And Hell Followed With It: Life and Death in a Kansas Tornado

by Bonar Menninger

  “Dad! That’s a tornado!”

  A long pause followed as the words sunk in.

  Then Craig said, “We need to get out of here!”

  But his father wasn’t so sure. “Maybe we ought to just stay in the car.”

  Objects were beginning to fly past and a few thumped into the Corvair.

  “No, Dad! We need to get out of this car right now. Let’s get out. We’ll head up to Morgan Hall. We can get inside.”

  Bill didn’t argue.

  “Okay. Let’s go!”

  The doors flew open. The youngest son, Chris, pushed the passenger seat forward and pulled himself out of the cramped backseat. He stood up, and for a moment, the 17-year-old stared straight into the heart of the abyss, not 200 yards away and closing fast. It didn’t look like a tornado: just a towering black wall, a tidal wave, so wide Chris couldn’t see the edges, and so tall that he couldn’t see the top. It was filled with cars and trees and lumber and roofs.

  It was death.

  The three men sprinted for the main entrance of Morgan Hall and were leaping up the building’s wide concrete steps when the double-glass doors blew out in a hail of glass. The blast knocked them backward and hard to the ground. Miraculously, the shards didn’t cause serious injury. But other objects were striking the men now and after just 30 seconds in the wind, already they were covered with mud from head to toe. The noise had become a crushing, crackling roar, like a jet fighter with full afterburners on.

  Bill tried to scream above the din. He motioned toward the concrete landing in front of the door.

  “Get down beside the door! BY THE LANDING!”

  The group ran low to the corner where the three-foot-high landing met the building and crouched down in a tight huddle, bracing and interlocking their arms in an attempt to cover their heads.

  “HOLD ON! HOLD ON AS TIGHT AS YOU CAN!”

  Missiles were flying into them: boards, shingles, sticks, everything. From the huddle, Chris could see his brother’s back beneath his own arm and he watched a brick slam into Craig like a slug from a .44 Magnum. Craig convulsed from the impact but didn’t let go.

  If he screamed, Chris never heard it.

  In the basement of MacVicar Chapel, Jean Tarnower had finished “Dorothy’s Dance,” and the second recital performer, Ralph Drayer, was halfway through his bassoon solo when Irma Hillebert turned to the window. She could see dozens of small, pink puffs drifting by like cherry blossoms floating on a gentle breeze. Except they weren’t flowers. They were pieces of insulation. Irma’s father, Roy Hillebert, was standing at the back of the room near a window. He saw nearby Carnegie Hall begin to come apart as giant stones were ripped loose and lifted like feathers into the wind.

  “Here it comes! Everybody get down!”

  The power failed and darkness descended. Outside the windows, all was inky, black-green like the bottom of the sea, as swirling dirt and gravel sprayed and hissed against the glass. Objects of unknown origin were speeding past. Kids and parents dove under the small desks. A group that included Irma, the music instructor and his wife crawled under the nine-foot grand piano. Irma’s father was still near the window and Irma’s mother and another woman grabbed Roy’s legs, as much for support as to keep him from being sucked away. The glass crashed and the wind hurtled desk chairs furiously against the interior wall. The roaring force was all-powerful now, spraying plaster dust, pebbles, mud and sand through the room and sandblasting any exposed skin. Seventy-five-pound chunks of limestone were tumbling three stories down to the window wells and bouncing randomly into the room or out into the grass. A couple dashed out of the studio just before the ceiling in the hallway collapsed. At that point, the howling winds suddenly reversed direction, and, according to Snyder, “blew straight west in a crescendo of torments beyond comprehension or narration.”

  Snyder felt as though his head was exploding.

  Leon Taylor, the one who’d lingered too long outside, just made it to the basement of the law building, Carnegie Hall, when the tornado struck. The main corridor was lined with people, maybe 50 or more, huddled on the tile floor with their backs to the wall, heads covered, some praying, some crying. Taylor was late. There was no room for him.

  Outside, the ravenous wind burrowed and clawed and ripped at the old building like a wolf hungry for the prize inside. Glass panes were exploding all over the building and enormous bangs were coming from above. Taylor sprinted past a soft drink vending machine just before the heavy box fell to the floor behind him. He saw a coatrack attached to the wall and reached out to grab it. Then he lowered his head and closed his eyes.

  To Ward Summerville, the law librarian, the roar of the twister sounded like thrust reversers deployed on a jet aircraft. It became very, very hot as the tornado drew near.

  John Fernstrom hunched on the floor. The noise was overwhelming: He was drowning at the bottom of a sea of sound and the pain was excruciating. People screamed silently and covered their ears. Finally, the wind gained the entry it had so relentlessly sought and the full fury of the storm was upon them, blasting through the corridor in a blizzard of debris. Strangers hugged one another to keep from being carried off. Fernstrom glanced up and saw huge limbs from an Osage orange tree, rocketing horizontally down the hall like guided missiles, just overhead.

  This building is coming down. I’m going to die and a lot of others are going to die. Right now. At Washburn University. Over a silly computer test. I could have never imagined this . . . Not in a million years.

