Thousands of people by now had learned of the twister’s approach as it spun toward Topeka with that strangely clear, sunlit sky behind it. Many, like Stallard, were tracking its progress. And yet, during those agonizing, elastic minutes, there was nothing anyone in the world could have done to thwart the danger. You couldn’t bomb it with every B-52 in the Strategic Air Command. You couldn’t shoot it with a high-powered rifle. You couldn’t call the police or file a lawsuit or form a committee or register a complaint. This thing was coming in. That was it. And all people could do now was to try to save themselves.
And pray.
“John. John! Wake up! There’s a tornado coming! We gotta do something!” Sherry Griebat was shaking her 23-year-old husband from the fitful, exhausted sleep of a night-shift worker. John Griebat was the younger brother of gym teacher Peg Marmet. He lived with his wife and 18-month-old daughter, Julie, in a two-bedroom atomic rancher with no basement on Eveningside Drive. The little place was one of hundreds of nearly identical houses that crowded a subdivision less than a mile north of Peg and Paul’s place, on the far side of the Shunganunga Creek and west of Gage Boulevard. The Griebats’ house was very close to the original site of Chief Burnett’s cabin, gone now these many decades and long erased from memory.
Griebat was built like an iron worker, six foot four inches and maybe 215. He looked like Tom Selleck, the television actor from the 1980s. He liked to fish and hunt. And he was flat sick of his job. He worked the graveyard shift, 11:00 p.m.–7:00 a.m., at the Goodyear plant north of the river. He ran the sprayer that coated the tires inside and out to keep the rubber from sticking to the presses. He’d hang a tire, spray it and toss it onto the conveyor, then grab the next one. It was back-breaking, soul-killing work. But the money was good. During one period in ’66, Griebat put in 58 days straight without a day off, knocking down double time on Sundays. A monkey could have done his job, though. That’s what he thought. Once, his foreman had called him in to see if John was interested in working his way up to a supervisory position. But Griebat declined. He didn’t want a better job at Goodyear. He didn’t want to get comfortable. He wanted the toughest, most-mind-numbing task on the line, because it would remind him that he couldn’t stay, that he had to go back to college to get his degree. He’d keep it up until Sherry finished her degree in education at Washburn. And until he’d paid off his new ’65 Chevy Impala Super Sport. But not a minute more.
Griebat mumbled through the haze of half-sleep. “It’s okay. We’ll be fine.”
“NO! We need to get out of here right now. Get up!”
Griebat slowly lifted himself out of bed. He pulled on a T-shirt, stepped into some shorts and found his house slippers on the floor. Then he cleared his head and thought for a moment. There was a community center with a gymnasium a few blocks from the house. Surely they could find shelter there. The family went out the front door and climbed into the shiny, black Impala. Sherry held the baby in her arms. The 327 roared to life and Griebat backed onto Eveningside. Then he jumped on it up the deserted street.
White’s Pony Farm filled the wide valley directly below Burnett’s Mound on the southwest side of the hill at the end of Fairlawn Road. Ray White had been a contractor before getting into dairy farming and later, beef cattle. He’d done well in all his pursuits, and in retirement, he’d taken an interest in Shetland ponies. He showed them, bred them, bought them and sold them. More than 250 Shetlands grazed across the 420 acres of the old dairy farm. White even built a half-mile oval track to run the ponies on near the farmhouse and barn. The 20-foot-wide racetrack was enclosed by two rings of white fencing. White no longer lived at the farm; the big frame house was occupied by Clarence Irish, a lanky, aging cowboy who looked after the place. Irish lived in the house with his wife and son. White’s son, Dean, a builder like his father, had constructed a fine, new home for his wife and four children across Fairlawn Road, at the base of Burnett’s Mound.
Irish and his wife stepped onto the back porch when the sirens went off and watched the tornado approach. As it drew closer, they could see it shredding stands of timber and flicking trees into the air like matchsticks. The couple watched a moment more and then headed for the basement.
Across the road, 18-year-old Jim was the only one home at Dean White’s place. His father called him not long after the sirens went off.
“What do you see, Jim?”
“It looks like a wide scoop on the ground,” Jim said.
“You need to go to the basement right now, son. Go.”
“Oh, crap! Here it comes!”
The line clicked.
Jim ran.
The pony herd undoubtedly tried to flee as the tornado swept into White’s pastures, the animals scattering before this strange and terrible new force. But they may as well have been insects at the feet of a sadistic child, for the tornado no longer showed the deference it had exhibited with the Nicelys’ horses. Dozens of ponies were lifted and slammed back to Earth or carried off. Others were struck — disemboweled, decapitated, crushed or impaled — by tree branches, fence posts, barbed wire and other debris packed in the spinning winds. The tornado then moved on to White’s farmstead. In an instant, the house, barn and silo were obliterated. Across the road a moment later, Jim White huddled alone in the basement as the home above him vaporized.
