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daidoji_giseiThis Saturday will be May 6 and, weather permitting, I will be with my Girl Scouts in the morning and early afternoon planting flowers at a local retirement community. Later that afternoon I should do laundry and sort papers, but I'll probably end up messing in my own garden instead.
May 6, 1975 was a weekday--I'm pretty sure it was a Thursday--and I went to school as usual. I was in 4th grade at the time. After school I went straight home, as usual, and messed around the house. That meant it was easy for Mom to find me and hustle me (along with my sister) into the basement when the tornado sirens went off. This didn't seem terribly unusual--this was May, in Nebraska--but it was. This was the May 1975 Omaha Tornando, and it was big.
If I had only been living in Omaha the May 1975 tornado would have been a Big Deal--even a child would take notice of a tornado that traveled 10 miles through the center of the city and destroyed or damaged 4000 to 5000 homes in the process. But part of that track went through what is known as the Westgate subdivision, and that meant it went straight through what was then my entire world.
My family's house was undamaged; the closest the tornado got to us was two blocks away. That meant I could stand in my front yard, look up the street, and see where houses I walked past every day on my way to school had been destroyed. My school, Westgate Elementary, had been destroyed too. The middle section is where the 3rd and 4th grade classrooms were located, and all but two of the student desks in my class room were crushed by the roof's collapse. A few days later, after the roads had been cleared of debris and all the broken power lines cleared away, my Mom took my sister and I on a walk up the hill to see the remains of our school. I really don't remember what I thought at the time, though I probably mourned the loss of the school library. Walking around the school grounds I found a survivor--Carol from the Country was its title--and took it home to read. I wish I still had it, but it was lost the last time the basement flooded.
For the next few weeks I lived in a disaster area, with helicopters constantly in the air and gun-toting National Guardsmen patroling the area in seach of looters. A family of five we knew who lived a few blocks away from us lost their house, and my parents invited them to stay with us until they found something more permanent. We didn't have electricity but the gas grill on the patio still worked and the Red Cross brought in truckloads of ice, so we got by.
Strange as it is to say, this was one of the more idyllic parts of my childhood. Having 3 extra children in the house was quite a novelty, and they had no trouble blending in with the neighborhood group. With car traffic practically non-existant we could play in the street all we wanted without getting yelled at. School was canceled, because there was no place for us to have school at. And we had regular adventures, in the form of being sent to the store for bread, milk, or other sundries. The grocery store was on the other side of the National Guard cordon, and the local adults quickly noticed that the Guard stopped and questioned any adult who wanted to enter or leave the area, but they never bothered kids. So, whenever we needed something minor, a mom would round up a group of us, give us a list and some money, and send us off. It was a small taste of Responsibility, and it was fun.
It wasn't until much later that I started to appreciate the size of the disaster that we had gone through, and how lucky I had been to be so lightly touched by it. Our house was intact, and when the civil defense sirens had blown both of our parents happened to be at home so however scared my sister and I were as we huddled in the basement we had the comfort of having Mom and Dad with us. The parents of the family who stayed with us had been at work at the time, and their three children had hid in the basement alone when the tornado tore their house off of its foundations. I can't imagine what it would have felt like to be in that basement. I can imagine all too clearly what their parents must have felt when they learned where in the city the tornado had been.
I know, however, this experience must have affected me. I don't know all the ways how. I went through a brief period of fear of civil defense sirens that started around jr high. I'm over that, though I still dutifly head towards the basement when the tornado sirens go off. (Native Lincolnites go out on to their lawns to look, a practice that irritates me to no end.) Beyond that, who can say? I think about it a little, every year in early May, and then go on with my life. Maybe that's what I learned then. Go on.
May 6, 1975 was a weekday--I'm pretty sure it was a Thursday--and I went to school as usual. I was in 4th grade at the time. After school I went straight home, as usual, and messed around the house. That meant it was easy for Mom to find me and hustle me (along with my sister) into the basement when the tornado sirens went off. This didn't seem terribly unusual--this was May, in Nebraska--but it was. This was the May 1975 Omaha Tornando, and it was big.
If I had only been living in Omaha the May 1975 tornado would have been a Big Deal--even a child would take notice of a tornado that traveled 10 miles through the center of the city and destroyed or damaged 4000 to 5000 homes in the process. But part of that track went through what is known as the Westgate subdivision, and that meant it went straight through what was then my entire world.
My family's house was undamaged; the closest the tornado got to us was two blocks away. That meant I could stand in my front yard, look up the street, and see where houses I walked past every day on my way to school had been destroyed. My school, Westgate Elementary, had been destroyed too. The middle section is where the 3rd and 4th grade classrooms were located, and all but two of the student desks in my class room were crushed by the roof's collapse. A few days later, after the roads had been cleared of debris and all the broken power lines cleared away, my Mom took my sister and I on a walk up the hill to see the remains of our school. I really don't remember what I thought at the time, though I probably mourned the loss of the school library. Walking around the school grounds I found a survivor--Carol from the Country was its title--and took it home to read. I wish I still had it, but it was lost the last time the basement flooded.
For the next few weeks I lived in a disaster area, with helicopters constantly in the air and gun-toting National Guardsmen patroling the area in seach of looters. A family of five we knew who lived a few blocks away from us lost their house, and my parents invited them to stay with us until they found something more permanent. We didn't have electricity but the gas grill on the patio still worked and the Red Cross brought in truckloads of ice, so we got by.
Strange as it is to say, this was one of the more idyllic parts of my childhood. Having 3 extra children in the house was quite a novelty, and they had no trouble blending in with the neighborhood group. With car traffic practically non-existant we could play in the street all we wanted without getting yelled at. School was canceled, because there was no place for us to have school at. And we had regular adventures, in the form of being sent to the store for bread, milk, or other sundries. The grocery store was on the other side of the National Guard cordon, and the local adults quickly noticed that the Guard stopped and questioned any adult who wanted to enter or leave the area, but they never bothered kids. So, whenever we needed something minor, a mom would round up a group of us, give us a list and some money, and send us off. It was a small taste of Responsibility, and it was fun.
It wasn't until much later that I started to appreciate the size of the disaster that we had gone through, and how lucky I had been to be so lightly touched by it. Our house was intact, and when the civil defense sirens had blown both of our parents happened to be at home so however scared my sister and I were as we huddled in the basement we had the comfort of having Mom and Dad with us. The parents of the family who stayed with us had been at work at the time, and their three children had hid in the basement alone when the tornado tore their house off of its foundations. I can't imagine what it would have felt like to be in that basement. I can imagine all too clearly what their parents must have felt when they learned where in the city the tornado had been.
I know, however, this experience must have affected me. I don't know all the ways how. I went through a brief period of fear of civil defense sirens that started around jr high. I'm over that, though I still dutifly head towards the basement when the tornado sirens go off. (Native Lincolnites go out on to their lawns to look, a practice that irritates me to no end.) Beyond that, who can say? I think about it a little, every year in early May, and then go on with my life. Maybe that's what I learned then. Go on.