  I should have done a better job of saying good-bye to Ruth.

  John and Elaine Martin scrambled with their neighbor and her baby into a small custodian’s room in the basement of Stoffer Science Hall. The room was packed. Pretty quickly, two young men who had been standing watch at the front door dashed down the stairs, shouting, “Here it comes!” John and Elaine hugged each other tightly, sitting on the floor, hunched over, their backs to the wall. Next they heard an enormous whooshing sound that rose steadily in pitch and intensity. Then came huge concussive crashes and bangs, like a foundry or factory at full production. Except these were not the sounds of things being built.

  Four blocks south of the Washburn campus, in a small, cracker-box ranch house with no basement, Sue Breuninger waited and listened. Earlier in the day, after the sun had finally burned through, the 26-year-old housewife had taken her two children to the pool. They had enjoyed the water and didn’t mind coming home when the clouds rolled in. But Sue didn’t know about the tornado watch. And she never heard the sirens. Her husband was playing golf. She was making dinner in her small kitchen as six-year-old Larry Jr. and three-year-old Jill watched TV. The telephone rang.

  It was her mother-in-law. Her voice was agitated and insistent.

  “You need to get those children to safety right now! This tornado is coming and it’s real. Get them out of there right now!”

  Sue glanced at her kids, still watching TV. Bill Kurtis was on the screen, urging viewers to take cover. She looked out the sliding-glass porch door. A piece of lawn furniture shot past.

  It’s too dangerous to take them out in this wind . . . Too late to go to the neighbor’s basement.

  Fear began to rise in her.

  “Okay, kids, we’re going to play a game. We’re going to sit in the closet and eat our dinner. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

  Sue sat the kids down in a narrow bedroom closet behind a flimsy sliding door and brought them their plates. She recalled that you’re supposed to open windows to equalize the pressure if a tornado is approaching. So she cranked open the bedroom window and then went to the kitchen and opened the window there before returning to sit outside the closet with the door partially open. There wasn’t enough room inside for her.

  All the while, her mind was ravished by guilt.

  How could I have been so stupid and not paid more attention to the weather? What was I thinking? Now look what I’ve done . . . My children’s lives are in danger.

 
Time inched ahead. Then Sue heard something.

  A train? Why am I hearing a train when there aren’t any tracks around here? It must be a plane flying low. But who would be crazy enough to fly in this weather?

  She got up and went to the kitchen window. The wind was howling outside, and the screen was bowed out from the suction as far as it could go. The curtain was plastered tight against it. Sue peeled the curtain back and looked north into a chaotic, gray-black miasma filled with flying debris. It was the ugliest sight she’d ever seen. The world had become monochromatic: The only color visible was the red-and-white playhouse Sue’s father had built for the kids in the corner of the backyard. It stood out incongruously against the hideous, churning atmosphere. Trees were twisting sideways in the wind.

  A toxic mix of terror and guilt rose like bile inside her. She fought to contain the emotions, but she was losing ground and could barely resist the urge to simply start screaming. When Sue returned to the closet, three-year-old Jill stared up at her. The child was silent. But the abject fear in her wide, blue eyes betrayed her own grim take on the situation.

  Sue was fighting tears as she knelt by the door.

  I can’t lose it. I’ve got to be strong for these kids.

  And so, although not a particularly religious person, she began to pray:

  Take me if you want, Lord. But please don’t hurt these children.

  And just like that, she felt a warm hand on her shoulder. She startled and turned. Who was there? Had her husband slipped in unnoticed? But there was no one. And then — immediately and completely — all the fear and anguish that had roiled her fell away, and in their place, a sense of peace and certainty emerged, the likes of which she hadn’t known before — nor since. The beauty of the moment was indescribable and she instantly knew they would be all right.

  Sue leaned forward and spoke gently but directly to the children. “It’s okay, kids. You’re going to feel the house shake a little and the ground is going to rumble, and then you’ll feel it move away to the neighbor’s house. But we’re going to be okay. We’ll be just fine.”

  And sure enough, the house shook and the ground rumbled.

  And then it was over.

  Chief Abram Burnett (1812–1870), leader of a band of Potawatomi Indians forcibly removed from Indiana to Kansas in 1838. (Kansas State Historical Society)

  Chief Abram Burnett’s cabin near the Shunganunga Creek, circa late 1860s. (Kansas State Historical Society)

  In 1960, construction of a 5-million-gallon water tank began on the shoulder of Burnett’s Mound. The tank forever altered the hill’s appearance and, some believed, disturbed the spirits of Indians buried there. Interstate 470 can be seen under construction in the middle distance. The highway opened in October 1960. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  John and Ruth Fernstrom. (Courtesy of John and Ruth Fernstrom)

  Dominic Gutierrez (Courtesy of Dominic Gutierrez)

  Richard Albert Garrett was meteorologist-in-charge of the U.S. Weather Bureau’s Topeka office for more than 20 years. By 1966, Garrett had turned Topeka into a citadel of tornado preparedness. (Courtesy of Pat Fleenor)

