, a cyclone is coming.” He went back outside, but not for long. We were all herded to the basement, my father being the last. I asked, “Are they bombing us?” My mother was saying how it sounded like a freight train running through our house.

Because of all the noise, none of us heard the pounding and yelling at our front door until the storm passed. When we did hear the pounding, my father ran up stairs and let the neighbor family of four in, and led them to the basement. From the Gould’s, we started to hear of the horror that went on above us.

They were hysterical, trying to tell us how each parent hung on to a child while hugging a porch pillar for dear life. At the same time, two huge trees were uprooted and fell along side the porch, just missing them. Also, a picture window they were next to was blown in. For some strange reason the front door had been locked. We were all asking each other how it came to be locked, since we rarely locked our doors.

We really couldn’t see the devastation until the next morning because it turned dark. It was raining when my Uncle Bob Pettengill stopped by with a farm vehicle to check on his daughter who was spending the night with us. He also, was helping with the search and transporting of people, to hospitals or shelters.

The next day some of my family and I walked out across our back fields towards Coldwater Rd. to view the devastation caused from the center of that huge storm. There were pieces of homes, a refrigerator with pop bottles unbroken. We heard that one or two people living in these broken houses might have been killed. My Aunt Ellen told me not to touch the stuff. The stone walls of a barn looked strange without its’ top. There were dead and injured animals lying all over. Some men were shooting an injured cow. A neighboring 20-acre woods was all torn up and broken, with not a tree standing straight.

People were starting to call what happened, a “tornado,” and this was a term we were not familiar with.

It took some time and help, from friends and family with the cleanup: cutting up the fallen trees, repairing roof and windows, and getting over the shock of what had hit us.

Monday, June 8, 1953, was a warm, breezy day as I remember. I had helped my Mom hang diapers on the clothesline for my two year old brother and four month old sister and felt as if we’d be blown away. It was the first real day of summer vacation as school was out the previous Friday. In September, I would officially be in high school as a Freshman – an event my friends and I eagerly awaited. That evening at 8:30 p.m., our lives would change forever.

My dad and eleven year old brother were playing catch in the front yard when the Beecher fire alarm sounded. My brother, Dan, was facing the West and saw the huge black smokestack-looking form in the sky. He thought it could be the fire, but my dad immediately knew it was something much worse. “That’s a tornado cloud. Get in the house and to the basement now!” he screamed.

Our family made it to the basement, and since we were the only house on our block with a basement, our neighbors came in, too. As we crouched by the West basement wall, the window was right over my head. As the noise grew louder and I became more terrified, I looked up and saw nothing but the ugly greenish-black color of the wind. It sounded like a freight train was going right over our heads!

In a few minutes it was all quiet so my dad went upstairs to see what had happened to our house. He came right back down and told us it was all right to come upstairs since the only thing he could see was the TV antenna on the ground.

Since my grandmother and a majority of my mother’s immediate family lived on Kurtz Avenue and Coldwater Road between Alfred Street and Harry Street just two block north of us, my dad got in the car and left to see if they were all right. He was gone for quite a while and my mother was getting more anxious and worried. One of the neighbor boys offered to ride his bike to Kurtz and see how things were at my grandma’s. He came back in about five minutes and told us that there was nothing standing and he could not get to the streets as they were covered with debris and downed wires.

As we learned later, my dad had gotten as far as he could in the car and began walking to find our family. He found my Grandma with five of my cousins she had been baby-sitting. She had a severely broken arm and was dazed. The children were cut and bleeding and dad couldn’t tell how badly they might have been hurt. He picked up the ones he could and the others walked to the car. As he was about to start the car, my aunt and uncle came walking down what had been the road, limping and bleeding. He got them into the car also and started for Hurley Hospital. At the corner, a lady was holding a small bleeding child and asked that they please take her to the hospital also. Dad told her they were heading for Hurley and she said she would find her little girl.

Dad said he somehow made it to Saginaw Street and started south driving as fast as he could and laying on the horn, trying to get a police escort to the hospital. He ran red lights and just kept driving until he reached the emergency drive at Hurley. The staff at Hurley were aware of the tornado situation and he got immediate help getting the people out and into the hospital. How he got that many people in our little care is amazing in itself.

As they were taking people from the car, all four tires went completely flat! It was a miracle that he was able to drive in that mess, pick up all those people and make it all the way to the hospital without flat tires. He went into the hospital with everyone to identify them and get them settled. He was there probably two hours before he came out to try to find a way home and discovered that some good Samaritan had fixed and changed all four tires.

