Joplin tornado recalls memories of Flint disaster

Tornado! The very word touches a primal place deep inside me.

Growing up in Flint, Michigan, the threat of tornadoes was a regular summer occurrence. They were usually preceded by a vicious thunderstorm, and they sent us, as a family, down to the basement where we would huddle around a crackly radio and wait until the weather passed and the warnings expired. It seemed to happen two or three or four times every summer.

Time had dulled those unpleasant memories, as time tends to do. Being the eternally hopeful creatures we are, we’re more likely to remember the good stuff from the past and push the bad to some recessed place in the brain from whence it takes a reminder of some sort to retrieve it.

That reminder came on the front page of the May 24 edition of The Arizona Republic. It was an article about the half-mile wide tornado that ripped through Joplin, Mo. on May 22. The Associated Press article called it “the nation’s deadliest single twister in nearly 60 years….” The tornado that equaled its death toll of 116 occurred in June 1953 in Flint, Mich. and I was there.

As the memories of that deadly day flooded back, I Googled the Flint tornado and found a treasure trove of photos and information. Here’s one of the online overviews:

“At about 8:30 pm, on Monday evening, June 8, 1953, a tornado touched down near the intersection of W. Coldwater and North Linden roads, just north of Flint. Before the storm left Genesee County, 116 people died in the Beecher district. A one half mile wide track of destruction was left.

“Most people living in the area were at home with the children in bed. By the time people heard the storm's roar, their houses were being torn apart.

“The slow moving tornado wrecked 340 houses, severely damaged many others and injured 844 persons. The major damage was concentrated between Clio Road & N. Dort Hwy. This area contained mostly small homes with some businesses and a high school.

“The Beecher tornado was the last single tornado to cause over 100 deaths the United States. It is ranked the 9th deadliest tornado in U. S. history.”

That and the other accounts took me back to my hometown on that summer day. I was 10 years old, my brothers 7 and 1. Until that 1953 tornado, we took the warnings broadcast on the radio much less seriously than we did the ones that came after. Close calls tend to make you appreciate your mortality.

And, in fact, the death toll in the Flint tornado was so high in part because so many people failed to heed the warnings and take cover. Our motto in Flint must have been, “It couldn’t happen here.”

I don’t even remember if we were in the basement that evening when my dad called the two oldest brothers outside in the gathering dusk to witness an amazing sight.

If you’ve ever been close to a tornado, you know the eerie calm that precedes it and the almost evil yellow sky. It creates a sick feeling of foreboding that’s impossible to describe, as if time is standing still waiting for nature to unleash its fury.

We stood in the driveway and watched in awe as a real, live tornado passed overhead. It would touch down on the other side of Flint, a couple of miles away.

We didn’t linger long. We went inside and down to the basement.

Within minutes, it was over.  The first radio reports were incomplete and inconclusive, but it was clear that Flint would never be the same.

Just like in Joplin, it took days to count the dead, but stories emerged about people who were miraculously still alive even though the houses they were in were gone. And then there was the story about the people who had gone to a drive-in movie theater in the storm’s path.

A local radio DJ interrupted his show to advise them to leave. Most didn’t. It couldn’t happen here. One who did leave told the Flint Journal about the experience:

“Bruce Sage remembers his uncle rolling down the car window at the drive-in and shouting to Bruce's mother in their car: ‘Get out. Now.’ He remembers the movie screen tumbling as they tore out of the lot, remembers the debris flying by and his mother telling Bruce and his siblings to stay down in the back seat of their '49 Buick, until she could get them to safety.”

Many of the deaths occurred at that drive-in theater.

My dad worked as a tax assessor for the City of Flint. While the area devastated by the tornado was restricted, he had access. He took his home movie camera into the area the next day and got some stunning film that we watched over and over – always on a projector set up in the basement.

While those scenes are forever imbedded in my memory, I did not recall what happened after the tornado passed. The articles I found reminded me that our community of some 200,000 rebounded and rebuilt:

“Community response to this tragedy was immediate and overwhelming. Unsolicited donations poured in. General Motors, the United Auto Workers and numerous businesses made generous donation to a disaster fund. Hundreds of local workers gave through payroll deductions. Within a few weeks over $900,000 was collected.

“In late August, 8,000 volunteers participated in a weekend building bee known as ‘Operation Tornado.’ In 90f heat, people from all walks of life gave more than 80,000 hours and built 193 houses.

"For its efforts, Flint was honored as the 'All-American city of 1953.'"

I suspect Joplin will do the same. It’s that eternally hopeful thing again.

But like those of us who went through the Flint tornado, Joplin residents will never forget. As Bruce Sage, now retired, put it: “The memories are very much alive. They never go away.”

It just takes something like Joplin to trigger them.