Your Memories of the Oak Lawn Tornado :: Oak Lawn Tornado :

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• 1. admin  |  January 31st, 2007 at 4:18 pm

  I was only 3 years old when the twister struck, but that day was one of my very first memories of life. The twister first touched down exactly one mile to the south of us, and most of the devastation ocurred about three miles to the east. I knew nothing of a tornado that day, but I distinctly remember having to sit in our basement, which we rarely did. I can still see the colorful plastic chairs down there, and the grim looks on the faces of my parents. As I got older and saw the photos, streets and landmarks I would see several times every week in the routine of life, I could not believe the devastation. For years, just seeing the word “tornado” frightened me.

• 2. Steve  |  February 16th, 2007 at 5:00 pm

  I was 4 when it hit, i lived near 83rd and Narragansett ave. My father saw the tornado from the back yard and told us to all get into the crawlspace under the house(no basement). It was dark and had spiderwebs and i was scared to death!!! But what made this even worse was that my parents thought it would be a good idea to pack up the 3 kids in the car and go “check out” what happened the next day….. big mistake for children to see that if they dont have too. I remember clearly seeing the OL High School gym ripped apart, Buses on peoples front porches, and just trees and debris everywhere. The sight of all this death and destruction scarred me for almost 20 yrs. I can still remember shaking uncontrollably in bed at night every time i heard the sirens go off until i was almost 20. Yet, i am still drawn to any story about tornados or the Oak Lawn tornado. I even have a map of the path of destruction that tornado took as my computer screensaver….Oh yeah, i also remember The Starlite Drive-in movie screen bent and the speakers thrown apart.

• 3. Jackie  |  March 6th, 2007 at 6:33 pm

  I was 15 years old. I went to the orthodontist that afternoon after school to get my braces taken off. The office was on 95th st. and Ashland Ave., upstairs from a bank. After my appointment, I went downstairs to the bank to wait for my dad to pick me up. The sky was beginning to turn a dark, dark, green-black color. At about 5:05 pm, it was pitch-black, and a huge, huge gust of wind came up very suddenly.
  For the next few years, every time springtime would come around, I would have a few nightmares.

• 4. JOE  |  March 10th, 2007 at 7:11 am

  I remember it real well my dad was a fireman for Oak Lawn and his stories about going into the roller rink to bring bodies out made me real sad I was 11 at the time.I was sitting in my livingroom no basement we opened the door it sounded just like a train going by it hit 3 blocks from our house

• 5. Kathleen Reed  |  March 12th, 2007 at 1:46 pm

  I was 9 years old at the time of the tornado, that day changed my life forever. I had stopped at a small grocery store with my father and brother at 103rd and Central when it hit. The lights went out and the sound was so loud it drowned out my screams. we were not aware of the amount of devistation untill later on that night when we returned back to our home.My Aunt and Uncle werer moving from the city to Hinsdale where we were headed with some cold cuts for dinner. I was at the delli counter alone when the tornado hit, the memory is as fresh as yesterday. Although we were under a tornado watch, we never dreamed that a tornado of that magnatude could hit us. Today I live in Western Arkansas,and when the skys turn dark you can be sure I have my NOAA weather radio on. In the four years that I have lived here we have been under a tornado warning three times and each time we retreated to a centrally located closet. I hope that some day I can forget those terrible memories.

• 6. Bill  |  March 15th, 2007 at 9:02 pm

  I was 17 and working at Franksville - 87th & Cicero that evening. I was in the back when someone ran in yelling abunt the storm. Looking out the windows - the dining area was all glass, we watched it cross Cicero. Cicero had a slight curve south of 87th, so we had a perfect view. The base of the tornado covered all six plus lanes of traffic. It was a huge green rotating monster. Debris was flying everywhere. The power went out and the phone line dead. We closed and I rushed home. My father was a building inspector for the Village and this was about the time he usually drove home from the village hall at 94th & Cook to our house at 87th & Tulley. When I got home my mother said he was fine, he had a quick sandwitch and went back to work.
  Later that night I walked down SW Highway from Central, rounded the curve and saw the corner of the pool area of Oak Lawn HS - GONE.
  It was later in the weekend before I saw the remains of St. Gerald, my grade school.
  I didn’t see much of my father for several days as they were busy inspecting houses.

  Once in a life is enough. I still get chills thinking of the images that evening.

  Don’t ever play with mother nature.

• 7. Dirk Mooth  |  March 18th, 2007 at 9:58 am

  I was in the Roller Rink that day with a hand full of skaters that were there for lessons, and practice. We were all competitive skaters of different skill levels. I remember talking with my Sister, as we headed to the rink that day, about the warnings, we were aware, but like most people, never had a reason to take them too seriously. We headed to practice, and to work out. A hand full of us had recently put together what was called a “Fours team” where four skaters interacted with each other doing spins, jumps, and different dance choreography. Two of my partners Christine Hines, and David Nork would die that day. We were first aware that something was happening when it became very dark outside, and the pressure changes caused my ears to pop. We all stopped what we were doing and were looking around when the wind outside began picking up gravel from the parking lot, and sent it crashing through the windows. we instanty knew to dive for cover. I can’t remember if I had a lesson that day, but I was in the process of changing my clothes to begin the Fours workout, which meant we would be falling down alot, and I normally put on some grubby clothes for the workout. I had gotten one skate on when my ears popped, and someone yelled to get down. My Sister was near buy, and we both dove under a wooden bench that was used by spectators, and people to get their skates on. It was fairly wide as it had a common wedge shaped back, and a place to sit on both sides. It was probably 10 feet long. As the storm hit, the noise was unbeleivable, and I was quickly knocked unconsious. I have a vague recollection of being pushed around as though I was in a pile of lumber and a Bulldozer was shoving me around. I came to as rain beat down on me. I looked up, and saw the sky. I could hear people moaning. They were friends who were buried in the rubble. I could not see them but I could hear them. I wore glasses and was pretty nearsighted, probably a good thing considering the damage and injuries that were around me. I was not buried at all, there was only a piece of electrical conduit across my leg which I easily removed. My sister was still there next to me. She had one of the main support beams from the rink lying across her, and she was pinned down by the weight of the beam. There was no way I could get it off her. I would later see her at the hospital and find out that her leg had been broken in six places between her knee and ankle, she also would require surgery to her face, as she came very close to loosing her eye. I had survived with a concussion, and two stiches to my cheek. I spent six days at Christ Community Hospital, my Sister, twenty one. I can remember walking through the debris with one skate on and my other foot only protected by my sock to try and find help. It was dark, and wet, and I somehow found my way to a stairway in an adjacent building where I found other Skaters, and discovered that Mrs Hanley had also been killed in the storm. We were somehow taken to the hospital which was total chaos. My Sister and I were reunited there in the hallway as she was brought in on a door, and taken to surgery. Several weeks after the Tornado, a man knocked on our door, to hand my Mother my wallet. He had found it as crews were cleaning and removing debris. I was an employee at the roller rink, and had just been paid, all my cash was still in that wallet. It’s hard to beleive it’s been nearly fourty years since that day, It changed all of our lives in some way that day, and my memories of the day are still very vivid.

• 8. R.W.Lakie  |  March 24th, 2007 at 12:23 pm

  I was with my wife and children at the red light Southwest & Cicero Ave south bound on Cicero . I could see the storm coming towads us and the car begin to shake. I drove through the red light to my parents home on Edison Ave put the wife and children into the basement & reported to work at the Oak Lawn Polie Dept where I was a patrolman. I met Chief Hein in the lobby of the station, he ordered me to get into uniform and come back to work.. I helped in the tempory morgue area & assisted in everyway needed.
  did not see home again for three days, except to shower & change clothing. Found money pasted on the fence across the street from the Mac Donalds 91st & Cicero Sgt Frank Gilbert was with me at this time. Assisted in the last body located in the bus garage on 95th & Menadr Ave one of the mechanics.

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• 9. Karen Noto  |  March 31st, 2007 at 6:19 pm

  I was 5 years old when the tornado hit, but I can remember it like it happened last week. I was living in Hometown at the time, and my mom, brother and sister and I just got home from the grocery store in hometown (National) for tartar sauce(we were catholic and we didn’t eat meat on friday during lent). After we got home, my brother and I sat in the front picture window to watch the storm. My brother was a year older than me and we were playing the lightening and thunder game. Basically, it was a child’s game where each looked and listened and each time one saw lightening they got 1 point and when the other heard thunder, they got a point. My brother said “I see thunder”, which of course started an argument because I told him you couldn’t SEE thunder. Just then my mom walked in with my baby sister on her hip and looked out the window. She didn’t say a word, just grabbed me and my brother by the collars and pulled us underneath the dining room table in the kithen. You could hear it coming closer and closer. That sound will haunt me forever. I heard wood splintering and cracking, metal bending and breaking, and glass being broken. Only being 5 ,I didn’t understand what was going on. My father arrived home shortly after the tornado passed, glad to find us all alive even though the house was a mess.There was no roof, furniture that was once in our home was found in the cemetary almost a mile away and yet the table that was set for dinner hadn’t been touched.
  My father told me that he just got off work and into his pick up that was parked at southwest highway and cicero, across from dog n suds. He saw the twister, hit the floor of the pickup and the storm picked up his truck, turned it 90 degrees and set it down on its wheels across the street where the dog n suds that was not there anymore. He drove as quickly as he could to get home to us, but had problems at the railroad crossing in hometown by the firehouse. He could see the metra train coming from downtown quickly, and right before the intersection by the firehouse, a whole house was lying on the tracks. Some others stopped and they thought the best thing to do was warn the train to stop, so they used jumper cables on the rails to turn the light red for the train. Luckily, the train was stopped in plenty of time to avoid hitting the house, that still had 2 people inside!
  After leaving his pickup by the tracks, he ran home, (you couldn’t drive because the roads were blocked by debris and trees) hugged us kids and my mom and took me and my brother out to see if we could help anyone out. I couldn’t believe the destruction! It looked like a bomb went off. But those kinds of things don’t happen in safe, small, little Hometown…or do they? Obviously they do, and did that day with a vengence!

• 10. Jay C. Harn  |  April 20th, 2007 at 11:42 am

  I was a 6 1/2-year-old first grader at Covington School on April 21, 1967. Minutes before the tornado hit, my mother and I were driving down Southwest Highway on the way to pick up my sister, who was a sophomore at OLCHS, from a girlfriend’s house near the high school. We were one of the last cars to make a right at the traffic light at the high school intersection on to 95th street. As we proceeded along I remember all the traffic stopping and seeing the funnel cloud coming straight down the street. I remember my mother turning towards me and in a matter of fact tone stating to me that “that is a tornado.” We did not sit for long, because a man from the car behind us started to pound on the driver’s side window telling us to get out. He grabbed my mother and I and we ran for the ditch at the side of the road. We got down as flat as we could and I remember feeling like I could not breath and the noise was awful as the tornado passed over us. Amazingly, afterwards our car was still there, but some of the glass was broken and it was moved sideways. My mother always believed that our car was still there because we left the doors open in our haste. We got back into the car and drove to get my sister. Powerlines and trees were down everywhere and I remember seeing a church steeple in the middle of the road. My sister and the family she was with were shocked to see us. Their house was still standing, only windows were knocked out. They had no basement, but had taken refuge in the home’s center hallway. All were cut up by flying glass, but no one had been badly hurt. We picked up my sister and steadily drove home. Our house on 50th Ave and Southwest Highway was okay, but we lost all our big elm trees and our brand new two-car garage had been flattened. My father, who was at work in Chicago left as soon as he heard the news about what had happened. He could only get as close as 87th before he had to get out of his car and run home. To this day, even now living in California, whenever I hear chainsaws it reminds me of that day in Oak Lawn. The ditch we took refuge in is no longer there, it is approximately where the Ford dealership is now.