On the other side of the mound, Rick Douglass swung the WREN-mobile onto the winding road and radioed to WREN listeners that he was making the final climb to the top of the ridge. The windshield wipers were slapping double time. The quarter-size hail that had been pelting the car like handfuls of gravel suddenly grew larger. Douglass leaned into the windshield to follow the road. BANG! BANG! BANG! Now the hail was the size of grapefruits. It crashed into the hood and Douglass heard the emergency light on the roof shatter as he reached the open parking area at the top of the ridge. He assumed he’d find other public safety personnel up there — fire, police or civilian spotters. But there was no one.
He couldn’t see much through the rain and hail except a gray-brown mass of cloud that looked like dirty ground fog coming in. The wind was howling. The radio popped and crackled: “33, 33, come in, come in!” Douglass bent down near the speaker to hear above the din. It was Vernon, WREN’s news director.
“33, this is 22. Is that you up there?”
“Up where?” Douglass said.
“Up on the mound!”
“Yeah, it’s me. It’s crazy. Got grapefruit-size hail.”
“I’m down here in the valley to the west. I can see you. The tornado’s coming straight at you, Rick! You need to get out of there!”
“Roger . . .”
The hail began to ease and the rain abated. Douglass looked up. Directly in front of him, a long, white fence rail from White’s pony track was swirling in the air. The board was probably a one-by-eight, 10 or 12 feet long, and it still had a thick post attached at one end. The board danced and circled vertically in front of the car like some kind of crazy performance art.
Oh, boy, Douglass thought. He slammed the wagon into reverse. The gravel flew as he swung around and started back down the winding road. He grabbed the microphone.
“This is 33. Give it to me right now, Steve. This is hot!”
“Okay, GO!”
Douglass was broadcasting live.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Rick Douglass, and I’m driving like mad down Burnett’s Mound.” He was yelling. “Tornadic winds are right behind me. It’s coming over the mound right now. If you’re anywhere in the southwest part of the city, you need to take cover immediately. This thing is gigantic!”
In a thousand homes, people listened, and the cold, prickly sensation of imminent mortality raced across Topeka at the speed of light.
Douglass pushed the WREN-mobile hard into the switchback corners, cranking the wheel like a dirt-track driver, first one way and then the other, as he skillfully broadslided through the gravel curves. But then he felt something odd. The rear end of the ca
r was being pulled, restrained, almost as if someone had thrown a logging chain over the bumper and hooked it to a truck that was braking hard. The rear of the car felt light, too, as though it was being lifted.
The winds were reaching out to him.
“I’ve got to drop the mike to steer,” he yelled. “It’s catching me!”
Douglass rounded the last corner and made the turn onto Skyline Drive. The area was set to be developed, and already a new home stood alone halfway up the east side of the mound at the corner of Skyline and 33rd Street. The one-story house was robin’s-egg blue and owned by a minister. As Douglass passed it, he could see the house literally starting to shake and siding beginning to peel off in long, irregular shards. Gage Boulevard was straight downhill from the turn on 33rd. Douglass put the pedal down. He glanced at the speedometer: He was pushing 90 before he started to brake. Then he swung north on Gage and in a moment, skidded to a halt on the shoulder near the underpass. The rain had stopped. The sky was bright.
Officer Hathaway was nearby, standing half in his vehicle and watching the ridge with microphone in hand. Then Hathaway heard a rumbling buzz that sounded like “a freight train full of angry bees.” He called dispatcher Hood. The tornado was on the mound, he said. From the front seat of the WREN-mobile, Douglass turned and looked back toward the hill.
“Here it comes!” Hathaway shouted.
Like the leering devil himself, the towering funnel was making its grand entrance at last, shambling up the back side of the mound like a derelict king reclaiming his earthen throne. The funnel’s wobbly black crown rose and spread like a mushroom cloud against the curdled-milk sky in the west. Seconds later, Douglass and Hathaway watched the robin’s-egg-blue house on the side of the mound suddenly detach from its foundation and shoot 200 feet straight up in the air, Wizard of Oz–style, as if it were riding a geyser. Then it dipped and spun and, in an instant, exploded in a blizzard of brightly colored confetti. Hathaway was yelling into the mike. Dispatcher Marc Hood and patrolmen across the city leaned into their speakers, trying to pull words out of the static and the roar.
“The house! (unintelligible) The house! Got the house! . . . Gettin’ the hell out of here.”
At that point, transmissions from Car 45 ceased.
Burnett’s Mound / 29th & Gage
A – Nicely, Auburn Rd.
K – Lollar, SW 30th Terr.
B – Meinholdt, Hathaway, Douglass; Spotters’ vantage point Burnett’s Mound
L – Huffman, SW 30th St.
C – White’s Pony Farm
M – Goodin, Huntington Apartments
D – Lake Sherwood Estates
N – Marmet, SW 30th Terr.
E – I-470 / Gage Blvd. overpass
O – Olson, SW 30th St.
F – Noack, SW Twilight Dr.
P – Steuri, 29th St.
G – Ward, SW 33rd St. & Atwood
Q – Griebat, Shunganunga Creek Bridge
H – Hudkins, Huntington Park Texaco
R – Tuttle, SW 28th St.