  Glenn and Inge Nicely, with their daughter, Angela, playing with Mitzi in 1963. (Courtesy of Inge Nicely)

  Lisle Grauer, proprietor of the Pla-Land bowling alley. (Courtesy of Ron Grauer)

  The Huffman family standing on the slab of their destroyed home after the tornado (left to right): Joanna, Teri, Tami and Harold. (Courtesy of Teri Huffman Colpitts)

  Carol Martin with her parents, Hazel and Cleve. (Courtesy of Carol Martin Yoho)

  Peg and Paul Marmet with their daughter, Stacy, circa 1968. (Courtesy of Paul and Peg Marmet)

  Sterling “Chick” Taylor (Courtesy of Katherine Taylor Boline)

  Johnny Scheibe (Courtesy of Kert Scheibe)

  WREN disc jockey Rick Douglass, left, and Topeka police officer Dave Hathaway, standing at the spotters’ vantage point on the ridge south of Burnett’s Mound a year after the tornado. The mound can be seen in the left middle distance, with the buildings of downtown Topeka faintly visible on the horizon. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  John Meinholdt was a member of a volunteer CB radio spotters’ group and the first to alert the Weather Bureau of the approaching tornado from his post on Burnett’s Mound. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  Capital-Journal photographer Perry Riddle shot more than 20 photos as the tornado approached Topeka from the southwest. The tornado is probably 7 to 10 miles away in this picture. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  As the sirens wail, area residents race for cover in the basement of the Countryside Methodist Church on Burlingame Road. The rain is still falling. Note the illuminated brake lights on the car that’s just pulled into the church parking lot. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  This shot probably is the most famous of the Perry Riddle series. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  The tornado is much closer now but still southwest of Burnett’s Mound. The sun is shining in the west. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  The enormity of the funnel is apparent in this shot. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  Climbing the ridge south of Burnett’s Mound. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  The tornado crosses Burnett’s Mound and explodes into the homes of the County Fair Estates subdivision. The outline of the water tank is barely visible on the right shoulder of the mound. Perry Riddle, the photographer, was positioned two miles east of the mound. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  Firing debris in every direction, the tornado hammers the neighborhoods north of I-470. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  Its path of destruction complete, the now-white tornado begins to weaken and lift after crossing the Kansas River at the northeastern edge of the city. This photo was taken from the Highland Park area looking north. (Courtesy of Delmar Schmidt)

  The tornado ropes out over Tecumseh, east of the city. (Courtesy of B. T. Bradford)

  Survivors emerge to a shattered world. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  One of the approximately 150 Shetland ponies killed at White’s Pony Farm, just west of Burnett’s Mound. (Courtesy of Dean White)

  A family scrambles from their destroyed home as tornadic clouds move off in the background. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  A badly injured Mary Lee Herndon of Fayette, Missouri, is carried from the ruins below Burnett’s Mound shortly after the tornado passed. Mrs. Herndon was visiting her daughter, Mary “Betsy” Clark, and the Clark family, in the 4200 block of Twilight Drive on June 8. The Missouri woman and her daughter were caught outside the house when the tornado struck and were unable to get the front door open because of the wind. Both recovered from their injuries. Mrs. Herndon’s son-in-law, Charles F. Clark, is the balding, dark-haired man in the white shirt and light-colored pants at the rear of the group. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  On the move in the aftermath. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  The water tank on Burnett’s Mound. (Courtesy of the AT&T Archives and History Center)

  Vehicles piled up beneath the I-470 underpass on Gage Boulevard. Officer Dave Hathaway’s K9 station wagon can be seen in front of the nearest car. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  Destruction at the Embassy Apartments just northeast of the mound. (Courtesy of Lloyd Zimmer)

  The Embassy Apartments (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  Home slabs swept clean by the tornado between Twilight Drive and Gage Boulevard, looking northeast. The Embassy Apartment complex is in the middle distance, and the 29th Street hill and Prairie Vista subdivision are in the background. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  The same area from the opposite direction, with 29th Street in the foreground and Burnett’s Mound in the distance. The tornado crossed the Shunganunga Creek just beyond the lower, right-hand co
rner of the picture. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  Bloody, battered and mud-caked, Rick Douglass — carried 100 yards by the tornado — is helped into the Stormont-Vail Hospital emergency room by nurse Nadine Gilbert and an unidentified man. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  An unconscious Dave Hathaway arrives at the hospital. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  The casualties roll into Stormont-Vail Hospital. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  Ralph Drayer was badly cut at the Washburn University music recital but still managed to walk into Stormont-Vail under his own power. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  A night to remember. (Courtesy of the Topeka Capital-Journal)

  Carnegie Hall on the Washburn University campus. John Fernstrom and 20 or so others were taking a test in the second-floor classroom on the northwest (right) side of the building just before the tornado struck. Carnegie Hall, which was repaired after the tornado, was the only one of the badly damaged, old stone buildings at Washburn that could be saved. (Courtesy of the University Archives, Mabee Library, Washburn University)