• 11. Barbara Burns Stevens  |  April 21st, 2007 at 8:00 pm

  I was driving home from work with two coworkers. One wanted to stop and get hot dogs at the stand next to the high school and the driver was going to get gas at the gas station at 95th and SW Hwy. I thought the sky looked very odd and I was suppose to be in Oak Forest that evening for dinner at my future sister-in-law’s house. I asked the other two if they would mind driving me home so I could get my car and get out to Oak Forest. They luckily agreed and dropped me off at my house at 98th and Meade. As soon as I got in the house my Dad told us all to get in the basement. The tornado came through at that point. Our house was spared and the two coworkers were blown into a ditch but were unhurt. Needless to say we were so relieved that we did not stop at 95th and SW Hwy. that evening for gas and hot dogs. Both locations were gone. We were just minutes away from being at that intersection.

• 12. Judy (DeKorp) Matthias  |  April 22nd, 2007 at 5:34 am

  This is the first time I’ve had a chance to talk about the tornado with anyone who lived through it. I am saddened to hear the stories of others more immediately affected by that nightmare than I was.

  I had graduated from OLCHS in 1966. The day of the tornado I was 17 and attending Don Roberts Beauty School on 95th & Kedzie in Evergreen Park. It was a beautiful warm, sunny day as we left class. A classmate, (and former OLCHS classmate) Betty DeVries was leaving at the same time. We could see off in the distance to the west toward Oak Lawn, that the sky was very dark. Betty’s mom was out in front in her car, and I asked if she could drop me off on their way home so I wouldn’t have to wait for the bus and walk home in the rain that was sure to be coming down soon. Mrs. DeVries said she’d drop me off on 95th Street & 52nd Avenue, rather than driving me all the way home because she’d left her house windows opened. I believe that decision saved all of our lives.

  I got out on the corner, but the wind was so incredibly strong that I couldn’t stand up straight, and I took refuge in the doorway of the Dove Candy store on the corner. Dirt and debris was hitting me in the face. We had been so close to the tornado that we had not seen it, we were only aware of wind and darkness. They went on their way, and I stood huddled in the doorway, listening to a loud roar and the sound of sirens…totally clueless, while feeling the sting of being peppered with whatever was blowing against me.

  Once I could open my eyes, I stepped out of the doorway and walked the few steps to the corner. I could see police and others running out of the back side of the building on Cook Avenue. As far as I could see down 52nd Avenue, were toppled trees, power lines hanging from downed poles and draped across the trees and cars, and lying across the sidewalk and street. Cars were lying in ways I’d never seen…sideways and upside down, and the ground was littered with bricks and scraps of “stuff”.

  I still had no idea what had happened, but remember running down the street sobbing hysterically as the men told me to stay back from the power lines. In a total panic, I climbed over everything in my way and kept running. When I got home (to 5223 West 92nd Street)across the street from Covington, my former elementary school, my parents and sister were waiting for me inside the house. They told me they’d been looking out the living room window when they began to see “things” up in the sky that should have been too big to be able to be blown around…portions of walls and roofs and trees, and had taken refuge in a closet in the basement. They hadn’t heard a weather report.

  They never mentioned to me that there had been a tornado…I still couldn’t imagine what had happened, however I do recall spouting a mouthful of profanities for which I did NOT get clobbered! And which surprised me, since I didn’t recall ever having heard before, let alone utter! And I recall freezing that night, huddled in front of the fireplace as the wind blew snowflakes through our windows. We didn’t sleep…we listened to the sound of helicopters and chain saws all night. The next day as we went to check on other friends, I recall seeing National Guard troops.

  We were more fortunate than many. Every window in our home was broken, and our house looked like a porcupine…penetrated by lumber from other homes powerfully enough to push alot of the nails in the drywall inside our home inward so the heads stuck through the paint about a half inch. Our chimney had been pulled away from the house. Our garage was gone, power tools and other garage contents scattered…some in the few trees that remained, and some laying at the bottom of our pool along with many other people’s belongings. The trunk of our cherry tree looked like someone had tried to unscrew it from the ground…it looked like the threads of a screw.

  We checked on neighbors…friends who lived on the street behind us sustained much more severe damage, and people across the street from us sustained none.

  I recall all of the years of hearing, “a tornado watch has been issued for Kendall, Dupage, Will, and southwestern Cook counties….” Growing up, it meant that our play was going to be cut short because rain was coming. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined a tornado outside of The Wizard of Oz would be a part of my life. My heart aches every time I hear of another community devastated by a tornado.

  It has affected me for all my life. I grew up and moved to the Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago, where I lived on the 20th floor of a highrise on Lake Shore Drive. From that beautiful vantage point, I could see both beautiful sunsets. But I could also see thunderstorms approaching out of the west. It was awesome, yet so terrifying that I would rush to the basement of our building every time a storm would approach. Even a “watch” sent me (and eventually my children) racing for the elevator.

  Living in Virginia Beach now, and preparing each May for the approaching hurricane season is extremely stressful, but still doesn’t compare to the intestine-twisting feeling that comes with seeing “a tornado watch has been issued…” crawl on my TV screen. I remain hypervigilant.

• 13. Judy (DeKorp) Matthias  |  April 22nd, 2007 at 6:01 am

  I accidentally referred to Raymond Ave. as Cook Ave. My apology…I moved from Oak Lawn in 1968 and just realized my error.

• 14. Linda Yarbrough Maratea  |  April 22nd, 2007 at 7:46 am

  I was 17 and attended Don Roberts beauty school on 95th and Kedzie, another girl Jan Shaffer and my self were standing on the corner of 95th and Kedzie waiting for the bus, on a normal day I would of taken an earlier bus and my Mom would of been sitting at 95th and Southwest Hwy at the bus terminal waiting for me, my dad had bank business so for the first time since August of 1966 to storm date my routine changed, the normal bus I took was put head first in the farm house there on 95th and Southwest hwy, my Mom was at the bank with my dad, instead of the leveled bus lot, where she could of been killed in her car, we were going out for supper that nite, which never happened, I got to Oak Lawn trust and savings bank to my parents and we drove home during the very begining of the after math, it was a horrible scene. A day I will never forget. I was 2 months pregnant with my first son,

• 15. JO-ANN GIACONE SEITZINGER  |  April 22nd, 2007 at 9:28 am

  My husband and children were living in DeKalb, IL, but my parents, Babe & Joe Giacone, were living on Cass Street just parallel to SW Hwy and about a mile from the high school from which I graduated in 1959. Dad had a cigarette vending company in the Oak Lawn Bowling Alley, and they were just about to leave for home when the storm hit, so fortunately, they stayed and had dinner in the bowling alley restaurant instead where they were safe. They weren’t able to get home for several days, but lucky to find the only damage being the roof and loss of large oak trees; the home across the street was leveled, and there was a young girl still in the basement scared to death. Nobody could get in or out of Oak Lawn for several days, but we had a rural mail route and a mail truck, so we drove from DeKalb to my folks to save all the meat in their freezer. Because we did not have the TV on in DeKalb, we had no idea that a tornado had torn apart my hometown until my father called us from a Hometown Motel to tell us that they were OK. I still have the Chicago Sun Times Newspaper for that horrible day…and the destruction is just as vivid in my mind today as it was the day after the storm. God Bless Mayor Dumke; without his leadership, Oak Lawn would have been in worse straits. He was absolutely the Rock of Gibraltar.

• 16. Kathy Starr  |  April 22nd, 2007 at 10:44 am

  I survived the Oak Lawn tornado!!! It hit 1/2 block to the southeast of my family home. My Dad was home early that afternoon as my sister was to be confirmed at St Geralds that evening. My Grandma was at the house and my Dad was outside looking at the storm clouds when he rushed in the house and shouted to us all to get in the hallway and stay down. I recall holding onto my youngest sister, and looking out the living room picture window and seeing huge fire balls rolling down 91st Street. It was awful and the noise was literally like a freight train coming at us. It was very upsetting to my mom and grandma. We had no damage to the house fortunately, but friends just to the south and east of our home were not so fortunate. Luckily no one I knew died. I wanted to help, and a friend of mine and I walked over to the Mason hall and were told they didn’t need any help there. We walked home in the snow. I never want to go thru that sort of storm ever again.

• 17. Billy Fuessel  |  May 5th, 2007 at 2:05 pm

  I was 11 years old and lived with my family (Edward and Anne Fuessel and their 12 children) at 96th and Merton avenue.(The huge Colonial Cape Cod which still stands)and approx.(2 blocks East of Ridgeland)Anyhow still the most frightening day of my life!!! My father and older Brother had left the house only my 2 sisters and mom remained, As the weather that day was oddly warm and as it grew darker, we planted ourselves on the couch in front of the larger windows looking west. My mom was on the phone to one of my sisters. The phone went dead and she came into the living room curious off the very large hail… Suddenly she screamed.. those clouds, theyre spinning, tornado!!!She then ran for the basement my sisters hysterically followed.. of course me being a rambuncious young lad just had to stay and look… What I saw is set in my mind forever…. A large wavelike greenish black cloud rolling and spilling over the homes just due west of us!!!! We made it to the basement, yet enroute there was an eerie minute of calm.. followed by a progressive high pitched roar and hissing that rose in loudness, then up and down. Eventually the basement and house shook and creaked. The roar was so loud that you could barley hear things breaking upstairs. My mother pushed us under the ironing board and covered us. My sister Mary Ellen stood up hysterically calling my other sister, Kathys name.. (who lived in a small cottage next door). My mother pulled her to the floor again and we laid their in complete helplessness. Slowly, (but probably only in the real world a matter of seconds) the roar decreased.I saw from the basement windows, the blackness fade to the east and steady cold rain had begun. You could hear in the distance, faint cries of neighbors, car horns and sirens.. eerie as ever..My mother told us that there may be live wires upstairs and to stay put.. Shes feared that up those stairs was nothing!!! Suddenly we heard.. Anne are you ok?? it was our neighbor Mr Sullivan! he shouted it was ok to come out but there was much damage to the house. As we made our way up the stairs you could see out the from the sidedoor landing, the devasation,, trees, part of a volkswagon, fencing and speakers from the Starlite Drive In, wood, windows a bathtub piled 5 feet deep! I recognized nothing !!! We turned the corner through the Kitchen which seemed ok and into the living and Dining room which were devastated, open to the street like a dollhouse and filled with debris..Totally surealistic is the only way to decribe our lives that day.. My brothers and sisters arrived in droves shortly after, as did the neighbors.. Everyone appeared detached, delerious and in a total funk.. The air was thick with gas smells, wet pine, leaves and broken branch smells. it was weeks before I had realized the total devastation and changes in my life the Tornado had created!! Not until Augustof that Summer was our house completed and totally livable. My life was, as is now “Oak Lawn before and after the Tornado”. It was the first time I had seen my parents cry and I now knew that Family and that life as well as death, was very real and imminent.. I am now 51 and telling the tale remains to this day………. theraputic.