I – Lollar car stalls
T – Griebat, SW Eveningside Dr.
S – Crestview Recreation Center
J – Beymer, SW Twilight Dr.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“For God’s Sake, Take Cover!”
Greg Ward stood with his father, the assistant U.S. attorney, and watched the sky above Burnett’s Mound from the driveway of the partially completed house where the Wards had sought shelter after the sirens went off.
“There it is!” the boy cried.
The tornado was nearing the ridge a quarter mile away. “Get in the basement with your mother right now!” Jim Ward commanded. He watched his son dash back through the open garage. Then he turned toward the hill, lifted the movie camera to his eye, opened the aperture and started to shoot.
The tornado seemed to pause for a moment after ascending the ridge, as if gathering itself to decide which way to go. Then it swung slightly to the north and made a straight line for the squat, now-aqua-green water tank set into the far side of the mound. The funnel’s rotation was clearly visible through Jim’s viewfinder. The column spun furiously as ragged eddies of cloud curled and looped along its edges like oily smoke from an enormous blaze.
Jim was hypnotized. He couldn’t stop watching. The tornado drew closer and began to engulf the water tank. The distant roar grew louder. He kept shooting.
Then his wife, Carolyn, was at his side, screaming.
“C’mon! C’mon! C’mon! Get in the basement!”
“In a minute . . . Just a little bit more.”
“No! Now!” She was pulling on him with both hands. But Carolyn was five feet two inches, and Jim was six foot. He caught his balance and turned toward her. Carolyn was terrified by the tornado’s approach. But what she saw in Jim’s eyes scared her almost as much. They had a glazed, faraway look, fixed and peaceful, as though he’d been sedated. Jim slowly turned back toward the tornado.
“Goddamn it, Jim! We’ve got to get back to the children! Let’s go!”
The words hit like bullets and shattered the trance. Jim was momentarily stunned. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard Carolyn use language like that before in all the years I’ve known her. I didn’t know she even knew how to swear . . .
They turned and ran for the basement.
A few blocks north of Burnett’s Mound, at the Huffman home on Southwest 30th Street, 10-year-old Teri and 12-year-old Tami had finally accepted their mother’s strange decision to bring them in early from playtime. Dinner was over and they’d settled down to watch Batman on Channel 9 out of Kansas City. But soon after the program began, the broadcast was interrupted and the words “Tornado Warning” were pasted across the screen. The girls assumed the danger was in Kansas City.
In any case, Teri was watching her mother, Joanna, a lean, pretty woman with auburn hair. All afternoon, Joanna had been weighted down by an enormous feeling of dread. Now she was pacing like a cat from one end of the small house to the other: first to the family room to check on the girls, then to the back bedroom to peer out the window closest to the mound. Then back to the family room. Then back to the window.
“Mom, what are you doing?” Teri asked. But Joanna didn’t answer. Instead, she went into the bathroom where her husband, Harold, was taking a shower. A minute later, Harold burst out dripping and naked. He grabbed his glasses and dashed for the back window, then returned 30 seconds later.
“C’mon girls!” he said. “C’mon!” There wasn’t panic in his voice. But there was an urgency there that Teri had never heard before.
“What’s happening, Daddy? What’s going on?” Harold didn’t answer as he hustled the girls down the hall. Now they were crying as he lifted the queen-size bed — frame, box spring, mattress and all.
“Climb under there right now! Go!”
“What’s going to happen?” Teri was petrified. She started shrieking. Her mother lay down first, then Tami. Teri, the youngest and smallest, was out on the end. Harold gently lowered the bed and then lay down beside it, bracing himself along the frame on the side closest to the mound.
“It’s gonna be all right. It’s gonna be all right,” Joanna said.
Harold and Virginia Tuttle lived in a three-bedroom home with an attached double garage on 28th Street, just west of Gage, along the banks of the Shunga Creek. Harold was a Kansas Highway patrolman. He was also a Pearl Harbor survivor. He’d been an infantryman stationed at Schofield Barracks on Oahu on December 7, 1941. His building was strafed. Harold went on to fight the Japanese all the way across the Pacific. On June 8, 1966, he’d worked the 7:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m. shift. He was napping on the couch in his T-shirt when Virginia’s father called from north of Topeka to warn of the approaching tornado. A few minutes later, Virginia’s dad called again, more insistent this time.
“You need to get under cover!”
Finally, Virginia told Harold, “We’d better go.” Virginia was a tall, dignified woman. She was
not the nervous kind.
The Tuttles had their grandchildren in from Kansas City that day: five-year-old Dena and two-year-old Adam. Everyone piled into the ’65 Ford Fairlane, including Gypsy, the Tuttles’ Boston terrier. Virginia was behind the wheel. Head for the interstate, Harold told her. We’ll outrun it. He held Adam in his lap. But as the car approached the I-470 overpass, the Tuttles saw a police officer in the road.
And Hell Followed With It: Life and Death in a Kansas Tornado Page 12