We were very fortunate as all our immediate family recovered from their injuries. So many extended family members lived within these same two blocks, we lost my mom’s uncle, Jerome Dunning, and mom’s cousin, Lucille Parr, lost both legs and her husband, son, and youngest daughter. Her older daughter, Diane, survived after surgery and lengthy hospital stay. Many of the other aunts, uncles, and cousins were less severely injured.

Many of our school friends were either killed or injured and many of them never returned or rebuilt their homes. It was an experience that is embedded in memory and this 50th anniversary brought it all back as if it were yesterday.

Marilyn Murphy Gregor
Beecher High School Class of 1957

Monday, June the eighth 1953 was unbearably humid. As I remember there did not seem to be any breeze on that day. The oppressing heat and humidity hung about you like a “wet, hot blanket”.

At about 8:00 p.m., my friend and classmate, Richard and I were cruising with his dad’s new 1953 Buick and we decided to visit an uncle of mine who at that time lived on Hamilton Avenue near North Saginaw Street, which is approximately 3 miles from the Beecher area. While at my uncle’s house, we sat on the back porch and looked at the sky. Towards the northwest, the sky was a bouquet of colors; pink, dark green, yellow, gold, purple and black. Never had I seen such co1ors in cloud formations

In the distance, I could see a huge black mass of clouds, not distinctive from my vantage point as a funnel, but more as a huge swaying, black, worrisome column of storm clouds. The cloud was clearly defined on the horizon and I commented to my friend, not realizing how close I was in my distance estimate, “I bet there’s a storm in the north end…Beecher school or Walli’s Drive-In.” I was to find out later that Beecher High School had been hit and leveled but Walli’s had been spared.

The matter passed from my mind and in about 45 minutes the telephone rang. It was my mother, who was doing her ironing and listening to WFDF radio 910 AM. The first report of trouble had been called in directly by a Bell Telephone repairman working in the vicinity of Coldwater and Clio Roads. “A storm had knocked down some trees and phone lines,” and that was all that was available for news, she said. Her concern had been for my safety, because Walli’s was my favorite drive-in and I was frequently a customer there.

My friend and I decided to drive out to the north end and see what had happened. We set off driving down North Saginaw Street, noticing several trucks, cars and station wagons speeding and honking their horns and flashing their lights. All heading south; we would soon learn why and where they were headed.

When we passed Carpenter Road (one mile to go to storm center of damage), we noticed the lack of people on the streets. Only cars were evident, carrying people southward. My favorite drive-in, Walli’s, was still standing, but what met my eyes beyond that was almost more than I could comprehend.

The initial impression that still remains with me today in addition to the destruction and confusion was the “screaming people.” In disbelief, I witnessed a woman standing alone, arms outstretched, head up and screaming without let-up! Undoubtedly she had been witness to her family and home being swept away.

It was dusk at this time but I was still able to see; many fires were breaking out, probably from severed electrical wires and gas lines that had ruptured. The fire and destruction gave an unreal picture. There were no discernible streets, landmarks or reference points except the Beecher Water Tower west of Saginaw Street and south of Coldwater Road, Beecher School or what was once Beecher School, and the new General Motors Ternstedt Plant between Saginaw and Dort Highway north of Coldwater Road. The rest was disheveled, totally destructed.

People were beginning to appear from I don’t know where. A man ran to me and said, “I need help. Come on, hurry!” Needless to say, I was scared. My knees were weak and I found it difficult to breathe, but I followed. The first person we came across was a woman bleeding very badly from many cuts. We put her on a makeshift stretcher and carried her to an area where cars and other vehicles were waiting to transport the injured and dead to hospitals.

I remember vividly a Ford 2-door car, pretty new, and the driver broke the front passenger’s side back seat rest to accommodate the injured woman. We then laid her in the car. I never saw the car, the woman, or the driver again. But the man with whom I had teamed up initially, was to remain my rescue partner. We stuck together all night…digging people out of basements, from underneath lumber, debris, out of ditches, carrying injured and the dead, to a common pick-up area. I never knew his name.

No trucks or cars were able to get into the damaged area, so everyone had to be carried by blanket, by hand, piggyback, or on anything capable of holding a person and that could serve as stretchers. It was not until the early hours of the morning when dawn came that the totality of the destruction was realized by all of those involved in the immediate rescue efforts.

Initial rescue efforts were very difficult because of darkness. Meanwhile, Consumer’s Power Company had brought in generator trucks during the night and long extension cords were unrolled, and we, my partner and I, were given a large searchlight about 12″ to 14″ in diameter to find survivors.

Usually the cries and screams would direct us to the injured and the dying. We all felt inept while doing this rescue work because there were so many people injured and all in need of help. You had to prioritize the worst and ignore the rest. We wondered, “When is more help coming?”