• 18. Vicky Hoffman Runcio  |  May 17th, 2007 at 6:44 pm

  I’m 46 yrs old. I freak-out when the weather starts to threaten, let alone watches and, God forbid…a WARNING! I have to know where my kids, family, and friends are when it gets “bad”. I get a ’suffocated’ feeling when storms are coming and then hit. I have described “the tornado senses” to anyone who will listen: the darkness,the deafening dc-10, the smell of the mossy/earthiness, the feel of PRESSURE and panic… and I was only 6 1/2 yrs old. I remember like it was only yesterday. I cried when I read the previous testimonials of that hellish day in 1967. I understand, in the depths of my soul, the pain, OUR pain of that day. In my little 6-yr-old world, I felt that my family and home had experienced ‘the worst’. It WAS bad, but to actually hear from others about that day, my picture is getting much bigger. As I grow older and with ‘theraputic” websites as this one, can I continue to heal.
  I grew-up in a duplex on the corner of Southwest Highway & Duffy ave. (Across from the firehouse). My older brother, Terry, was working on his go-cart after finishing cleaning the garage for my dad. My younger brother Dave and I were watching mom put on her make-up in our parent’s bedroom while we waited for dad to come home from work in Argo. Dinner was in the oven and the table was set. (Remember when families ate together??)It got very dark and mom turned on her dresser lamps. We were worried that it was so dark. She started to sing “April showers bring May flowers” when the lights started to flicker and went out. We could feel ‘the pressure’ at that time! She told us to “stay here” and ran to get Terry from the garage. Well, of course, we grabbed onto her pretty dress and ran to the back door to hear her YELL above the wind for him to come in! Terry said, “Look mommy! A tornado!” She screamed back, forget the…tornado, RUN!!” We all ran to the crawlspace hatch, but it had a large laundry hamper on it, too heavy for her to move it, so we ran to the hallway and mom put her body over all of us. (later she would tell us that she was thinking that ‘if we died, at least we were all together’)At that precise moment, the “wind” an understatement, slammed the hallway doors to the bedrooms and bathroom shut and the LOUDEST CRRAACKING of the roof blowing off was heard and felt because the pressure changed, once again. The sound of glass crashing was mixed-in with the wind, lumber and all that surrounded us was something that I will never forget. Shortly after that was…SILENCE. Nothing. We looked up and saw sky. No roof at all. Then, slowly, mom got us all up off the hallway floor and checked to see that we were alright. Not A Scratch On Any Of Us!!!! Mom said, (I don’t remember), Gramma ran to the front door, (after what seemed a while), to see if we were okay. She lived down the block. Mom was in shock, literally, and gram thought she was going to ask her in for coffee, she was so calm! Dad couldn’t get to us because the roads were blocked-off. He left his car about 91st & SW Hwy and ran to our house, to find us all okay. He wrote on the outside of our house with a big red pen “4267 All OK” so that the rescuers wouldn’t need to look for bodies. Our favorite Willow tree that our tire swing was on, looked like someone took a saw and cut a slice at the trunk. Gone. Our garage and its contents were completely gone. The driveway neighbor lost a few pieces of her siding and for the next three houses were unscathed. The Fifth house was obliterated except for one wall with the family china still there, untouched. Sadly,they lost their family pet, Bonnie, a cute neighborhood dog.
  We lost everything physical in the tornado. The fiberglass insulation penetrated every fiber of the house;nothing was salvageable. The only things we owned were on our backs. Mom & dad have ALWAYS said, they ‘wish they could thank the insurance adjustor for the way he handled everything’. He said he had a wife and children of his own. He cried with my parents, and took money out of his own pocket to get shoes/clothes for us. What a Blessed man! Thank you, whoever you were! We lived in a hotel for two weeks, then stayed at my gram’s house for the summer while they completely rebuilt out house, the HOME, where my parents still call home. I get emotional when I tell this story. I praise God that I, we, are here to tell it. He is Good, He has a plan for us, for Good and not bad, to give us a future and a hope. Life goes on. LIFE is GOOD.

• 19. Dave Hoffman  |  May 18th, 2007 at 6:59 am

  I was only 2 1/2 at the time and to be honest, I do not remember a thing. I have been told my entire life the story you read just above this, from my sis, my bro and my mom and dad. We do however still have the 8 mm movies to prove what happened to our home. It is incredible to me that anyone could have survived in our house. From the home movies, I can tell you that the garage in which my brother stood moments before was in fact torn from the foundation and just plain gone. The concrete floor was the only reminder of the garage. Most of the house roof was gone and our T.V was in the neighbors back yard. As the camera pans down S.W.Hwy. toward Cicero, you can see a fire burning with plumes of black smoke, I remember always asking ” is that the tornado?” Of course that movie was filmed the day after and it was probably debris being burned intentionally. I always get an eerie feeling watching that movie especially the big red writing on the front of the house that read 4267 ALL OK. And how incredible that our house sustained so much damage, yet our next door neighbor 20 feet away had only broken windows and a small corner of the siding missing. As the camera moves a few houses down, just as my sister reported, another neighbor who was on vacation and had their house closed up, pretty much exploded with one interior wall standing with cabinets intact still holding dishes! My cousin Scott Zukowski was aprox. 10 yrs. at the time and told me he was at hi - lo foods in the Hometown shopping center and actually watched the twister come down S.W Hwy. I have always wanted to share this video with anyone who would like to see it and I would be happy to make copies on video tape. Therefore, I am leaving my E mail address for contact.
  crankysob@comcast.net
  I have never really been afraid of storms since, and I actually wish I would have become a storm chaser. I was fortunate to see the tornado that hit the Palos Forest Preserves back around 1991. I was at 79th st. and Narragansett. But I will be honest, I sat here and cried like a big 43 year old baby when I read all of the accounts above. God bless all who suffered any loss that day, and I hope that none of us ever experiences anything of that magnitude again!
  Thanks for taking the time to read this, and again God bless us all!
  Dave Hoffman

• 20. Tommi  |  May 31st, 2007 at 1:14 pm

  I did not live in Oak Lawn at that time and was 7 yrs old when this happened. I lived by Midway Airport & my aunt & uncle lived there where it all happened. They had minor damage only & were very lucky. My sister was supposed to have an orthodonist appointment that evening ( like #3 Jackie-was it Dr. Konie?)but was making her Confirmation that night & had to cancel (makes me really wonder about the higher powers). My aunt & uncle told us the roof blew off that building & was pretty messed up. My father took me the next day to visit my aunt & uncle & what I saw was (I have a very good memory-too good sometimes) to also make me fear tornados forever to this very day. It was like a battlefield. Too horrible to even describe. The Roller Rink, The High School & yes The Starlight Drive In. I am happy for everyone who survived this & hope the bad memories go away one day for those who lost loved ones in this disaster.

• 21. Debbie smith  |  September 10th, 2007 at 6:30 pm

  I was in the roller rink for practice that day along with my sister and friends. I recall someone yelling to take cover we went under a bench.My sister got out first and a fireman dug me out and took me in his car to christ hospital and I met my sister there. We were okay bruised cut and shaken up and very sad to have lost 2 good friends and our friends mother. Many years later, that same fireman returned my skates to me he held on to them for years, till he found me and I got to thank him.The memories will always be vivid in my mind something that will never go away. I have a great respect for storms.

• 22. Jeff  |  September 18th, 2007 at 3:57 pm

  At that time I was 4 years old. We lived in Hometown, just off of Pulaski and Duffy. I remember my sister, brothers and myself 4 of us total, were eating fudgesicles in the Kitchen, which our Mom had just given us. The skies turned greenish in color. Suddenly all the wind stopped. Just then we heard a rumbling sound like a train, we lived close by the tracks and heard that all the time. Suddenly all the wind started up agin and I remember looking out the window into the back yard to see all the lawn chairs start flying away. Our Mom grabbed our fudgesicles and threw them in the sink. We were all crying because we didnt want to stop eating them. Our Mom ran us into the bedroom and shoved me and my sister under the Bunkbeds( I thought about that when I was about 10 or 11 years old and wondered how anybody could of fit under them, boy was it tight). After all the rumbling and crashing noises stopped, we all went outside to see what a mess the neighborhood was. There had been a large tree across the street that had been ripped out of the ground and dropped across the street blocking traffic and almost hitting our house by inches. I can remember my dad and all the neighbors grabbing the tree and all those men together lifted it enough to move it off the street. I also remember later that day as our mom drove us around to get groceries, seeing a car perched up against a tree in the cemetary

• 23. Dennis Durkin  |  October 4th, 2007 at 1:04 am

  I was 7 years old at the time. I went to St Gerald’s grammar school (2nd grade) and lived at 8804 S. 55th avenue (aprox 87th & Central). I remember vividly that day as we were getting ready to eat dinner as my father just got home from work. As we sat down at the table all of a sudden it became very dark and started raining and hailing and we could see the funnel go right over our house as we looked out the big picture window in our dining room. I then remember my father screaming at us to get in the house as my brothers sister and myself were running outside collecting the HUGE ice hailballs that were as big as baseballs that were left. We stored them in our freezer. It all happened sooooo fast, and seemed to be over in a matter of minutes. I then found out that my Aunt & Uncle’s home on Tulley Ave right off of Southwest Hgwy got the roof torn off and my school was destroyed. A girl that i went to school with (Bernadette Brady) got killed along with her father as their station wagon got picked up and tossed by the funnel as they were driving down 95th street. Ill never forget as we drove by my school seeing the white metal hand towel machines hanging off the wall where the bathroom on the 2nd floor was.

  see pic at link:

  http://theunexplainedworld.com/Oak_Lawn_Tornado/pages/St__Geralds_jpg.htm

  Since St Geralds was destroyed, it would take at least a whole year to rebuild so I had to go to the rest of 2nd and the entire 3rd grade at Burbank Manor school in Burbank.

  What I really remember from all this and what alot of people have also commented on is considering some buildings were totally devestated, some often just feet away and right next door some were left totally unscathed. It was very wierd almost as if the tornado picked what and whom it layed its rath upon. After seeing all these old pics and reading all the stories really brought all the memories back as if it was just a few weeks ago. Thanks to everyone here for posting their memories as they brought me back in time.

• 24. Tom  |  October 9th, 2007 at 3:49 pm

  I was only 2 months old at the time, but I have been fascinated by tornadoes because of the Oak Lawn tornado and the stories told about it. I can tell what my mother recalls about this day….We lived in Bridgeview near 88th/Harlem. Like many in the area, she thought Lake Michigan somehow protected us from tornadoes, so what was about to unfold that afternoon was the furthest thing from her mind. My mom would always say that the clouds that day looked different than she’d ever seen before…eerie…dirty, and very very low hanging in the sky. In the late afternoon, I had awoken from a nap and my 10 yr. old brother was looking out the window at the storm. He yelled for my mom to come to the window and take a look at something weird he saw in the distance. She didn’t go to look as she was in the middle of changing my diaper. Finally when my mother heard radio reports of a tornado ripping through Oak Lawn and hitting the high school, she became alarmed and took us into an interior hallway of our home. My mom was also worried as my sister was taking late classes at Oak Lawn H.S. and my sister planned to head to my grandmother’s house in Burbank after school that day. The was no dial tone to make any phone calls. Luckily my sister had left before the tornado hit the school. It was after all this that my mom realized that it must have been the tornado my brother saw at the window. My uncle who lived in Burbank, had just stepped outside that afternoon and noticed a bad storm was coming. He smoked a pipe at the time and he said the smoke from his pipe went straight up in the air as if being sucked up by a vacuum. He thought this was very odd and took it as an ominous sign and headed back inside. My mother said a couple days after the tornado, there was a light snow.

