Memories of The East Grand Rapids Tornado 50 Years Ago
Douglas B. Olds (photos and text, all rights reserved)
April 2017
Date Magnitude Start
Lat/Log End Lat/Log Length Width
1967-04-21 3 42°54'N
/ 85°46'W 42°57'N / 85°30'W 13.60 mi 400yds
Fatalities Injuries Property Damage Crop Damage Affected County
0 32 25.0M 0 Kent
Friday, April 21, 1967. It
had been an unusually hot and humid day, and I had stripped down to my t-shirt
on the walk home from 2nd grade at Breton Downs Elementary. I stopped and played in the 2x4
and plywood skeletons of houses under construction on the newly cut Whitfield Road--blond architectural bones under a hazy blue sky. One was upon construction moved into by Brian McNamara's family. By dinner time it was stormy,
and at 7pm my two younger brothers and I were in our pajamas, sitting on our
parents’ bed in an upstairs bedroom (where the only TV was) waiting for the black and white serial “Marshal Dillon” to come on channel 13.
Despite the storm outside, the TV picture was unusually clear for
channel 13.
We were eating bowls of ice cream for dessert as the show
started. Five minutes in, the storm intensified and I looked out the window to see
a wildly bouncing set of branches on the trees outside. The surroundings had a hue of backlit pea green emanating from the sky.
I went back to the show, then the house shuddered by a wall of wind, concussed
by the tornado. I’ll never forget that
concussion of air. Windows started
breaking around us, and I hustled my younger brothers to the top of the stairs. Mike, the four year old, sat down on the
upper step and began to cry, so I took his ice cream bowl he had been clutching
and set it aside.
At the bottom of the
steps, my 71 year old grandmother from Philadelphia was trying to close the heavy front door that
had flown open. She guided us into front hall closet, but I said, “No,
Nana, we have to go to the basement.” I
looked through the now flung open door and saw the rage and phosphorescent green hue and
now the sound was a high whine like a freight train.
[Picture: our garage after tornado struck:]
[Picture: our garage after tornado struck:]
After a bit, my dad and I went outside. He told me we had to be careful of “looters.”
What those people were and what activity they might engage was unknown to me,
but I remember that word added to my feeling of being under siege by the environment.
Our half of the street was dark and quiet—no electricity—but we were drawn to bright lights at the bottom of the street where huge fire trucks had set up bright reflectors and shone them onto the damaged houses at the foot of Tenway, on Oxford. At that corner, I found wrapped in a fireman’s blanket Mrs. Hyla Jacobsen, a kindly older woman--the wife of Arnold who was not in sight. Her house was unrecognizable, almost completely destroyed. She had survived the collapse of her ceiling by hiding under a heavy dining table. I went up to her with an 8-year old's directness: “Hi, Mrs. Jacobsen! Did you see it?”
[Hyla and Arnold Jacobsen's house after tornado struck:]
Our half of the street was dark and quiet—no electricity—but we were drawn to bright lights at the bottom of the street where huge fire trucks had set up bright reflectors and shone them onto the damaged houses at the foot of Tenway, on Oxford. At that corner, I found wrapped in a fireman’s blanket Mrs. Hyla Jacobsen, a kindly older woman--the wife of Arnold who was not in sight. Her house was unrecognizable, almost completely destroyed. She had survived the collapse of her ceiling by hiding under a heavy dining table. I went up to her with an 8-year old's directness: “Hi, Mrs. Jacobsen! Did you see it?”
[Hyla and Arnold Jacobsen's house after tornado struck:]
“I did. It was the most beautiful thing you ever seen.
Silver and black flakes and all the colors blending in and out…gold, and the sound like music” Just then, a fireman hustled her away by
telling me she was in shock.
“What’s ‘in shock’, Dad?” I asked. He shrugged his
shoulders.
Kitty-corner to Mrs. Jacobsen’s house was Mara Matthews.’
Her house had no roof. Her mother had
been giving her and her sister a bath when the tornado hit, and the mother had
been hit with a flying bathroom door. She was one of the 32 injuries of this
magnitude 3 tornado, which theoretically packed a windspeed of 158-206 mph. Thankfully no one was killed.
My family’s detached garage was obliterated by the tornado and my house's siding was partially ripped off so that it appeared like a molted reptile. All this part of the $25 million (equivalent to current $185M) of damage from the tornado. Other sections of
East Grand Rapids were also hit. The
tornado had hopped to our street from the southwest and took out our garage, then hopped a bit more to the end of the street, where it knocked a
half-dozen houses about. On its hop, it sucked a couple of intervening houses off their
foundations, so that you could look into their basements from the front yard.
After doing its work at the end of Tenway Drive, it touched down about 8 blocks east to just east of Breton Downs Elementary and did more damage in that portion of town.
Overall, the tornado was one of a warm front that spawned tornadoes beginning at lunch time in Missouri, passing through Illinois and Indiana. The F3 EGR tornado was part of of a very deep shortwave trough, and it traveled from southwest of Grandville 13-1/2 miles to Ada before giving out. As it "struck the south side of Grand Rapids, 65 buildings were destroyed, and 60 others were badly damaged. 375 buildings sustained minor damage. A church and a K-Mart store were completely destroyed." (Ibid).
Overall, the tornado was one of a warm front that spawned tornadoes beginning at lunch time in Missouri, passing through Illinois and Indiana. The F3 EGR tornado was part of of a very deep shortwave trough, and it traveled from southwest of Grandville 13-1/2 miles to Ada before giving out. As it "struck the south side of Grand Rapids, 65 buildings were destroyed, and 60 others were badly damaged. 375 buildings sustained minor damage. A church and a K-Mart store were completely destroyed." (Ibid).
The legacy of that day for me was a gradually-abating fear
of thunderstorms, as they been the harbinger to the tornado. By the time I was in college at the
University of Michigan, I was chasing my fears by chasing tornado sightings and going up to the top
of parking garages to scan the skyline.
I was close to another tornado once, in 1980, when one flew
over the pier head in Holland, Michigan, just 300 yards from where I was
staying in a cottage in Macatawa Park. It gave that same green hue to the air.
The other take away of that date for me is this: when Channel
13 announces a tornado warning, don’t just dumbly sit there eating ice cream as
the windows shatter about you. Take cover in your basement!
[Picture: our garage]
[Picture: our garage]
[Picture 5: Oxford Drive damage]
