THE LORAIN TORNADO
OF JUNE 28, 1924
By
Emily Grace Doane
As told to
daughter, Jane Meitzke MacDuff
This is Mother’s story:
It was about 5:15 p.m. in Lorain, Ohio, June 28th, 1924, a hot, sultry day, and my Grandfather, Clarmont Doane, was out in his garage
doing his usual thing; tinkering with his 1918 Dodge automobile, and aware of a
pretty bad-looking storm coming from the west.
There was hail and thunder and a pea-green sky. In the house at 1329 5th Street, my Grandmother Hildegard was canning sweet cherries in the
kitchen. My mother, Emily Grace, age 16,
didn’t like the sounds of the approaching storm while she was upstairs getting
dressed for a party. It sounded like a
train to her. So, she came down stairs
and sat down with her mother at the kitchen table. Grandpa Clarmont usually rode out
thunderstorms in his workshop in the garage and didn’t bother to come in for a
thunderstorm. But, the electricity went
out and he decided to come into the house this time. Grandma had lit the gas lamps and Grandpa
went out to the front porch to take the big swing, in front of the big glass
window, off its hooks, which he always did for bad storms. He had noted the winds were pretty strong in
this one. Emily Grace was in her slip as
she had not finished getting dressed for the birthday party to be at her
friend’s house. She now went to the
front room and looked out the big front window in time to see a telephone pole
go sailing away, and then the large maple tree uprooted and sailed off over
other trees. Grandpa was forcing the
front door closed.
In those days of early weather reporting no one in Ohio knew about such storms as tornadoes, but my Grandpa
Clarmont had grown up in Indiana farmland and was familiar enough with bad windstorms that
he knew they would all be better off in the basement. Then the dining-room windows came in and my
Grandmother wanted to do something about it but Grandpa said, “Get to the basement!” Emily Grace was the first to the bottom of
the basement stairs. Her parents were
close behind. As the house rose up and
crashed all around them with an indescribable, deafening crash, Grandpa said
simply, “There goes the house.” The foundation stones fell into the basement
but they were standing on the only square yard where nothing fell. Something hit Grandpa and Grandma on their
left sides, probably the side of the stairs because they were black and blue
the next day. My mother had a cut on her
right elbow where a piece of roofing slate hit her, the scar of which was still
very visible and she could still show it to you up until her death at the age
of 94.
The rain
continued to pour down for some time and they got drenched because there was no
house above them now, it had tipped up and over and they were, fortunately,
under the open corner. The rain and
thunder eventually stopped as they crouched there. They crawled up and out using the large
foundation sandstone building blocks as stepping-stones. Mother didn’t know how or why they weren’t
hit by some of the blocks. Had they been
anywhere else but that corner of the house, at the foot of the stairs, I would
not be writing this narrative.
In the
returning daylight they could see that the bungalow next door had only a broken
front window, but looking over toward the banks of Lake Erie they could see that the bathhouse at Lakeview Park beach was gone! More
people were beginning to crawl out of their houses. Houses including their own, looked like piles
of toothpicks. On top of the pile of
rubble that had been their house was the piano and music cabinet. At this point, Emily Grace had a silent fear
that she would have to view lots of dead bodies. She wondered “how many” as they looked over a
street of devastation; all the houses behind them and across the street. There was devastation every way they
looked. Grandpa’s car still sat in the
backyard, however, without its top or the windshield, and had one flat tire, in
the midst of toothpicks. The garage and
workshop, where Grandpa had been working shortly before, was gone.
They could hear sirens, but help was
having trouble getting through since trees and debris was on all the
streets. Fortunately someone at the city
power company, with a view of the storm coming off the Lake, had turned the electric power and gas off, and there was
not the destruction by fire that there could have been.
The bungalow house next door, for some strange reason, was
not much damaged except for the front window.