• 25. Nancy B  |  October 15th, 2007 at 6:53 pm

  I was 5 yrs old at that time, but i remember standing at the corner of Byron and Lockwood with my mom waiting for my brother Andy to come home from school. As i looked south i could not believe how black the sky was, I found out many years later that this storm system streched for 40 miles which is why we saw it on the Northwest side of Chicago. When my brother came home he had a horrible look on his face,my mother asked what was wrong, Andy said that him and his friend were looking out the window at school and his friend saw a funnel cloud,they tried to tell the teacher but no one would listen.Thank god it didnt touch down.

• 26. Nancy B  |  October 15th, 2007 at 7:10 pm

  Over the years I have talked to many people who lived through that day. The worst story i heard was from a lady who lived in Oak Lawn with her 2 daughters. She said the wind had picked up and when she went ot close the kitchen windows. She saw the tornado coming she grabbed her kids and headed for the basement, as she was going by the window she saw her neghibor coming home from work.And tried to warn him but he was sucked up in the funnel his body was found 3 days later. She told me her daughters spent many years in therapy after seeing this happen.

• 27. Mark  |  October 22nd, 2007 at 1:52 pm

  At the time, I lived in Chicago on 86th and Central Park right next to Evergreen Cemetery . When the tornado hit, I remember my father grabbing me and my brother and running us with my Mother down to the basement. That year I was about 3, and too young to know the danger. While my father carried us down to the basement, I was holding my plate and fork and eating. I saw the funnel cloud and our garage roof get ripped apart. As many say, it sounded just like a freight train.

  After it passed, all of the neighbors were checking on each other. In those days, a block was an extended family. We all had each others’ house keys. There were 6 to 10 children in each family, and the mothers didn’t work. This world has certainly changed. Since then I have seen 6 tornadoes. The 1967 Oak Lawn one was the closest, loudest, and largest by far. I always keep a place in the basement clear to duck and cover in.

  Thank you for your time.

• 28. Jeanna Peacock  |  November 3rd, 2007 at 8:16 am

  I lived on W. 89th Place. We were playing outside and my dad came out with a frantic look on his face and wanted us to come in. We complained, of course, until we saw what he was looking at (it was by the High School). The sky was green, it was huge with a lot of debree flying in it. I have never forgotten that sight till this day. I live in south Alabama now and routinely give tornado warnings/watches to the neighborhood. They all think I am crazy, but if they were in the Oak Lawn Tornado, they would understand why I am the way I am.

• 29. Curt O'Hara  |  December 13th, 2007 at 12:59 pm

  I was 7 years old at the time of the tornado and lived in Worth, IL, but my grandfather’s house was directly across from the old O.L. bus garage near 95th & Menard. The tornado passed directly over Worth just before 5:30 PM, and the sky was almost black. We heard on the radio that a tornado was heading toward the bus garage, and so my dad (who was heading back from work somewhere on 95th Street) began to attempt to drive to my grandfather’s house but was initially blocked by police. Since he was a relative they let him into the area, and he helped pull my grandfather out of the rubble after the storm. We still have a picture from the Southtown Economist of my dad along with other rescue workers carrying my grandfather on a stretcher.

  My grandfather had built his house (by hand) on Menard in the 30’s, and he said he was heading to his basement when he heard the nails on the roof of his porch being pulled out by the force of the wind, and that it sounded like a freight train was racing by. He did not remember anything beyond that, and he had a few broken ribs as a result of the destruction. A refrigerator also fell on his legs, and he had trouble walking the rest of his life. His house was leveled. Later that year, a house was built on his lot & we moved from Worth to Oak Lawn into the newly-built house.

  My uncle (my grandfather’s brother) owned the house next door to him on Menard, and he and my aunt were in Norway at the time of the tornado. This was a good thing, because their house was also destroyed & the water main broke which completely flooded their basement. Had they been home & sought refuge in the basement, they would have drowned.

  For a long time I wanted to become a meteorologist because of the impact that the tornado had on me. Although I live in Colorado now (near Denver, where tornados rarely occur), I am ever-conscious of when the skies turn “green” (which is what I remember seeing in 1967). For many years after the 1967 tornado, whenever a tornado watch or warning was issued, I would watch the sky to the southwest to see what color it was.

• 30. Rob Studer  |  December 20th, 2007 at 4:45 am

  We were living on 89th Place in Hometown at the time and through the years we’ve kept the memory of the tornado alive whenever we get to talking about days gone by. My parents had completed an addition to the duplex in 1965, and we had one of the bigger homes on the block (in Hometown any addition made you one of the bigger houses on the block). I do remember the sky having extraordinary colors and shades that day, with greens, purples, black and some red before being called into the house by Mom as she was very much concerned about the pending storm. The clock ticked closer towards 5:30, and my Dad’s expected arrival from work. On any usual Friday, we probably would have been soon after that all in the car (Mom, Dad, and 6 kids) heading out for the Bank, and sometimes afterwards to Dutchies on 95th Street or McDonalds on Kedzie (have never ever gotten to liking tartar sauce, and always on Fridays having to get a fish sandwich). However, Dad was nowhere close to being home. Hail and heavy rain had delayed traffic on the Tri-State Tollway, so he was in traffic as the storm moved in from the southwest. As Dad later explained it, he should have been at the intersection of 95th Street and Southwest Highway at around 5:30. Thankfully he was not, and in fact I did not see Dad until Sunday afternoon. Meanwhile, Mom summoned all of the kids into the house. My oldest sister was just getting out of the bathtub and drying off when Mom, sensing the wind picking up, yelled up for her to come down “now!”. The weather quickly worsened and as described by others, the sound of a freight train passing by surrounded us. Mom had us all lying on the floor in the front room as there was no time to get into the crawlspace, and quite honestly, think most of us would have balked at that anyway. I do remember Mom over all of us, shielding us with her body and doing her best to hold us all together as we clustered together, some crying, all praying for deliverence from the storm. Those prayers were answered. For what seemed a very long time, but in fact was just minutes, the strom passed. Then there was the eerie calm afterwards and in the fading light Mom could slightly see the wreckage around us. It was soon dark, and made darker by the loss of electricity to the neighborhood. We were all huddled still inside, perhaps in some state of shock about what just happened. Time seemed to be taking its toll too that day, as Mom was consumed with her concern about Dad, and him not being home there. About an hour after the storm, the front door opened. It was my uncle, Mom’s brother, who lived just north of Scottsdale on 79th Street, and who had gotten as close to us as 87th Street between Cicero and Pulaski, and had to walk the rest of the way, over downed but still hot power lines. The embrace of my Mom and uncle is perhaps the most indelible image I have from my childhood, as the tears and few words at his discovering that we were alright was a relief from the destruction he had seen on his way to our house. He had the presence of mind to bring a flashlight with him, and that made our departure that evening easier. He and my aunt had temporary custody of 5 kids for the weekend as Mom, Dad, and my older brother stayed behind to pick up after the storm. Aside from losing windows upstairs on the addition, and some tree limbs on the tree in the backyard, we came through the storm much better off than many in Hometown and Oak Lawn. Half of the duplex across the street from us was in shambles, thankfully the owners were not seriously injured. Another house on the street had walls ripped out of it. Now that I think about it, the north side of the street had more damage than the south side, or at least that’s what one could tell from the street. I remember too that homecoming on the following Sunday that there was snow on the ground. Our homecoming was the day we all reunited as a family, and we lived in Hometown for another year before moving to New Jersey with Dad accepting a new opportunity. Mom and Dad still live in New Jersey, and my 4 sisters are still there, and my brother and I have progressed farther from the nest (he’s in AZ, I just recently moved back to the DC area from CA). I can’t say with 100% certainty that the tornado was the reason, but today I am working as part of the team at NASA/NOAA that oversees the design, integration and test, and launch of the GOES satellites, which as a public domain satellite, broadcasts real-time images and data of the atmosphere commonly seen on the Weather Channel or local weather broadcasts. These images and data form space, along with data from other enhanced weather data systems such as ground based radar (Doppler), have greatly improved the weather forecasting capability here in the US.

  There have been numerous tornadoes since Oak Lawn/Hometown, but that one incident has had a profound effect on anyone who survived it. As a group, we’re probably the first, as survivors, to not guess at Mother Nature and her storms, but to respect the power of the storm and take cover sooner rather than later. As part of the GOES team, that’s part of our mission: to provide accurate and timely data, and in the end, to save lives.

  Hometown in our memories is 89th Place, Patterson Park, Our Lady of Loretto, the Library, the trains, Hometown Shopping Center with Kreske’s and the Hi-Lo, and the numerous friends and acquaintances that have either passed on or moved out of the town, but with whom we share this same experience. Over the years when someone asks “What’s your hometown?”, and you reply “Hometown”, it’s often that you get that funny look until you tell them, yes, there actually is a Hometown, Illinois.

• 31. susan culp  |  December 29th, 2007 at 6:31 pm

  I was 6 years old that year the tornado hit. We lived on Monitor Ave. just one block from the high school. I remember the loud sound of screaching that hurt my ears to hear. My four brothers and I plus our dog was in the hallway but after it was over, my dad took us to see the damages done. The high school, down southwest highway seeing a roof totally intact but upside down on the neighbors home and the house that was next door to my uncles inlaws was gone. Devastation never leaves your memory. This was a big devistation that year for everyone in the area and who was caught in it.

• 32. Matthew P. Dillon  |  January 5th, 2008 at 4:59 pm

  I will never forget this day. I was only 7 years old and had
  stayed home from school that day. My family lived (for
  over 50 years) on West Oak Street directly behind what for
  many years was The Oak Lawn Village Hall. Oak Street
  is essentially 94th St. which was very close to the “epicenter”
  of this tornado. I snuck out of the house to go to a neighborhood store with my friend (Danny) who lived next door. My Mother was unaware we had left the house as
  we exited via the basement door and through the backyard to 95th street as we headed toward Southwest Highway. Needless to say from the perspective of a 7 year old I could tell something was “amiss”….. The sky was black..then turned green as we left Knies (the store we left the safety of my parent’s basement for in pursuit of balloons and 7 year olds fantasies) quite quickly winds
  became so intense I was hanging on to a street sign parallel to the street at what was Raymond Avenue near
  the Village Hall. I still do not know how we made it back to the house directly behind the Village Hall. However, WE
  BOTH DID! My Mother was hysterical (a woman not known
  to get emotional in mist situations) and was as understandable wreck. Our home was untouched….but
  the house on teh corener at 52nd Street and most of that
  area was leveled. My father was in New York City on business and returned that day and had to WALK home from 87th and Cicero to our home. I remember him
  holding me in his arms as I slept in THEIR BEDROOM
  (NEVER BEFORE) when he finally arrived home. We were the lucky ones that fateful day that I will NEVER FORGET……….. Thank You to the powers that made
  that possible.