I recall one little girl, about 8 to 10 years old that I pulled the wreckage of what once was a house was covered with many scrapes, cuts, and in a state of shock. Sand and rocks had been blown into her skin and hair and while I carried her to a rescue point she told me her name. I assured her she was going to be all right. Her body was very cold. She had been trapped probably 4-5 hours. I remember she said, “I was in the kitchen and it got dark and lots of noise came up. The corner of the house started to raise. My sister and mother were in the kitchen. My sister grabbed me and pulled me under the dining room table. All I remember is her being pulled away from me. That’s all.” She had told me her name then, which I have since forgotten, but I looked in the Flint Journal special edition and read where her mother and sister had been killed. I often thought of her.

The rescue work continued all night, but the area became cluttered with people. We were to witness some looting. One person, I remember, picked up a Winchester carbine rifle from some debris and walked off .. with it. My rescue companion and I thought he was helping the rescuers but soon realized he was treasure hunting. When we questioned, “What the hell was he doing?’, he just wa1ked off, rifle in hand. But this was the exception rather than the rule, because the hard work and compassion shown by most people that night was heartwarming to say the least.

At one point during the night, fire engines began to work their way into the storm’s destruction center and work to put out and prevent fires.

Governor G. Mennen Williams came on the scene. I recognized him at once. He stated to a fireman at his side. “Who the hell is in charge here?” I then lost sight of him, but later saw his picture in the paper.

My rescue companion and I continued our search with the spotlight and came across bodies that lay in an open grassy area south of Coldwater Road and east of North Saginaw Street. I remember because I could coordinate my approximate position by the new GM Ternstedt Plant in the distance.

There were scores of dead in this area – I was to learn later that this had once been Kurtz Avenue. This was not my first look at violent death. Nor was it to be my last that night. There were four bodies within 30 feet all lying in knee-high grass. I remember the grass swaying from the breeze and my light picking them up. It was an awesome sight.

As in combat, once the initial shock subsides, the job has to be done and we set about carrying the remains with blankets to be loaded on a truck. At this point. the vehicles were able to gain access into some areas, and the job of evacuating the injured speeded up.

When daylight finally came, the weather was clear and beautiful. The sunlight made a mockery of the previous night’s deadly onslaught. The enormity of what had happened finally became a reality instead of a surrealistic nightmare. All the people involved in the initial rescue efforts probably never really had any of this sink into them until some time later. It was too much to grasp while trying to work.

It was later I remembered that I had not contacted my parents as to my whereabouts after the phone conversation the night before. I thought, I’m in trouble. I don’t remember how I got home; perhaps I hitchhiked. I usually did in those days.

But the welcome committee was there to greet me. They were distressed by what I had seen, worried about my safety and a bit pissed that my “friend” hadn’t called them. Dick, whom I thought had also worked in the rescue effort had bugged out. He had taken his dad’s car back home. After that our friendship cooled.

Until this time, I had never really put it into writing, nor talked of it much.

The strangely colored lightning caught my eye as I was playing in the backyard with our dog Skippy. As my mother was taking down the dry laundry from the clothesline, the lightening kept appearing in the western sky. My seven year old mind thought the colors were awesome, but didn’t bother me much.

I remember going into the house and getting ready for bed. It was a warm early summer evening in 1953, and I was in my underwear. As I was preparing to get into bed, my dad hollered “Get to the basement”. I followed my parents, two older sisters Sharon and Carol, older brother Gordon, and Dennis, the youngest, to our lower level. Within a very short period of time, it sounded as if freight trains were passing overhead. There were many loud explosions, along with a myriad of other noises It was a time the Russians were a real threat to our country. In my young mind, I knew the terrible Ruskies had attacked.

After the din subsided, we looked around in total disbelief. The fuel oil tank which my mother had been standing near with Dennis had fallen in the exact spot they had been standing just
seconds before. We looked up to find the sky, where our house had been standing just minutes before. We were still alive.

As we crawled out of the hole that used to be our basement, we began to feel where our bodies had been hit by flying debris. Sharon, the oldest, had a gash on her arm. Carol’s little toe was almost severed, and she had a few other cuts. My parents and brothers had minor scratches. I had cuts on my knee, back, and buttock that required stitches.

After we all got on solid ground, we gathered around a large tree that was just feet away that was still standing and thanked God we had made it through the ordeal. We walked west (we lived on Coldwater Rd. between Belsay and Genesee Rds.) where we were met by Red Cross and other emergency workers. From there we were taken north on Genesee Rd. about a mile to my paternal grandparents’ house. They drove my sisters and I to a Doctors office in Mt. Morris, where we were treated for our injuries. From there I went to a private residence and was cleaned up. I was so dark it took several baths for the lady that was washing me to realize I was a white kid.