Grandma Hildegard and Emily Grace were taken into the bungalow along
with others who came wandering in, in dazed states, from the bathhouse across
the way. The lady of the house put a fur
cape around Emily Grace who was shivering, clad only in her slip. The lady of the house later went and found
her a dress to wear.
That lady of the bungalow was a
couple blocks away visiting at her sister’s house with her baby at the time of
the storm. The sister’s house was blown
away but the women and the child were spared by crouching in the chimney corner
and miraculously uninjured. So, the
sisters came to the bungalow and found it standing, but had not thought to hang
onto a purse with the keys in it.
Grandpa Clarmont walked to the back of the bungalow to try and get in
for the women. Having just walked up
that driveway between those two houses he had no sooner gotten to the back of
the bungalow when the side fell off the other house into the driveway where he
had just walked.
The neighbors on the other side of Grandpa Clarmont’s house
were on vacation, but were notified on their way out of town and came back to
their house which was lying flat like a pancake, with the sides splayed out,
split at the corners. The next house on
the other side still stood. It was
severely damaged, but repairable. The
houses across the street were all severely damaged.
It had been a strange day from the
beginning my mother recalls. Earlier
that morning, on the East
Side of town, a train
engine and several cars had run headlong into the river because the bridge was
up. Mother’s older brother, Clarmont P. Doane, (known as Monty),
and a friend had gone off on motorcycles that afternoon to see the attraction
of the engine that fell off the trestle into the river. They were returning and decided the coming
storm looked so bad that they would go to the buddy’s home where his younger
sister and brothers were at home alone; the parents being out of town at the
Mayo Clinic due to the father’s health.
When the storm had passed they heard that a lot of wires and trees were
down all over town and thought it would be fun to go out and look around. The two brothers and Monty started out along
the Lake Road toward Monty’s house by car, but soon had to stop and walk
due to so much stuff in the roads, and indeed things did look bad--worse than
they thought. They couldn’t see the
bathhouse, and discovered its destruction and bodies being hauled out of
it. Monty, looked east toward where he
should have been able to see his own home in the daylight that was returning,
-- and it was not visible. He wondered
about his mother and father and sister?
The two brothers took off toward the house as best they could, but Monty
stopped. He didn’t go any farther until
his two friends saw Grandpa Clarmont and other people who were milling
around. The two boys called back to where
Monty had stopped announcing that his folks and sister were all right. Then Monty ccme on.
Meanwhile, Emily Grace’s other
brother, Ronald C. Doane, has gone
to Cleveland that day. He had
started home on the streetcar about 5:00 PM. as the storm brewed.
The streetcar could only get part way to Lorain, so it stopped and went back toward Cleveland. Then it came
forward some miles again but again it was stopped short of Lorain. Brother Ron decided
to get off and walk. He had to walk
about 7 miles, so he didn’t get to his parents’ home until 11:00 PM, and he, too, was afraid of the worst as he arrived on
foot. National Guardsmen questioned him
before he could get through to the house where he found his brother, Monty, and
the two friends, camped out there. All
of the boys stayed around the remains of the house and the car that night to
protect against looters.
The National Guard arrived in the middle of that first night
and their presence was obvious. They
camped in the closest undamaged schools for about 2 months afterwards. The
National Guard produced tents for homeowners and stayed on patrol with
guns. People had to be off the streets
by 6:00
PM for a month
afterwards. Several weeks later it was
rumored that at least three poachers were shot by the Guard. Mother remembers shots rang out every once in
awhile around the city for the next two months, and a couple injuries were
reported. The National Guardsmen shot
first and were NOT questioned.
After the storm had passed, at
sunset time, 8:30
PM, Emily Grace had
been taken to the home of friends of the family, the home of brother Monty’s
two buddies he was with, in an unaffected area west of Lorain on the banks of Lake
Erie. Mother remembers hiking out there with her
mother and dad to where the boys had parked the car, climbing over wood, trees,
and dead electric wires at sunset time.
