This is the fortieth anniversary of the Palm Sunday tornadoes, and they are all over the news here in Indiana. I lived in Ohio then, but one of the tornadoes hit my house, so I certainly remember them!
It was a really warm day that day, and I played outside most of the day. It was overcast and windy, but I didn't feel threatened in any way. Times were more laid back as I recall. We still had a black and white TV that my parents had bought in the fifties, and although we had cable at times, most of the time we had channels eleven and thirteen from Toledo and two, four and seven from Detroit. Sometimes we had channel nine from Windsor, too. Some people had UHF, but we had an old TV so we didn't. People didn't watch as much TV then, anyway. Ours had not been on all that day, but it probably wouldn't have mattered because they didn't have tornado warnings then like they do now, and there were certainly no neighborhood sirens.
This is what I know about the tornadoes. My older sister was standing at the front door looking out. A noise like a freight train started up, and she turned around to tell my mom that she was scared. It was then that the wind blew the window from the landing down the stairs.
I was asleep upstairs in the top bunk. I had played outside all day, and kids used to have earlier bedtimes. What I woke up to was my mom screaming, "My baby! My baby!" She ran through the broken glass the window had left, wearing high heels no less, to get my sister, whose crib was in my parents' room.
Having just awakened, I was pretty confused about the whole thing. Next thing I knew, my grandpa, my dad's dad, was by my bed, and he carried me down the stairs into the basement. I was pretty tall at ten, so I don't know how he managed it. Somebody, I can't remember who, told me later that nobody remembered me until they all got to the basement and counted heads. Either way, it was Grandpa who saved me. We sat down there most of the night, but the storm and danger were long over. I think we were just sort of in shock.
As it turns out, twin tornadoes hit Toledo. One of them took the roof off a store a block away, and that roof came through the roof of our house and cracked the ceiling in my bedroom. A woman on the other side of the block was sitting out on a second floor balcony watching the storm and she was killed, but there was no other damage on our block. The rest of the damage was in Point Place, several miles away. Much to my chagrin, I DID have school the next day.
We got a new garage because of the tornado, too, but I don't really remember what the storm did to ours. It was old and sort of like a carriage house. It had a flat roof, and my older sister liked to lay up there and sunbathe. I remember that the workmen thought it would fall down easily because it was old, but it was sturdier than it looked, and they had a hard time knocking it down.
My father's parents had been visiting us for Easter when the tornado hit, and later my mother's dad came. Her dad liked to fix things, and he just happened to be around at the time things were being fixed, so my sister, who was only two, went around saying that my dad's dad had broken the house but my mom's dad had fixed it.
It was a really warm day that day, and I played outside most of the day. It was overcast and windy, but I didn't feel threatened in any way. Times were more laid back as I recall. We still had a black and white TV that my parents had bought in the fifties, and although we had cable at times, most of the time we had channels eleven and thirteen from Toledo and two, four and seven from Detroit. Sometimes we had channel nine from Windsor, too. Some people had UHF, but we had an old TV so we didn't. People didn't watch as much TV then, anyway. Ours had not been on all that day, but it probably wouldn't have mattered because they didn't have tornado warnings then like they do now, and there were certainly no neighborhood sirens.
This is what I know about the tornadoes. My older sister was standing at the front door looking out. A noise like a freight train started up, and she turned around to tell my mom that she was scared. It was then that the wind blew the window from the landing down the stairs.
I was asleep upstairs in the top bunk. I had played outside all day, and kids used to have earlier bedtimes. What I woke up to was my mom screaming, "My baby! My baby!" She ran through the broken glass the window had left, wearing high heels no less, to get my sister, whose crib was in my parents' room.
Having just awakened, I was pretty confused about the whole thing. Next thing I knew, my grandpa, my dad's dad, was by my bed, and he carried me down the stairs into the basement. I was pretty tall at ten, so I don't know how he managed it. Somebody, I can't remember who, told me later that nobody remembered me until they all got to the basement and counted heads. Either way, it was Grandpa who saved me. We sat down there most of the night, but the storm and danger were long over. I think we were just sort of in shock.
As it turns out, twin tornadoes hit Toledo. One of them took the roof off a store a block away, and that roof came through the roof of our house and cracked the ceiling in my bedroom. A woman on the other side of the block was sitting out on a second floor balcony watching the storm and she was killed, but there was no other damage on our block. The rest of the damage was in Point Place, several miles away. Much to my chagrin, I DID have school the next day.
We got a new garage because of the tornado, too, but I don't really remember what the storm did to ours. It was old and sort of like a carriage house. It had a flat roof, and my older sister liked to lay up there and sunbathe. I remember that the workmen thought it would fall down easily because it was old, but it was sturdier than it looked, and they had a hard time knocking it down.
My father's parents had been visiting us for Easter when the tornado hit, and later my mother's dad came. Her dad liked to fix things, and he just happened to be around at the time things were being fixed, so my sister, who was only two, went around saying that my dad's dad had broken the house but my mom's dad had fixed it.
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