We stayed at my grandparents’ house for several days, until we were able to put up two tents in our backyard. One tent was for sleeping, the other for cooking and storage. Every evening my mother had to change the dressings on our injuries. The only light we had were lanterns, which attracted those pesky June bugs.

GrandpaMorey was a carpenter Uncle Tom a Plumber and a friend from church an electrician, so we had a lot of skilled help in rebuilding our house. My older cousins, Uncle Toms sons, were also a lot of help in the process. I was too little to be of much help.

Our old house had been two stories. The tornado lifted the upper level and moved it across the road. There were still clothes in the closets we were able to salvage. Dad had recently bought a new car, which was totalled by the storm. At that time, auto insurance wasn’t required, and he had to pay the loan balance.

We didn’t see Skippy for several days, and feared the worst. He finally came home limping, and had a curve to his back, which never straightened out. Our neighbors to the east had cattle which died from the storm. They salvaged what meat they could, and shared their harvest with our family pet. Dad built another dog house for Skippy, but he never used it. Apparently our mutt was sleeping in his abode when the tornado hit, and he never wanted to see the darkness of another dog house.

I was sixteen, ending my Junior Year at St. Michael’s High School in Flint. My classmates Dick Wagner and Jack Murphy and I went downtown to shop at Penney’s. Then we decided to go to the North Flint Drive-In on N. Saginaw Street to see “Invasion USA”. We didn’t call our parents and let them know we were going there. Dick was driving his parents’ brand new Buick sedan.

It was a hot, humid and still night. The car was facing east looking at the screen. Just as the movie screen flickered to life cars started driving out of the theater. We looked behind us to the West and saw a black funnel cloud stretching from the horizon to the sky. It was still a ways away, probably near the present I-75. We recognized it as a tornado. There had been a tornado in Massachusetts a few days before that in the news.

We immediately drove out of the theater and turned South on N. Saginaw St. towards Coldwater Road. In their panic, people were ignoring the traffic light at Saginaw and Coldwater smashing into each other like a demolition derby. It wasn’t possible to get through the intersection. We stopped the car in front of Beecher High School and watched the tornado move towards us. I was sitting in the middle of the front seat between Dick and Jack.

When the tornado hit, the windshield disintegrated as if a thousand stones had been thrown at it. Somehow I twisted and crawled into the back seat fast enough to avoid any cuts from the glass. Dick and Jack both had many glass cuts on their face and arms. The Flint Journal took a picture of Mr. Wagner’s new Buick sitting on a pile of lumber in the Beecher Lumber yard that was located across the intersection and down the street past a gas station. It had probably traveled 100 yards.

I remember walking around the area afterwards and seeing people rescued. I was eventually put in a car with several other injured people. The car drove down Saginaw St. with the driver flashing its lights and blinking its horn. I have often wondered how much blood got on the car seats of that Good Samaritan.

We were taken to Hurley Hospital. I was put on the floor with many other patients in one of the large rotundas that the hospital wings branched out from. Father Sheridan, the pastor of St. Michael’s, came across me there, and eventually my parents were notified that I was there. Unfortunately it was after my Father had searched for me at the temporary morgue that had been set at the Flint Armory.

By morning many non- tornado patients were discharged from Hurley and I was given a room. My left leg was put in a cast. Several days later my leg swelled out of the cast and the cast was cut off revealing gas gangrene. I was taken to surgery and the infected tissue was removed. Many tornado victims were infected with gas gangrene. Many of the homes in the Beecher area were on septic tanks. The tornado blew the contaminated dirt from the ground into every exposed pore of our skin. We all looked like we had beard stubble for many days. It wouldn’t wash out. Gas gangrene is very contagious and all who had it were separated and quarantined on separate floors of the hospital. Many tornado victims had amputations because of it. To the best of my knowledge Dr. Hira Branch was the only orthopedic surgeon in Flint at the time. He must have been very busy.

I was put on the isolation floor in a room with a man named Paul Ginter who lost an arm and a leg and a sixteen old son. It must have been hard for him having a sixteen-year-old boy in the room. He eventually went to college and became a principal in the Flint School system.

My classmates also survived. Dick Wagner was released fairly soon. Jack Murphy was in a coma for a while but he was released before I was. I was released on July 3rd in time for my seventeenth family birthday party on the Fourth of July. My final report card for my Junior Year reflected better marks than I deserved. I sensed the sisters thought I had passed a far harder exam than the ones they had given in my absence.