• 33. Lou Brancaccio  |  January 10th, 2008 at 5:41 pm

  Gymnastics practice at Oak Lawn High School was always a grind. This particular Friday –shortly after classes finsihed — would be no different. We’d head over to the secondary gym, put up the equipment, and begin working out. But then our coach called off practice. He needed to help at a track meet at the school that day. As a junior, I was happy to get a little earlier start to the weekend. At home for dinner, the sky suddenly darkened, it became silent and still and then it hit. We were lucky, the tornado bounced over our home. As a few us began to walk the devastated streets of Oak Lawn, we came to our high school. It was almost completely destroyed. But then we found something strange. Very strange. Across Southwest Highway from the high school, where the football team sometimes practiced, we found several pieces of wood. It was part of the bleachers from the gym we would have been practicing in, if gymnastics practice hadn’t been called off.

• 34. Ben  |  March 7th, 2008 at 3:44 pm

  This is about the tornado that happened during a spring outbreak in April of 1967.

  It has been referred to me, by the person I predicted it to an hour before it happened, at the last class of the day, as;”(Benafia) You and your tornado!” Nearly two dozen people died in my town. Now I have learned it was 33 deaths.

  Anyone who has been in this kind of natural disaster, might recall how reality seemed turned on its head. That day National Guard rifles were pointed at we kids as we walked down the middle of the street. (Where you were told to walk; not near stores. We had been out checking on some of our relatives and friends.)

  Sirens went on and on. There is no power and so no news but rumors. When I got home from the terrifying normal trip to the store to get pop for my terminally ill step brother who was working, favorite trees were gone. We got that pop to him at the job (I worked there on weekends, Friday evening, Saturday and 2am Sunday morning to sometimes afternoon ($1.00 an hour). Anyway, in the parking lot at his work there was a two by four going right through someones windshield. Debris was everywhere.

  Earlier we had left home for the four block walk to the store after an exceedingly wicked electrical storm just passed and it cleared up a bit.

  But while in the grocery store, a man ran in saying there’s a funnel cloud outside. I was an avid weather watcher, so I went out on 95 street to look and could not fathom the odd sloped wall dragging down from the sky to the west.

  Two step brothers and a sister went back into the store with me. I thought, man, is this ever the worst palace to be. That jet and train engine combo roar seemed to shake the air. It went pitch black. I reached out and touched someone. I said; “George. Is that you?” He said” Yeah. It is getting hard to breathe.”

  I had never heard of this phenomenon before. I prepared for the onslaught of glass and cans before the roof came down. Suddenly, dying seemed close at hand. Then light came back through the store windows, and rushing outside, the clouds were whirling in the opposite direction as I last looked. Pieces of fences and all kinds of tree debris and metal objects were on the road.

  When we got to near the high school, total devastation started. The cement gymnasiums pool roof had gone into the pool. We walked on beams looking and listening, since someone said they heard a voice in the water. A young girl in a trench coat was picking up surviving whiskey bottles from a liquor store, and hiding them in her long coat.

  You could see through town as if a mysterious trail has been blazed where buildings and homes once were. We heard horror stories from just moments before; someone impaled out in the athletic field. A bus was upside-down on top of a three story house left standing. The bus stations collapse killed some(?). And now another storm was starting to form, so we had to head home 5 blocks away north. Our house was missed by about one block.

  A stepbrothers swimming team friend was in the emergency room, his face wrapped, not knowing if he would see again. His dad had picked him up from practice. My stepbrother when visiting him a day(?) later, was not to tell him his father died being sucked out of the car window at the intersection. That is how I remember hearing it.

  There was a famous shot of my grammar school damaged where the tornado lifted enough to stop destroying homes, (except mobile homes a mile further up, at least 1 death there.). If you ever happen to see it, 16 year old me was standing right behind that photographer at that moment. I took six roles of film on some cheap little spy camera from Japan that I had never tried before. Never developed the hundred or so photos, as the little roles of film vanished in time.

  The tornado killed the huge elm trees that were the landmark in our front yard. Our trustworthy large apple tree split in half. We had to climb through it to get to the house.

  The east west highway was blocked for a while as chainsaws growled away on the widest Elm that split in half. You could see those Elm trees from up to ten(?) miles away, when up on the other side of the moraine deposit on the other side of old glacial Lake Chicago. They were a plume of green rising above a sea of green. An underground stream happened to flow beneath them, they always had all the water they wanted. My father had said to us as kids that they were invincible, lasting all these years being often hit by lightning and ferocious storms. One myth ended, very near his own vincible (month later suicide) end.

  As it turns out that tornadic day, another high school in session about an hour or more before was hit. That town had even more casualties I believe, leaving that tornado I was in, kinda off the Weather Channels radar when I watched a special on it of that days outbreak.

  Ours was a wedge tornado in the photo and the one side I could see, must have been F3+, (just learned F-4)the radar image shown in coming papers (as I recall), had it seeming to have its own spiral band of storms feeding into it, (the prior intense lightning storm?)leading me to believe it was so well organized and long lasting that it may have been the same storm that hit the other school.

  A very shy guy (me) blurting out; “There’s going to be a tornado!” to the kid next to him, I believe, picked up on the subconscious currents that some of us know, moves between those of us open to receive them.

  Lake Michigan. That is what I believe was the savior that day. Once cool and more stable air got sucked in off the waters large mass, it stopped as a plug on that hyper intense uplift of hot humid air. Why Chicago’s downtown is virtually safe from a tornado, but I would never say, given the right wind speeds angle and storm formation development, that it is an absolute impossibility.

  Working as a volunteer on clean-up after the storm, changed my perception on what being a human in this world of life and humanity, is all about. It is about being there for one another.

• 35. Angie Barbaro  |  March 17th, 2008 at 2:01 pm

  The day the tornado struck Oak Lawn is truly a day I won’t ever forget. I was driving home from work following a co-worker. Her station wagon came to an underpass and she was about 2 car lengths in front of me. The sky was a very strange green color and the car radio commentator was saying to keep a watch for tornadoes as there were several around. As she passed through the underpass I saw the wheels of her car leave the ground about a foot. She continued to sail through the underpass. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I followed her through the underpass and have no idea if my car left the road or not. Several days later when we were back at work, I commented to her about her car leaving the ground and she said I was the second person to tell her about it. This was not my imagination, her car did leave the road, but fortunately she was not injured. My mother’s boss died in his car as it was picked up and thrown several miles off his route.

  What was astonishing to see on TV was the devastation wrought by the tornadoe. A house had no roof. A reporter was standing in the kitchen of the home and there was only sky above. But unbelieveable as it was, there were tiny figurines on the top of the refrigerator that couldn’t have weighed more than a ounce and they were still standing in a straight line. The roof above them was gone, but the figurines weren’t touched at all.

• 36. kylie  |  March 24th, 2008 at 1:56 pm

  My aunt and dad were in that tornado.My dad was at work and my aunt and her mom were at home.They lived in palos hills and the tornado hit there house. they were inside but they were okay.its was a miracle.I saw pictures and the whole house was in pieces nothing was left.

• 37. Carole Janik  |  April 6th, 2008 at 12:13 pm

  I was 5 years old and living in Oak Lawn on 89th Place just west of Ridgeland Ave. I was in a.m. kindergarten and had spent the afternoon after school with my mom and little sister Janet at a friend of my mom’s house when my mom said we had to get going because the sky started to look threatening. We traveled home from her friend’s house via Southwest Hwy. (that’s all I can remember, as I moved from Oak Lawn when I was 9), and I remember the sky getting eerily dark when we pulled into our driveway. My mom hurried us up to get in the house and into the basement quickly (I stopped and picked a red tulip from our little flower garden in the front yard on the way, I still remember). We hid in the basement behind the couch down there and my mom had a transistor radio going to try and get weather reports. I remember it being really dark down there. It hit about a mile away from our house, and thankfully our house was spared. We could have been stuck right in the path of it had we left my mom’s friend’s house just a little later. My grandma was in the town of Oak Lawn getting her hair done and was under the dryer when the electricity went out. She saw the tornado pass by, but it didn’t hit the hair salon where she was.

  I still have a very keen interest in tornadoes and severe weather, and hope to go on a tornado chase some day. I just don’t want to see one destroy anyone’s home or business, or hurt or kill anybody.

• 38. Kathryn  |  April 8th, 2008 at 7:39 am

  I was 20 yrs old and I’ll never forget it. My Dad saw it coming; we ran into the basement. It turned from 79th St. We used to go skating at the roller rink in Oak Lawn, and to the Starlight Drive-In. My girlfriend’s family lost their whole trailer and all their belongings when it demolished the trailer park on Cicero. It was a nightmare. Can’t believe it’s been 41 years!

• 39. Tommy  |  April 10th, 2008 at 2:02 pm

  I was 7 years old and I remeber the tornado was right across the street from me on my block. My father was at work and was not allowed to go and see if we were okay because of the police guards. He thought we were dead and it was a frightening expierence.

• 40. Barb Kamper  |  April 12th, 2008 at 8:58 am

  I picked my daughter Carole up from Lieb Elementary School at lunchtime after morning kindergarten with my other daughter Janet, who was almost 3 years old. We went home to have lunch and then left for my friend Betty’s house, who lived at approximately 96th or 97th, just east of Central. We stayed there perhaps 3 hours, and then I decided we better start heading home so I could start supper. On the way home, we had to stop at the light at 95th and Southwest Hwy. I noticed the sky was changing to a yellowish-greenish color. It was such a strange mix of colors so out of the ordinary. It was about 5 o’clock. We got home, and I turned on the radio because I thought we were going to get a bad storm, but I never at that point thought we were going to get a tornado. They forecasted a severe thunderstorm warning. I took both girls downstairs to the basement. We played games and the girls played with toys. Suddenly, I could hear the winds pick up. I turned the radio back on and heard that a tornado had gone through Oak Lawn. Little did I know it hit about a mile to a mile and a half from our house. They said that the high school had been hit, and the south wall was down, as well as a supermarket and the bus barn. My sister-in-law was a math teacher at the high school. My mother was having her hair done at a beauty shop in Oak Lawn on 95th St. The pressure from the storm blew out the transom window above the door. She could not get home down 95th St. because of all the debris. She was rerouted east to Cicero and 95th, and took Cicero to 87th St., and then 87th St. west to Ridgeland. The national guard was immediately called in, and no one could get in toward the area where we lived without showing ID that they actually lived there to deter looting. The next day we took a ride to see what damage we could, but they wouldn’t let you through heavily damaged areas.

• 41. Ruth Warnas  |  April 12th, 2008 at 10:13 am

  I was 21 years old, a senior at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, some 325 miles southwest of Oak Lawn, and first learned of the tornado on the 10 pm news. Of course, no phone calls were going through to the area, and I had no status at all until a friend called me from Chicago in the middle of the night, saying only that she thought my family was “OK.” There was nothing to do at that point but to jump into my beat-up ‘56 Chevy and head north, with little more than gas money in my purse. Serious mechanical problems ensued, and I limped along as far as Springfield where I finally sought help. As soon as the garage owner heard me say “Oak Lawn” and “tornado,” and sensed my frantic need to get home, this wonderful man actually agreed to trust me to mail payment for the repairs the following week! I finally reached Oak Lawn on Sunday morning.

