Douglass never dwelt on his experience. But for more than 20 years, he received regular and painful reminders of that day: Tiny pieces of straw, wood and glass periodically would work their way out of his skin.
One footnote about WREN: About 18 months after the tornado, station manager Bob Fromme received a stern letter from the Federal Communications Commission, informing him that the station would soon be the subject of an investigation. Officials in Washington, D.C., were concerned that the station’s trademark severe weather watch alert — a series of four beeps that went out every two minutes over whatever else was being broadcast — was in fact some kind of nefarious signal, perhaps to enemies of the state.
Fromme and the station’s chief engineer immediately drafted a letter explaining the purpose of the beeps. They noted that Topeka was in the heart of Tornado Alley and had in fact experienced a devastating tornado less than two years before. The beeps were a public service, they said, nothing more. The agency eventually backed down but still sought repeated reassurances that everything was on the up-and-up as far as the beeps were concerned.
WIBW anchorman Bill Kurtis caught his big break with the tornado. He would later say that “just like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, I rode out of Kansas on a tornado.” The day after the storm, Kurtis was asked to do a live broadcast for the CBS Morning News. He seized the opportunity. And although he’d made the decision a few months earlier to join a law firm in Wichita, Kurtis quickly realized that everything had changed for him with the tornado. So he sent his tapes out and was hired in July by WBBM-TV’s Channel 2 News in Chicago. From there, Kurtis went on to CBS, first as a correspondent and then as anchor for the CBS Morning News. Not only did he get to work with his hero, Walter Cronkite, but the two became close friends. In the early 1990s, Kurtis formed his own production company and subsequently created a series of popular news documentary shows for the A&E Network, including Investigative Reports, American Justice and Cold Case Files. Kurtis also purchased a ranch near Sedan, Kansas, that once was the home of author Laura Ingalls Wilder. In Sedan, he formed Tallgrass Beef Company to promote the health and environmental benefits of non-feedlot-fattened, grass-fed beef.
It was to his wife, Helen, that Kurtis’s famous warning, “For God’s sake, take cover,” had been in part directed. Fortunately, she’d already sought shelter in the science building at Washburn, and neither Helen nor the couple’s six-month-old daughter, Mary Kristin, was hurt. They had another child, Scott, in 1970. But Helen tragically died of cancer just seven years later.
Kurtis said he’s proud of his performance on June 8.
“I do look back at it; I refer to it as ‘The Test,’” he said. “Because had I not done it, it would have haunted me for the rest of my life. Some people may look at it and say, well, ‘For God’s sake, take cover,’ that was not such a big thing. But at the time, in the context, at that moment, at the crucial point when people needed to know what was happening, it was the right thing at the right time.”
A few years ago, Kurtis was asked to give a speech at the dedication of a statue in Council Grove, Kansas, honoring pioneer women. It was a sweltering Kansas summer afternoon and Kurtis figured only a few hard-core history buffs would show up. But much to his surprise, the bleachers were full when he got there. He visited with a number of people from the audience afterward and learned that many had driven down from Topeka for the event.
“I told them that it was nice that they’d come out on such a hot afternoon,” he recalled. “And they said, ‘Well, we were there that day. You saved our lives. And we wanted to thank you.’ I can tell you, I come to tears every time I think about it.”
Officer David Hathaway recovered from his injuries and was back on duty within a couple of weeks. But in 1970, he decided it was time for a change. So he resigned from the Topeka P.D. and moved to Mobile, Alabama, where he went to work in the boat business. Hathaway was on track to earn his captain’s papers and run charter fishing boats out of Mobile Bay when Mother Nature again reached out to him, this time with more serious results. Hurricane Fredric struck southern Alabama on the night of September 12, 1979, with 125-mile-an-hour winds. In the aftermath, Hathaway was helping with the cleanup. He was on a roof cutting tree limbs when he slipped and fell. His neck was broken. The doctors told him he’d spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. But Hathaway said he couldn’t live like that. So he battled and fought and years later, he was able to walk again with the aid of a cane.
Along with Hathaway, volunteer spotter John Meinholdt received a plaque of commendation from Topeka mayor Chuck Wright in recognition of the men’s service in providing the earliest warnings of the approaching tornado. Meinholdt later worked with the Weather Bureau to help set up volunteer storm-spotting groups in other communities across Kansas. But he never went on weather watch again.
Electrician Tom Noack’s wife, Connie, was sitting in her kitchen with the morning paper one day not long after the tornado when she let out a gasp: “Oh my God!” She was reading about Craig Beymer, the five-year-old who was severely injured just a few blocks from the Noacks’ home and who later died from his wounds. It was only then that Connie realized who he was: Craig’s mother had been a close friend to her while growing up in Leavenworth, Kansas. Connie had heard before the storm that the Beymers had moved to Topeka. But she had no idea they’d been living just down the street. The thought of what might have been haunted Connie for a long time after that. If only she’d known, she thought, she could have reached out when the sirens sounded, and Mrs. Beymer and Craig could have come to safety in the Noacks’ basement.