I am 89 year old and I remember the Beecher tornado like it was yesterday. My daughter Goldie wrote her story, and I would like to share mine.

The day began like any other summer day in our tiny, modest house. My husband, Sam, had died and I was working hard to try and raise our four children alone. It obviously was not easy, as woman did not have the job opportunities that they have today. I was waitressing at Thompson’s restaurant and I was going to be working late the night of June 8. I did not worry about my children because my oldest daughter Dorothy was very responsible, always had been.

It was storming out and I was hoping the children had unplugged that new TV that I had scrimped and saved for, because at that time I didn’t know much about electrical gadgets and worried that it could catch on fire when there was lightning about. Just then, the front window of the restaurant shattered and I heard an awful, horrible noise like I had never heard and have never heard since, like a freight train. I ran to the restroom and fell to my knees, praying to God to keep my children safe.

I ran outside a few minutes later and saw that my daughter Dorothy’s bike was still there. I always rode her bike to work because we had never owned a car. I rode home as fast as I could, getting more and more frightened, as the closer I got to home, the worse the devastation.

The police would not let me past a certain point. I pleaded with him, telling him my children were just up that way, but they refused. I rode to my mother’s house where I spent the worst night of my life, hoping that God had answered my prayers. The next day, imagine my relief when I was let in and discovered that our house and everything in it was gone but my children were unharmed. I thank God every day for that. And I thank God for the good people, the Bells, who let my children stay with them that night.

That fateful day of terror and loss was seared into memory, as it happened on my fourth birthday. I was outside, still celebrating, and playing with the little girl across the street – Vicky Todd. we were playing under a big weeping willow tree in her front yard, across the street from my parent’s home at G-3225 W. Ridgeway Rd. in the Mayfair subdivision. Located about four blocks W. of Clio Rd, we watched as the tornado formed over our houses, then came down not far away.

I didn’t know what a tornado was, only that the sky got really black and stormy looking. My parents called me home to get into the basement. Dad had grown up on Russell Rd. in the Beecher area, and we had lots of relatives still living around there. My Grandparents (Guy and Mable Stoddard) were living in Russelleville by the old Russelleville Ballroom, and Great Grandparents (Pettingills) were on their farm (most of which is now Bluegill boat ramp area) in Geneseeville.

At first light, we drove with the family – parents Jack and Geraldine Spangler, older brothers Bruce and Keith Spangler, and myself – Chris Spangler, through the utter devastation left behind in the wake of the tornado. We were blessed that all family and friends were un-harmed. The tornado took out my grandparents’ barn not more than thirty feet from their home, while leaving it untouched.

My greatest memories of that trip are of the total devastation, Beecher High School, the intact fruit cellars in the basements where homes had been, the broken trees along River Rd. where the old slaughterhouse once stood containing ripped and torn fragments of clothing, and the chickens from Grandpa Stoddard’s barn that had all their feathers removed. Pre-plucked naked chickens running around were great fun for a four year old.

It left me however, with a very deep fear of tornados, and every time it even hinted of a storm after that I would panic and have to sleep in our own fruit cellar. Now, fifty years later that panic has subsided some. It (the subsiding panic) is a really good thing, for now I live in an area with hurricanes, the largest number of tornados’ in the USA, and the greatest number of lightning strikes too. Our tornados are not heard about so much because they tend to be smaller and less powerful than the ones in tornado alley.

Another memory is of the rows of caskets lined up in the parking lot of Mayfair Bible Church not half a block from my home, and next door to my baby sitter, Joyce Prays’ home. Her yard had wonderful Black Cherry trees we used to climb and sit in, while eating fresh fruit later in the summers.

I praise God that none of my family were harmed by this tornado, and want to thank all those that helped out.

On the evening of June 8, 1953 my father called the family to the back yard to look at the strange sky. Green, black, yellow and gray clouds tumbled overhead and there was a strange color to the light. We watched for a while, but could see nothing below the clouds since the Civic Park area where we lived had some slightly rolling tree-covered terrain between us and the north end of town.

When we kids went to bed, leaving our parents downstairs discussing their days, my older brother and I listened to the radio that was outside our rooms. In those days we didn’t have radios in our rooms and our family had no television set. We weren’t supposed to listen after bedtime, but we sometimes turned it on. The tornado was announced and the request was broadcast for blood. We knew Dad was a blood donor, but we weren’t supposed to be listening. Finally we decided that rule breaking or nor we had to go downstairs. Dad tried to drive to Hurley, but too many vehicles were in the way. He brought the car home and walked to Hurley.

In the next few days many people tried to drive by the area to sight see, by my parents said we didn’t need to add to the congestion.