It was a sunset that was gorgeous over the Lake that evening, and then stars came out. Emily Grace and her parents stayed at this
home for a couple weeks, although Grandpa Clarmont took turns with the boys
spending the nights in the tents at the remains of the house. Grandma and Grandpa worked there every day
sorting through things, salvaging what wasn’t broken or water damaged. There wasn’t a lot salvageable. Emily Grace ended up staying there with this
family, whose daughter was a good friend of hers, for a good six weeks before
following her parents to her Grandpa Clarence Ellsworth Doane and Grandma
Katy’s home in town by the Lorain High School. That house had been
skipped over and had only windows out and some roof damage, which was
repairable. The high school’s roof was
gone, and whole houses across the street from that home were gone, as were two
churches beyond that.
Damage Assessment: The tornado had
cut a swath through the business district of downtown Lorain, too. Mom family’s
church, the Congregational, and Dad’s family’s church, the Evangelical
Reformed, were both destroyed along with the Methodist Church and the firehouse.
At The State Movie Theater,
near the Woolworth Store, the roof
collapsed and 15 people were killed there.
At the bathhouse, 7 people were killed, and more injured. Seventy-eight lives were lost in Lorain that day, and the city has not forgotten. Every year on this date, 84 years now, they
make a special note of remembrance with news pictorials and articles.
The day following the storm was
Sunday and people were out and around.
My father’s mother, Anna, went across the street to Dr. Stack’s house to
see if she could be of help to Mrs. Stack.
The injured were being brought there from the bathhouse, and there were
a lot. The High School was also being
used as a hospital, it only suffered roof damage. Nobody went to work in the damaged area for
at least a week. The lumber company came
down the streets selling wood. Loaded
glass-trucks came along putting in windows where they were wanted as it
went.
In
the days that followed, the Thew Shovel
Company, where Emily Grace’s dad worked, allowed him to take off all the
time he needed to salvage his house and meager belongings. They also presented Clarmont with some sort
of financial gift and sent out a shovel and crane to tear what was left of the
house apart and help in finding anything that wasn’t soaked and ruined. Emily Grace did not want to even see it
again, so she even managed to avoid going past it when she was taken to the Red
Cross station at the High School to have her cut elbow looked at a week later
Grandma and Grandpa and everyone else had no wind insurance
at that time--tornadoes were unheard of in Ohio. They were a phenomenon west of the Mississippi
River. Federal Funds
helped home-owners who had mortgages on their lost homes, but Grandpa Clarmont
and Grandma Hildegard had no mortgage--they owned their house. They did not receive any financial help from
the federal government. In October, four
months after the storm, Grandpa managed to finance a smaller house. Finally he paid it off in 1963.
Clarmont built
a new garage at the new house. When he set
it on the new foundation Clarmont anchored it with steel rods set in the
concrete floor and bolted to the roofline headerplate. He was not
going to lose another garage!
Nine months later, at the new Parkview house address, a bank
returned a check to Grandma Hildegard, that had been on the dining room desk
before the tornado and had “flown”
down to Middlefield, Ohio, near Akron, 80 miles away. It
had been found by someone who mailed it back to the bank who mailed it to
Hildegard.
Clarmont kept the old 5th Street lot for many years, always hoping to finance re-building
the house on it. The plans to that
original house were saved from a drawer after the tornado. But he finally sold it and the buyer built
two houses on it in the place of my Grandpa’s one foundation. The plans to the old house are saved and
still available in the hands of my cousin.
I look at the time-honored pictures of that big old 1903
house on 1329
5th Street, with a tower on one corner that was my Mother’s bedroom,
and a porch across the front with a double swing on it. I always wonder, “what would it have been
like -- if I could have spent so much time, as I did at my Grandma and Grandpa
Doane’s house, in that house;
could have stayed in that room
with the tower, and swung on that swing
on that front porch with the
Lake Erie view and with a view of the new
bathhouse
Presented to Doane Family
Assn. Meeting of July 1908
By Jane MacDuff.