Teri Huffman (now Teri Colpitts), the little girl who lived nearby — the one whose house was swept away and who was herself nearly sucked into the winds but for her father’s strong grip — fought the tornado’s legacy for years. The blow to the back of her head and the psychological trauma of the day did lasting damage. After the tornado, Teri’s personality changed; she found it hard to concentrate and learn. She would become angry and agitated easily. She acted up; as an adolescent, she started smoking and often skipped school. She ran away from home. The behavioral problems persisted as an adult. She had a hard time holding a job. It wasn’t until 1990 that neurologists and psychologists were able to link her problems to the injury and trauma she experienced on June 8. And in time, with the help of her second husband, she was able to get to a better place. But she really battled with the anger.
Why did this happen to us? Why did it hurt my family? Why did it hurt me? This just shouldn’t have happened.
“The anger would just kind of sit there and build up until after a while, you couldn’t handle it,” she said.
Teri said she still dreads the spring.
“If the sirens go off, I start shaking,” she said. “It scares me to death. I go to the basement. I’m just waiting to hear that sound again, that sound I heard when the tornado was coming.”
The Huffmans struggled with money and insurance and everything else after the tornado. But the family eventually regrouped and rebuilt. One thing, though: They never talked about the tornado itself, about those terrible seconds when the funnel was blotting out the sun and nearly on them and then ripping their house away. In fact, Teri didn’t even know her father had reached up to save her until after he died. Her mother finally told her. When it came to June 8, Mrs. Huffman said, the family just didn’t go there.
The memories were simply too terrifying.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jim Ward, who shot footage of the tornado as it crested Burnett’s Mound, made it back home to find his own house severely damaged, twisted on its foundation and dangerously askew. Within a couple of days, he and his family had taken up residence at a local hotel. He also managed to get his film developed. The footage is dark and grainy and lasts only a minute or so. But the images are unmistakable; the black funnel is silhouetted against the lighter sky to the west as it draws closer to Burnett’s Mound and then crests the ridge. In the last frames, the funnel
fills nearly the entire view. Ward shot additional footage of storm damage, and within a couple of weeks, he put an advertisement in the Topeka newspaper pitching his movie. He sold more than 200 copies of the film at $12.95 apiece.
Like so many others, Paul and Peg Marmet — the couple who watched the tornado bear down on them and who were sure the sound alone would kill them — clawed their way back. They linked up with a capable contractor and, remarkably, moved into an entirely rebuilt home on the same lot just 85 days after June 8. Their biggest headache came later, courtesy of the Internal Revenue Service. One of the few items they’d managed to recover after the tornado was a drawer containing receipts for all the new furnishings they’d purchased for their house in the days, weeks and months before the tornado took it all away. A lot of the stuff was brand-new, many wedding gifts were still in boxes and none of the furnishings were more than a year old. But when Paul tried to deduct the expenses as losses, the IRS came back and said the Marmets could only get fair market value for the possessions. This amounted to about 20 percent of the costs. The upshot: The IRS claimed they owed $1,300. The couple lawyered up, went back and forth with the agency, and eventually was able to reduce the liability. But the IRS still hit them for $750 in back taxes, plus a 10 percent penalty — a pretty decent sum in those days, particularly when you’ve just lost everything.
“We decided afterward that dealing with the IRS might have been worse than the tornado itself,” Paul said.
Schoolteacher Ron Olson — the friend of the Marmets who’d confronted the looters on the night of June 8 — came across some still-intact bottles of homemade apple wine a few days after the storm in the basement of his wrecked home. He put the wine in his pickup with some other salvaged items and was leaving the neighborhood when he came to a checkpoint manned by a single National Guardsman. As a thank-you, Olson pulled out one of the bottles and told the guardsman, “Now, take this home tonight, but be careful drinking it. It’s pretty potent.”
Much to his embarrassment and regret, Olson spotted the guardsman passed out on the sidewalk with two MPs attending to him when he returned to the neighborhood an hour later.
Olson worked like a dog for days, wheelbarrowing debris out of his house. A couple of weeks into it — after he’d moved his family to one of the temporary trailers set up on the grounds of the VA hospital, after much of his help had lost interest and moved on — Olson was working alone cleaning out the last of the wreckage. The day was very hot and he began to suffer from heat exhaustion. So he found a shady spot and sat down. And it was only then, in that moment, that the harsh reality sank in: He’d really, truly lost his house and nearly everything he owned.
He just sat there alone and sobbed.
Kert Scheibe lost his older brother, Johnny, in the tornado. The family didn’t know that night which hospital he’d been taken to, so they raced first to Stormont-Vail and then to St. Francis. A nun finally got on a two-way radio and determined that Johnny was at the veterans administration hospital, not far from his home. It was kind of ironic, because Johnny was well known at the sprawling VA and well liked. When he was younger, he’d had an early-morning paper route there, delivering the Kansas City Star to patients. He also worked in the hospital’s bowling alley for a time. But no one could have imagined he would return like this.
Kert recounted a strange incident surrounding the tornado and its aftermath. He and his brother shared a bedroom and a closet. When the tornado leveled the house, it carried all of Kert’s clothes away. Every stitch. But all of Johnny’s stuff — including the suit he would be buried in — was left unsoiled and undamaged in a heap on the floor.