  Full realization of the utter devastation didn’t hit until I began to encounter military checkpoints at the Oak Lawn outskirts; fortunately my driver’s license still showed our Oak Lawn address, or I might have been denied access. Zigzagging as directed by the National Guard, it took over an hour to reach our neighborhood at 94th St. & 51st Ave. Due to fallen trees, I had to abandon my car several blocks from our home and walk. Approaching our street, I glimpsed a sign on the front door, which I feared said “condemned,” but was greatly relieved to find instead that it indicated “habitable!” At that moment, I saw Mother walking down from my grandparent’s home a scant block away — we both began to run, collapsing into each other’s arms.

  Our property had 11 majestic oak trees — one was split and laid atop our 2-story house. Miraculously this sturdy old brick bungalow, directly in the tornado’s swath, survived fairly intact, with the exception of roof incursion and many cracks in the plaster walls. My grandparents lived less than a block north, at the corner of SW Highway & 51st Ave., and sustained very little damage.

  At night, I heard strange noises coming from the walls, and feared something might be collapsing — my mother finally figured out that squirrels had gotten into our attic!

  I remember a representative of our church, Pilgrim Faith Congregational, only 2 doors south, stopping by to present my parents $50 in cash “to tide them over.”

  I believe it was on Monday April 24th that the snow came — quite rare for so late in the year. A crew came with a crane that day, booted us out of the house for safety, and lifted the oak tree off the roof. One of the emergency crew members was a young man from Makanda, a small town near Carbondale, and asked that I phone his parents when I returned to school to let them know he was OK.

  We spent many hours in the yard chopping debris with axes, and by the time I returned to my part-time job at the University‘s TV station, my fingers were so stiff from wielding the ax that I couldn’t manage the manual typewriter for several days.

  We were deeply grateful that our family members survived without injury, especially as my father had nearly perished in the infamous “Blizzard of ‘67,” when the Suburban Transit bus he was driving stalled far west on 95th St.; my Dad, always in poor health due to severe asthma, had to walk for miles through the snow drifts. By some miracle of providence, he wasn’t scheduled to be in the bus garage when the tornado struck on April 21st.

  -Ruth Warnas (nee Haaker)

• 42. Thomas Kaufmann  |  April 16th, 2008 at 12:37 pm

  Just looking to get in contact with Dave Hoffman-He has a video of the storm damage and his e-mail address is not current. THANKS

• 43. Mike L  |  April 21st, 2008 at 7:15 am

  Another April 21 has come and so we remember those this day whose lives were lost in this terrible storm.

  May they rest in peace….

  *Ages, and places of residence at time of death are listed.

  Bernice Andrews , 25 Joliet
  Helen Atchley , 81 , Chicago
  Bernadette Brady , 8 Oak Lawn
  Bernard Brady , 43 , Oak Lawn
  Edward J. Burman , 65 Oak Lawn
  Patrick Calascibetta , 46 Oak Lawn
  Joan Casey , 30 , Oak Lawn
  Christine Casey , 18 months , Oak Lawn
  Annette Clark , 21 , Worth
  Harold F. Cody , 70, Oak Lawn
  Patrick Andrew Golden , 39 , Oak Lawn
  Edward Griffith , 45 , Oak Lawn
  Ernie Gunnarson , 59 , Oak Lawn
  Karleen Gunnarson , 57 , Oak Lawn
  John Haggan , 51 , Oak Lawn
  Charlotte Hanley , 50 , LaGrange
  Christine Hinds , 13 , Worth
  William Hunoway , 47 , Oak Lawn
  William R. Jackson , 51 , Oak Lawn
  Walter Johnson , 60 , Hometown
  Carole Jucius , 22, Oak Lawn
  Albert Kriscunas , 42 , Palos Heights
  Edward Lipski , 51 , Oak Lawn
  John Timothy Martin , 32 , Chicago
  Charles McNeil , 65 , Oak Lawn
  Grant Miller , 32 , Chicago
  John W. Mobley , 46 , Oak Lawn
  David Nork , 14 Chicago
  Walter Nykiel , Oak Lawn
  Albert J. Semaitis , 42 , Evergreen Park
  Marjorie Swanson , 40 , Oak Lawn
  William Welser , 36 , Oak Lawn
  Catherine M. Zenner , 15, Chicago Ridge

• 44. Terry D.  |  April 21st, 2008 at 5:40 pm

  Remembering all those lost and those forever affected by this terrible storm and the other tornadoes of the April 21, 1967 tornadic outbreak.

• 45. Dale  |  April 22nd, 2008 at 6:06 am

  As I read the comments above, I too remember that day as if it happened yesterday. I was 6 1/2 years old, living in the Hometown Co-ops with my mom & brother. We had gone to the shopping center at 88th & Cicero with our neighbor when the storm suddenly hit. We got into our car and as we headed toward the stop light, my mom slammed on the brakes, and said “there it is” We looked up and saw the tornado along with with trees, wood and even a car flying through the air. As the tornado passed us it was as if it pulled a shade over the sky. Everything turned black. I was in the back seat of the car and immediately jumped into the front seat and crawled on the floor by my mom’s feet. Fortunately we were not hurt. My grandparents lived down the street from Foxes Pizza at the time. My grandmother ran all the way to our apartment to make sure we were ok. There was no electricity or phones for days. A few months later, we moved to Main street in Hometown and much of the devestation was still visible. A duplex down the street had been leveled with the exception of the toilet. The area just west of the Hometown VFW was set up as temporary housing (trailers) for many who lost their homes. We used to go to my grandparents several times a week, and the National Guard would stop anyone coming into Oak Lawn.
  Even now, 41 years later, I am terrified of bad storms and even the hint of a tornado. Several years ago my brother and his family were EXTREMELY fortunate to survive the F5 tornado that had ripped through Oklahoma City.

• 46. Kathy Johnson  |  April 25th, 2008 at 10:44 pm

  I was 17 years old and just showed up at work at Allison’s clothing store in Ford City. I had not been there very long when the roof of Frod City started shaking and the roof seemed like it was going to lift off the foundation. After the noise had stopped, we heard on the radio that the tornado had hit the Oak Lawn, Palos Hills area. I was devistated, I never thought that something like that could ever happened in our area. I had never, in my 17 years of living in the Burbank area had seen or heard of a tornado hitting so close to us. When my mother took is in the area of Oak Lawn to do our shopping a few days later most of the debris had been cleaned up. We saw the roller rink where all those children and parents had lost their lives. Then we passed Oak Lawn High School and part of the school was gone and we later found out that it was the swimming pool, and they said that there were no students in that part of the school when the tornado hit. Some of the stores we usually shopped at, were completely gone, the only thing that was left were bricks in the ground where the foundation was. I will never forget that day as long as I live. My sympathy goes out to those who lost a loved one that horrible day.

• 47. peggy shanahan  |  May 1st, 2008 at 4:46 am

  Does anyone have any photots of the Oak Lawn Roller Rink they could send me??? My family and I lived at 103 & Pulaski and its only due to the grace of God that I wasnt Killed or hurt in this tornado. I was 9 years old at the time and my friends and I were always at the Roller Rink, practicing whenever we could get one of our parents to take us. Four of my friends and I were suppose to be at the Roller Rink on that devastating day, but our ride fell through and we couldnt go. However, we heard of all the damages to many building and schools in the area. My next door teenage neighbor was working at the grocery store next to Panos Bowling lanes on 95th and Cicero, thank goodness he wasnt hurt, however, when they closed the store, he came out to find his car on top of the roof of the Robert Hall(?) Store. My Dad left work at the Clark Equipment Plant across from Ford City and barely made it home safely as the toronado roared down 95th street, the way he alway took to get home. My cousin and his friends rode there bikes to the roller rink and he came home with horror stories of the dead that I cant get out of my mind, even though its been 40 years. I emphasize with all of those who lost their lives on this hellish day-and my condolences go out to the families of the victims. Stay strong! Peggy Shanahan

• 48. Ron Corbett  |  May 1st, 2008 at 9:16 am

  I was 10 years old the day that tornado hit. I was helping my friend Steve Boyle deliver papers on 95th street between the railroad tracks and 52nd st. We saw it moving towards us and the thing I remember was the ice cream cartons flying around and all the debries in the air. The sky was a weird color of green. We started to knock on windows of shops as we ran west down 95th street warning people there was a tornado coming. I remember the startled looks of people and the total disbelief on their faces.When it got to bad to run anymore we took cover behind a wall next to a door at a dress shop. The wind was howling and all the doors were crashing open and closed.A lady who was working there saw us and came out and grabbed us and took us under the register counter. Just then, the windows from the Barends(spelling?) Hardware store blew out and came crashing into the exact spot we had just been standing. We came so close to being cut to pieces. After it went by we took off running home. I lived at 9610 West Shore Drive and Steve lived about 5 houses down on the Oak Lawn Lake.As we left the shop, the hail started to fall. We went about 2-3 doors down, and the craziest thing I remember was seeing the windows to the jewelery shop all blown out, and all the jewelery on the sidewalk. We were too scared to even think about stopping to pick anything up.We got to about Cook Ave. and 95th by the old newspaper place and a guy in a car offered us a ride home. We took it. Our house which was about a block or so from St. Gerolds was fine. It was the first Mayor of Oak Lawns house (Mayor Montgomery), and it had huge walls.My brother was at his friends (Johnny Poohr)house at the corner of 95th and Central ave. They were on the second floor of the then called Egan insurance agency building..(in the same lot as the Oak Lawn Bank. They watched it hit and then lighting struck the Funeral home at the NE corner of 95th and central ave.My friend Timmy Bruggemans brother came down fron thier bedroom after the storm and said there was a rock in the room that destroyed all their models… It was from St Gerolds I remember seeing the straw stuck in the concrete by St. Gerolds and wood driven into trees.That night we had a lady show up at our house.She was totally disoriented and in shock. I remember her telling parents that she was at the light at 95th and SW Highway and the car next to her was sucked up in the storm.We had National Guard soldiers standing at the foot bridge over Stoney creek by the old ice skaters “Hot House” by the park for days after the storm. I had friends whose Dads were fireman at the OLFD (Ron Hermann and Ron Bruggeman) and we were told alot of stories about the people who didnt make it.I’ve lived through Hurricanes Andrew, Charley, Wilma, and Katrina, and I can tell you this was by far worst than any ‘Cane I’ve seen. It was a day that will live with me forever.

