The Clyde Tornado: The Aftermath
After the storm was gone, we went to my grandparents’ house first in order to make sure they were safe. Then we went to our house. It had missed our house. Mama went to the cellar when she saw the clouds and never knew what had happened until we told her.
We got in our truck and headed out to survey the damage. Some our neighbors’ houses were no longer standing. We heard stories about people getting under the kitchen table to protect themselves. The Griffin’s house was lying in a pile of lumber. Alene and the kids had huddled down by the side of the refrigerator, and it kept the debris off. I couldn’t help thinking about the fact that I had eaten supper in that house the night before.
Jeff’s experience was the strangest of all. He was sitting at the supper table and saw the roof peel off the house. He went to the door to get a look, and the wind picked him up and carried him into the yard. He was unconscious for a few seconds, but when he woke up the storm was still churning in the adjoining field. Jeff noticed that a large piece of lumber had plowed a furrow in the grass just inches from his head. He said, “I figured the rest of my family members were dead. My first thought was, ‘What am I doing alive?’ Then I thought about praying, but I figured I had never done anything for the Lord, and it wouldn’t be a good idea to ask him for anything now.” Jeff was a hard man, and he got worse after that. He had an ongoing battle with the bottle. Alene and the kids lived difficult lives. She was a patient woman who put up with a lot.
The Griffins had been taken to the hospital for observation when we got there, so we drove on. A couple of hundred yards down the road, we saw the ruins of an old service station. Highway 80 had been rerouted to the other side of town (where I-20 is now). So the station was closed. The Tabors were, and still are, a prominent family in Clyde. One of the Tabor families lived in the remodeled station, which now was nothing but a pile of bricks. We saw an ambulance out front when we arrived. While we were there, workmen were digging their bodies out. All three residents of the house had perished. As we drove on toward town, we realized the storm had lifted and missed the town itself. Had it hit in a more populated area, there would have been greater loss of life. They didn’t classify storms by categories in those days, but this was a killer tornado. It would probably have been a category 5. I’ve seen one other tornado in my life, and it was incredibly small in comparison to this one.
Later we learned the tornado lifted and sat down again between Clyde and Baird. It completely destroyed the Steve Walker home. Steve Walker was the father of Hoyt Walker, who was my uncle by marriage. I had been in their home many times. Nothing was left standing at the Walker house. The engine had been ripped right out of their car. A refrigerator landed on a telephone pole several hundred yards away. Apparently the Walkers tried to run. They were found in the field, a short distance from the house. There was no way they could have survived.
The Walkers were Methodists, and their service was held at the Methodist church in Clyde. I remember going to the funeral service. There was not an empty seat in the house. I still remember someone singing, “Does Jesus care when my heart is stressed, too deeply for mirth and song/ And the burdens press and the cares distress/ And the day grows weary and long?/” Rarely do I hear that song without remembering that moment.
The tornado had a permanent influence on my life. It brought my attention to the fact that life is fragile and can be snuffed out upon a moment’s notice. My experience at the Griffin’s house, convinced me that it’s not a good idea to taunt God. While I don’t claim to know everything God was doing that afternoon, I do know that Jeff had an opportunity to praise God and didn’t take advantage of it. That’s not a good thing. It also seemed to me that when God gets your attention, and you turn away from him, he may just let you squirm with the consequences of your own careless decisions, at least for awhile. When that happens, and people don’t respond, they tend to become more perverse. Jeff as enormously cynical. When he learned that I had decided to preach, he said, “Well I guess that’s all right, Norman, but I had just as soon make my living honestly.”
Despite Jeff’s incorrigible ways, he had a generous heart, and he was probably the best house painter I’ve ever known. Jeff died some years later after a long struggle with cancer. I hope he decided to make things right with the Lord.
Life can seem boring to a teenager in a small town, but it doesn’t take but a few seconds to turn boredom into terror. If you were to ask me to give a description of “awe,” I would tell you what happened in my life on April 28, 1950.
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