Kert said his mom and dad struggled with depression for years after Johnny died. They never did get over the loss.
Sue Breuninger (now Sue Coleman-Muñoz) was the woman who experienced the strange and comforting phantom touch to her shoulder after she began to pray as the tornado drew near. She didn’t speak of the incident to anyone for nearly 40 years.
“I didn’t want people to think I was some kind of religious nut,” she said. “But I don’t know why, I just started talking about it a few years ago. I guess I’ve reached the age in life where, if you want to think of me as a nut, go ahead. That’s your problem, not mine.”
She remains mystified by the experience.
“Some people believe in guardian angels, and I’m not sure I do, but I don’t know how else to explain this presence. I know it was there. I know that it protected me. I know there is something beyond us that watches over us. I feel certain about that much.”
For John Fernstrom, the banker who’d heard that strange, growling sound as he took a test at Washburn, the tornado was life-changing.
“After 1966, I had a totally different idea about possessions, things, furniture, art, all that stuff,” Fernstrom said. “None of it meant nearly as much as it did before, because it could be gone in an instant. And life meant quite a bit more. It’s a very fragile thing. We’re just like little ants. We can be stepped on.”
Fernstrom had nightmares for a time. He’d dream about the tornado coming and he would hear that sound again. In some of the dreams, the events were even worse than the reality he’d experienced: Dozens of people were dead or dying amid the chaos of the Carnegie Hall basement.
Mary Hatke lost her big, beautiful house across from Central Park. She lost her Thunderbird and her Plymouth wagon, too. Never saw either car again. Mary was no shrinking violet. She’d been among the first class ever of female marines in 1942. She’d worked in the paymaster’s office in Washington, D.C., for the rest of the war. She was a fearless, independent woman in a man’s world and ahead of her time that way. But this tornado was a hard thing. Mary and her husband had put most of their money into their art store downtown. They hadn’t had it for long. So their home and car insurance weren’t what they should have been. And, yes, they rebuilt. But life was a steep, uphill climb after June 8.
“We never really recovered financially,” Mary said. “I was very bitter for a while. I said to my husband once, ‘Why me?’ And he smiled and said, ‘Well, why not you, Mary?’”
What hurt even more than the material losses, though, was the destruction of the tight-knit Central Park community and the once-beautiful park across the street. Mary assumed that her neighbors would rebuild and life eventually would return to normal. But in truth, nearly all of her neighbors did not rebuild and they never returned. And the park became a 15-acre rubble dump and burn pile after the tornado. Debris was bulldozed into the center lagoon. Eventually, the park was restored but only as a shadow of its former self.
“It was very sad,” she said. “It broke my heart.”
Mary said she stopped feeling sorry for herself after her husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease not too long after the tornado.
“He had Parkinson’s for 41 years. It was very difficult. And I thought, well, the tornado wasn’t so bad after all.”
The sudden loss of community was something a lot of people grappled with, particularly the kids. Groups of close friends literally were scattered by the winds overnight. Tony Stein, the carpenter’s son who grew up not far from Mary Hatke, said he never saw some of his friends again after the tornado. Same thing with Dominic Gutierrez, the eight-year-old boy who bravely rode his bike to the store to pick up some flashlight batteries just before the sirens sounded.
“I felt like I lost a part of my childhood,” Gutierrez said. “The memories I had from before the tornado are a lot different than the ones I had after. Things were never as good again. Before, everything in my neighborhood was so beautiful — big trees, flowers, grass, and the houses looked real nice. But afterward, it was turmoil. The tornado came through and it just devastated everything. It took people and friends away, and I never saw them again. It’s just like a whole chunk of that time is gone.”
At 19, Pete Maxon rode out the June 8 tornado huddled alongside his girlfriend’s house, hanging onto the edge of the siding for
dear life. Twenty-two years later, Maxon was working at a bank in west Topeka when another tornado came at him. This time, the funnel was rain-wrapped and impossible to see. Maxon and a couple others were watching a thunderstorm approach when debris started hitting the bank. They sprinted for the vault just as the windows shattered and objects began flying across the lobby. The tornado (unusual for November) was far less powerful than the ’66 storm. But it still injured 22 people and did $3.9 million in damage as it skipped across the western side of the city.
Like Maxon, Guy and Jean Shuck experienced a tornado’s wrath more than once. The couple’s home near 13th and Harrison was badly damaged on June 8, although the Shucks and their three small children fortunately escaped unhurt. Then, more than 40 years later — on May 4, 2007, to be exact — the now-retired couple was living in Greensburg, Kansas, when that town was wiped out by a massive, nearly two-mile-wide EF-5. The Greensburg tornado wrecked the Shucks’ house and trashed most of their belongings. But once again neither Guy nor Jean was injured.
What’s it like going through two EF-5s?
“Well, after Greensburg, we tried not to tell anybody where we were going to move to, because nobody wanted us around,” Guy joked. “We have some friends up in Newton, and I was just teasing and I told them, ‘We’re thinking of moving up there near you,’ and they said, ‘Oh, please don’t!’”
And Hell Followed With It: Life and Death in a Kansas Tornado Page 31