• 49. Ron Corbett  |  May 1st, 2008 at 10:47 am

  I should have read the other stories first, as there was alot more that came back after reading everyones experiences.I had forgotten about the Starlight and OLCHS… i had friends siblings who were at the school when it hit,the water from the school was sucked out and it flooded the halls. The overpass for pedestrians(which my Dads steel company built) was jammed up with cars.The Red Barn had its whole front torn off… and who could forget the bus garage? The skating rink…..I still feel for those poor people.Something else I remembered seeing, but have never heard anything about, is that the tornado had 2 smaller funnel clouds on either side of the main tornado.Does anyone remember that? Also, the Funeral Home on 95th and Central caught on fire after it was hit by lightning and burned up.I also remember that they ordered a shoot first and ask questions order to the National Guard who were all over after it hit.I remember going to Gasteyer School in 4th grade on the next monday and was told to draw a picture of the tornado…. must have been to release anxiety. The 2 days after the tornado hit, I workked with 2 friends cutting trees that were blown over for some older lady who couldnt do it. It’s still hard to believe it’s been 41 years

• 50. The Whites  |  May 5th, 2008 at 1:26 am

  We lived at 95th and New England(69th ave).
  I was in 3rd grade when I and my sisters and brothers(ages 7 to 16) actually saw the tornado just feet from our house..IT WAS HUGE!!HUMUNGUS….Biggest I have ever seen…….
  Our parents went to do some banking and we we supposed to being doing our chores while they were gone..riiight….4 of us were playing moms piano,(heart and soul I think)… in front of the Big Picture Window, that faced east..OOOHH!!!AND THERE IT WAS!!!LIKE IT WAS
  looking at us UP CLOSE!!almost like it was sizing us up for the KILL!!!!It was like a space ship suddenly appeared in our front yard!!!!!..A HUGE HUGE BLACK SWHIRLING MASS OF DIRT AND ROOFING AND METAL!!!! All at once we all SCREAMED!! TORNADO!!!LOOKING AT IT IN THE FACE!!! and ran to the hallway. No sitting on the floor and tuck your head applied here..Our 2 big brothers, in one second, covered us 4 litle girls….I remember being so squished..and the sound..and the pressure..and..The SKY WAS FROM ANOTHER PLANET!!! it’s gone..getting up and wondering where are our parents and where is Big brother (he worked at Hillmans Groc.,I think on 95th and Cicero)…It seemed like forever
  before Mom and Dad got home..(I think we may have even quickly finished our chores)..
  When our parents got home we learned that they were coming back(going west on 95th st)from Oak Lawn Bank and saw the TORNADO!!and ducked into a frantic pub, where they were all headed to the basement..holding hands on they way down…when they came UP…the pub was gone… When they tried to get back to our home the police would not let them go past…Dad pleaded…(I have 7 children at home)…Then HE BLEW THE ROAD BLOCK!!!…..
  Minutes after they returned OUR Big brother(he was only 16)..just frantic and crying,,,after walking miles down 95th st(in all the destruction) to get home was waiting at the same road block, he saw someone blow it so he ran fast thru it to get home..I’ll never forget seeing his face coming around that 95th st. corner..and him seeing our house still standing…
  We learned later that the TORNADO!!!actually skipped, jumped, RIGHT OVER OUR HOUSE!!! and stopped, and continued it’s destruction just feet away…
  Years after..I was the tornado watch person(because I was the fastest) in the family.I would watch out the west window and yell way across the house..TORNADO!!!!!IT”S COMING RIGHT THIS WAY!!!!!…Then run fast to the hallway…..I would see many of them skipping across 294 and 95th..THE SOUND AND THE ANTICIPATION and the FINAL HIT is just unforgetable….Our property took several hits years later. WE ARE ALL STILL ALIVE!!!!

• 51. Jim Carroll  |  May 16th, 2008 at 8:29 am

  I was a patrolman on duty in Oak Lawn at the time the tornado struck. In fact, my patrol zone included 95th & Southwest hwy. It was about lunch time and I decided to go home to eat. As I neared my home near 99th & Crawford, I requested permission to check out of service to eat. HQ advised there were high winds reported in my patrol zone and that I should return to check for injury or damage. I immediately returned and was confronted by the most unbelieveable sights I had ever witnessed! The rest of that day and several more were consumed by rescue, transportation,looter patrol and fatigue. It was a catastrophe of unimaginable magnitude and if one was there, one will never forget.

• 52. Chris  |  May 25th, 2008 at 8:50 pm

  I was 3 and my sister was 4, we were in our car with our parents, eating at the McDonalds on Cicero. We heard very strong winds and saw the tornedo coming. Our parents told us to get down on the floor in the back seat, they then put themselves on top of us. Our windows blew in and the car was shaking. When it was over, the roller rink was hit. If the tornedo would have gone the other way, we would not be here. My heart goes out to those who lost their loved ones.

• 53. Mike Jasiewicz  |  May 31st, 2008 at 12:24 pm

  I was almost 11 and living in Oak Lawn at the time of the tornado.
  My family was driving north on Pulaski Rd. to spend the night with my grandparents.
  We were stopped at the traffic signal as we approached the intersections of Pulaski, 87th St, Southwest Highway and the railroad tracks. That was always a slow intersection to get through. The sky was a sickly green color with lightning throughout it. Our car was shaking. My Dad said to hold on because we were going to run through the intersection. He said that there was a tornado coming. I looked to the west and there it was, just moments from where we were stopped. My dad got us to safety, however his car received some major hail damage. I was very excited to see the tornado until we came home the next day.
  My aunt took us home as my dad had to go to work. The National Guard was out in full force. They weren’t going to let us in to Oak Lawn because my aunt’s car had a Chicago registration sticker in the windo. In her purse, my mom found proof that we were from Oak Lawn. We had just recently moved there so her drivers license was still listed as Chicago, but she had a recent utility bill. The guards let us in. Our house received minor shingle damage. But my excitement about seeing the tornado all but disappeared when I saw what it did to Oak Lawn.
  I will never be the same. I will always remember those who were affected in more extreme ways then I was.

• 54. Susan Barwan  |  May 31st, 2008 at 6:13 pm

  I remember this tornado like it was yesterday…I was only 3 years old at the time, but it was me who was looking out the front window and asked mommy what the big black thing was. She ignored the comment of a 3 year old until the sirens went off, came running to the window and promptly ordered myself and my baby brother Paul downstairs, while she ran to get a blanket. We wouldn’t go down because it was dark and we were afraid of the dark, and mom (6 months pregnant with my next brother Gregg) picked us both up under her arms and hurried us down into the SW corner of the basement, where she quickly pulled the blanket over our heads. I remember the horrifying sound…so loud and yes, like a train, and big bangs as things hit the house.

  We were lucky…it missed us, but it got the High School on the corner and took out one side if I remember correctly. My father was at work at the time as a copy machine serviceman, and was at the Jewel that got grazed. He told me once that he dove under a desk just as the front windows blew in.

  I believe this experience is responsible for my infatuation with tornados to this day…when there is a storm, i don’t go inside…I stand outside and watch, much to the chagrin of my roomate hehe To this day I have seen 4 tornados up close, including the Plainfield tornado, and I just can’t get enough. Thanks for reading my story

• 55. Linda Kramp  |  June 7th, 2008 at 5:18 pm

  I was 11 years old on that fateful day. My dad was building our garage at 9624 Natoma. We were in the neighborhood behind the Starlite drive-in. The weather was looking pretty bad and I heard my dad and his lifelong friend talking about how ‘this is it’ while looking at the sky. I decided to go out back and secure the garbage can lids. At that time my dad screamed for me! I never ran so fast in my life back up to the front of the garage! He sounded so scared! He pushed me to the floor of the garage and as we looked out we saw the Starlite to down. My dad said to me ‘that is a tornado. Don’t ever forget what it looks like’. I’ve heeded his words and have been scared to death of bad weather ever since. Once it was over, the rain came down in buckets, and my mom pulled into the driveway, coming home from work. We had to pull all the debris out of the driveway before she could get all the way in. When she got out of the car she collapsed into my dad’s arms. She had driven down 95th street when she saw the tornado and pulled off the road in front of Simmons School. She watched it dance over the A&P that was across the street and she just knew our house was gone. Once we were in the house (luckily we had just superficial damage) my dad took off down the street. He was gone all night pulling people out of their homes. The entire block had been destroyed. He had brought back refugees to stay with us. My dad’s name, by the way was Jay Lambert. He was a real hero during that time. He worked so hard helping that night that he wore his socks away! I knew 3 of the people that perished. What a scary time. Every time after that when warnings would come up my mom and I would dive for cover. To this day I pace the floor waiting for the storms to end. I live in Missouri now and we catch whatever is coming out of Kansas and Oklahoma, but nothing has been as bad as the tornado that destroyed my neighborhood and caused so much death and destruction. I’m glad I found this site and am finally able to tell my story to people that were there and who understand. God bless David Nork, Joan Casey and Christine Casey, and the families they left behind.

• 56. Frances Terchanyn Mattre  |  June 8th, 2008 at 8:54 pm

  I moved to OakLawn 3/27/1967 from Johnstown Pa, to attend school. I also worked for Avis Rent-A-Car on Wabash St, downtown. About 5 PM that day, I was fascinated by how dark it was, expecially south of us. I went outside to experience a very different type of atmosphere. Very oppressive, dark but no rain. Never experiencing a tornado, I thought it was just going to be another typical summer thunderstorm, but it just felt different from back in Pa. I was living with my aunt and uncle in Oak Lawn and did not yet have a car. My uncle worked on the near north and was picking me up at 5PM, as he generally did. Our drive home brought us to 95th and Southwest Hwy about 5:30 each day. On 4/21, my uncle called me about 4PM to let me know that he had to work late and that I should take the L. Because of the storm, my boss told me to hang around til it ended. I got a call about 5:45 from another aunt that lived in Cicero, telling me that there were tornados touching down southeast of the city and that I should come to her place instead. Her husband drove in to the city, picked me up and took me home. We couldn’t contact anyone in OakLawn and couldn’t get near there. We were up all night trying to reach my aunt and uncle. I stayed there the next day, waiting for word of my family. We got a call finally, and everyone was okay. I got back to my aunts later that day. Her house was intact, the neighbors was gone and most in her neighborhood were either leveled or badly damaged. You wonder why that house was spared? I could not believe the photos on the news from the area of 95th and Southwest. The fact that my uncle had to work late possibly saved our lives. We will never know, but it left me shook for many years. The devastation was all around, and seeing it just left me feeling helpless. Because I was a student and worked, I was not able to get involved in the cleanup. I recall that everytime after that, when it would rain, get dark, or have what I called hangy down clouds, I would retreat to my aunts tornado shelter, under her house, where she and her children had spent waiting out the storm, frightened, on 4/21. I have never seen any thing so chilling and to this day, I can see the war like devastion in my mind.

• 57. Kathy webb(Neese)  |  June 10th, 2008 at 1:07 pm

  I was 11 at the time and was suppose to be at the oak lawn roller rink, but mom would not take me because of the storm. I was a good thing because I saw the tornado hit the high school. I had several friends buried at the roller rink since it was demolished.I will never forget that day.

• 58. Gene Skala  |  June 18th, 2008 at 8:55 pm

  I was only 2 years or so when it hit. I remember it was very dark outside and stormy. My father (an Oak Lawn Policman) was home a lunch or dinner break. My mother started panicking and told me, my brother and sisters to go in the bathroom. My father was using the bathroom at the time, but he soon opened up the door. We all climbed in the bathtub and our family stayed in the bathroom. We lived on Merrimac right near Chicago Ridge Mall. Only blocks away from where it hit.

• 59. Noreen  |  June 19th, 2008 at 10:18 pm

  I was 13 and had ridden my bike to Hillman’s Food store at 95th and Cicero to get something for my Mom. As I came out and looked West, the sky was a horrible green/black shade that I never want to see again…then I caught a glimpse of the funnel. I started to drive my bike south, but was urged by a group of people at the furniture store next to Hillmans to join them in the back of the lower floor until it passed…

• 60. Beverly Meier  |  June 21st, 2008 at 12:12 pm

  The recent tornado to hit the Boy Scout camp in Iowa validates the seriousness with which I take weather warnings, and explains to some degree the hyper-vigilent nature under which I constantly operate.

  April 21, 1967 was the day before my 10th birthday. My father and older sister had just returned from the Jewel near Southwest Highway and 95th with the birthday cake for my party, which was to be held the following day. As we huddled under the kitchen table in our house (which was built on a slab - no basement) at 9124 S. Monitor, my father held the phone out the back door so his co-worker could hear what a tornado sounded like. We couldn’t hear anything because my mother was screaming for him to get under the table. I remember wondering if the table could hold up the house if it fell on us.

  Afterwards, we all piled into the car and took a backroads kind of route to Foamin’ 60s on Pulaski for dinner, which was our Friday night routine. Inside, patrons and employees recounted seeing couches flying through the air. We had no idea what they were talking about as all we had seen on the drive over was a few downed branches. We returned home and walked up to Southwest Highway. There were school busses on front porches. A pot on a stove but the house around it gone. The high school was demolished. A car was rammed against the supports of the pedestrian overpass from the high school. My father looked inside the car and I heard him tell my mother that the driver was pinned to the seat with a board through his chest. The Fisher Motel was flattened. My 13 year-old sister, who was a friend of Debbie Fisher, who lived kitty- corner behind us, started crying. We didn’t know if she were there working with her parents, as she often did, or not. The remainder of my 4th grade year at St. Gerald’s was held in the basement of the school, and 5th grade classes were held at St. Nick’s the Greek where the desks were oversized for the children in our class and we had to bring a shoebox to rest our feet on if they didn’t touch the floor. Apparently, dangling feet could affect our posture, so they said.

  I’ve chaperoned camping overnights with the Girl Scouts and if there is rain in the forecast, I ask the leader straight out: “What is our plan in the event of a tornado?” My children know exactly what to do if there is severe weather and I am not home. If we go to a movie and there are storms predicted, I always ask someone at home to call my cell if the sirens are activated. I don’t trust the teenaged employees at the theatre to take a threat seriously. I guess when you witness it for yourself, you tend to believe it CAN happen to you.

  Hello to Susie Culp who posted here as well. She lived across the street from me on Monitor.

  One thing I discovered only as an adult: a 2nd grader at our school was killed in the tornado, along with her father. Was this fact not shared schoolwide? Were we sheltered from this news to protect us? I think of the school (Ss. Peter and Paul, Naperville) where my children attend and know that if something like this were to happen here, the Ss. Peter and Paul family would be wrapping our arms around one another and mourning this tragedy together. Am I remembering this incorrectly? Do any St. Gerald alums recall?

• 61. nancy  |  June 22nd, 2008 at 5:16 pm

  I was 14 at the time. We lived a just a few blocks north of Southwest Hwy. We were getting ready to go to St Gerald’s for a confirmation. If it came just 10 minutes later, we would of been at the church…right in the path. The thing I remember the most is picking up the phone and just hearing people crying and begging for help. I hope I never see anything like it again.

• 62. Mike  |  July 13th, 2008 at 9:49 am

  I was 14 and lived in the neighboring town of Palos Heights. I remember looking out the window to the north and the sky had turned to “army green”. The next morning my dad and I went to Oak Lawn and I will never forget the devastation we saw. The one thing that sticks out in my mind is a piece of hay or straw driven into the side of a tree. It was like it was a nail and someone had hammerred it in.

• 63. Rita  |  July 17th, 2008 at 1:41 pm

  I was 9 years old in 1967. We lived on south 51st Avenue across from a park.I remember the wind picking up and the sky looking yellowish. My dad was home and made all of us go down to the basement. He was very serious and I could tell that there was something definitely bad happening. He had the radio on and kept walking up the basement stairs to look outside. Once, I followed him up the stairs and looked at the sky. It was yellowish black. The wind was very strong and it was very loud. My dad told me to go back downstairs and I insisted that he come down as well. The tornado touched down several blocks away from our house and we were lucky enough not to suffer any damage that I can recall. After the storm, probably the next day, we drove around looking at the damage. I remember seeing the collapsed walls of the Oak Lawn HS swimming pool and buses in the pool, trees uprooted, and a small restaurant where the walls were totally gone, but the barstools and counter were still intact. It was very weird. We moved to Lincolshire the next year. I remember taking the front page of the newspaper published the day after the tornado into my new school and telling my classmates about the storm. No one seemed very impressed (except the teacher)as they probably had never experienced anything like it before.

• 64. Donna Otway-Krambeck  |  July 22nd, 2008 at 8:06 pm

  I too, like Dirk Mooth and Debbie Smith, was in the roller rink that fateful day. I had gone there to sell my skates as my car was in the shop and I had no money to get it out! As the others have mentioned, we knew of the warnings but always thought “it wouldn’t happen to us”. I remember sitting in the snack bar area when Chrissy Hinds came up to me to say hello. She had on a cute white ruffled blouse-always such a sweet and beautiful young lady. That would be the last time I’d ever see her alive again. I looked out the window that faced Cicero and noticed what I thought were many black birds flying and mentioned to the person there that it seemed unusual. We got up to get a closer look and saw that huge funnel cloud on the ground coming through the Clark gas station across from the rink! We yelled “tornado” and started to run. I remember someone yelling to get in the coat room, which was just a fragile room of paneling, nothing much for protection. I remember huddling with, I think, Chrissy and the Hanley daughter(whose name I cannot remember). We were all hugging each other very tightly when the tornado hit the rink and we went flying apart. I felt myself going through the air and started praying out loud. I remember thinking that I’d never see my parents and my brother again and that the next person I’d see would be Jesus at the gates of Heaven. I felt very relaxed and prepared to die. Then it was over. I was buried under debri and it started to rain. I’ll never forget the smell of wet wood. I could hear the kids crying and moaning. I thought my back was broke, but didn’t want to just lie there. I had to get help. I struggled to get out and had to leave my purse there, which I never found. Then I walked out onto the floor, or what was left of it. It seemed to have large buckled bumps in it. I had one moccasin on and slipped on the floor. I kicked the one shoe off and noticed that I had lost my periferal vision. I made my way out to Cicero avenue and asked someone for a ride home. The driver of the car turned out to be employed by a company that my father sold his animals to! Later he told my dad he picked up a girl coming out of the rink with blood all over her. He didn’t know that I was Don’s daughter. When I got home, I walked into the house where my mom was sitting in the kitchen unbeknown of the tornado. I walked passed her as she asked me if I was in a car accident. I told her that Chrissy was dead which of course I didn’t know at the time. Somehow, I must have felt that she was gone.
  I have finally gotten over my terrible fear of storms. I respect them and take cover when need be, but I don’t freak out anymore over them. I DID buy a house with a basement though!!! I have taught my son to respect tornadoes and do keep an eye out when it gets threatening. Whenever we go camping, I make sure I check first for the nearest gulley, etc. to take cover in, just in case! I never did get to sell my skates as they were lost for 3 weeks, but I did get them back and in fact, I still have them–down in the basement!!!
  Dirk Mooth–please email me if you read this, would love to speak to you again!
  dlks3@aol.com

• 65. Darlene (Daniels) Gallagher  |  July 24th, 2008 at 8:14 pm

  I graduated from OLCHS in 1968. After reading previous encounters, my heart goes out to those who can still so vividly recall ther perils of the day. I too have vivid memories for over 40 years.
  I was to make-up a swimming class that afternoon but I ditched to go to an OLCHS baseball game out at Sandburg HS. The sun was shinning..great day for a game…so we thought. Suddenly, it was announced the game was cancelled due to a storm warning. My mother, who drove us to the game, loaded the car and started to drive us home. As we were dropping off Elaine F. (who was in a full leg cast and on crutches) at her house on Raymond Ave, the sky was getting darker and darker. As we drove down Southwest Highway to take Mary Ellen H. home the winds kicked up….I remember saying to my mother..If you can’t keep the car steady, then I will drive..(typical teenager response!) After we dropped off Mary Ellen, we went home and Terry P. lived next door to me. We all rushed into the house….I looked out the back window just as the funnel was hitting the bus terminal and remember seeing the buses flying in the air like matchbox toys! I yelled to go downstairs (we had a basement) and pulling my mother off of the couch…she said…it is just a thunderstorm…I picked up our dog who was in a hip cast (fractured hip from that horrible snow storm we had that year)…… Once the storm was over, I could not pick-up the dog and bring her back upstairs. My brother was in the barbershop across the street from the bus station when the tornado hit. He drove home down Alexander Pl. going over 60 MPH thinking we were effected. Luckily, our house was fine..He drove me up to the HS and I observed the damage to the A&P grocery store (now Red Lobster), the Barn, the overpass and the pool where I was suppose to be when it collapsed! If I had not DITCHED… I would have been a fatality.
  I spent that night at the Korvette’s on Cicero Ave. helping with a First Aid Station with other emergency personnel. Victims were arriving with embedded glass at 8 PM at night. I quickly learned how many items in a store become first aid supplies! My mom even drove a nurse to Christ Hospital as they were in their disaster plan and he had no way to get there. The rest of the weekend was spent with many of my friends delivering food to those who were in need and working out of the Masonic Hall on 52nd Ave. I had to overcome the anxiety of storms with green tinged skies and tornado sirens so that I would not instill fear of storms in my children~ and teach them to respect nature. (Oh, I did become a nurse ~very involved in Disaster Planning and involved in that since before 9-11)
  May none of us or our families ever have to have these vivid memories.

• 66. Fred Martinek  |  August 19th, 2008 at 6:46 pm

  I was 6 years old in April-67, we lived on 84th and Pulaski in Chicago right off the Southwest Hwy. I was home with my two sisters, while my mom was working at the Jewel down the street. I remember my grandma calling our house to see if we heard about the tornado warning for Cook County! My sister told her yes, a neighbor next door said to stay away from the windows after you open them (in 1967 that was supposed to equal the pressure between the house and the tornado and save it from exploding — do not do this anymore it is a waste of time).

  As soon as my sister hung the phone up my mother came home from the Jewel and yelled at us to go in the basement. I remember coming out of my bedroom and looking out of our kitchen window which faced south looking at the Southwest Hwy and all I could see was the darkest black-green clouds I ever saw. The clouds were so low it almost looked like there was a fire at the gas station across Southwest Hwy ( which later became Marathon Pools). I later learned that the tornado was in St. Marys cemetery at this point and we were looking at the south edge of the wall cloud. After the storm cleared all the neighbors came out and to see if everything was all right - and it was. No damage on our block, but we started hearing sirens and emergency equipment. Heading down the Southwest Hwy we listened to the radio ( somehow our lights did not go out) and the reports of damage in Oak Lawn and Hometown started to come in, but we did not realize how bad this was until the following day, when the shoots from the helicopters showed the damage.

  I can still remember watching a WGN ch-9 special report on Saturday, April 22, 1967 and Carl Grayson (news report