Tornado

As this is a true story, some of the events might not be 100% logical. I can only relate what I know. I didn't want to change any of the events.

Tornado

It was May 25, 1955 and the South Central Kansas days were becoming hot and muggy. And today was especially so. A breathless wet blanket that lay over everything. Breezes could occasionally be seen far off in the wheat fields. Rippling grasses miles out on the horizon. But nothing stirring nearby. It was silent except for the occasional clicking of a grass hopper and the soft clucking of the hens in the yard.

Ruby King had debated walking the two and a half miles into Oxford for some needed groceries earlier that day; some canned meat and some breakfast cereal for her 10 kids. She could get milk from the Johnson's a quarter mile to the North and her chickens had given plenty of eggs that morning. She had checked her hot houses, the old windows screwed together and banked with earth to make small green houses, and she might have some tomatoes today. But she needed the meat. Maybe some Spam or Salmon. But it was too late now. There was no shade on the road that day, and the two mile walk on the dirt road, in full sunlight, and in this heat, would just be too much. The family would make due with eggs for supper and she would go to town tomorrow morning at dawn.

She wheeled the Maytag out into the back yard under the big walnut tree. It was just too hot to function in the small, un-insulated, oil field house structure from the 1930's made obsolete by the advent of factory made mobile homes. Houses that had been delivered in sections and hastily assembled to house the oil field workers. Many which sat on railroad ties, although this one had a foundation of sorts made by driving big branches from a hedgerow into the soft river sand.

The river sand was incredibly fine and it collected as thick dust on the road. Her home was just south of the convergence of the Arkansas and Ninnescah River. The sand was deep enough to bury a child's bare foot. Six year old Ronnie and five year old Billie were out on the road now, tossing up handfuls of the dust where it hung like smoke in the hot and dry afternoon air.

Ruby began filling the basin of the Maytag with the garden hose. The electric pump on the well at this house was a great convenience. At the last place it had been necessary to pump many buckets of water with the kitchen hand pump to fill the washer. A hard and time consuming job.

“Nancy! Barbara Ann! You get over here”, Ruby King called to too young girls sitting on tire swings hanging from a nearby oak. “We're gonna wash and I need your help.”

Dutifully, the two girls approached. Ruby noticed how dirty their feet were. Black halfway to their knees. Which reminded her that all six school age kids would need shoes come September. She shook her head and decided to just not think about that for now.

“Now you two know what to do,” she said. “You bring out what needs to be washed and set it on the table here. And get the clothes pins 'cause we're going to need to hang that stuff.”

The girls complied, each taking a huge breath of outside air before entering the sweltering shack.

With the Maytag full of water, Ruby kicked the starter pedal. The motor wheezed, backfired, emitted a large cloud of white smoke and then died. Ruby adjusted the choke and gave it another kick. This time it started. Ruby adjusted it to a gentle idle and let it warm up. The girls returned with the laundry basket and two big armfuls of clothing. Ruby added soap to the basin, ran the motor to full speed and then engaged it. Very gently so as not to stall it. The agitator on the washing machine began to oscillate and the wringers began to turn. Ruby added soap and then began stuffing in the bed sheets. The girls made multiple trips into the house to gather the rest of the wash.

Eventually, all of the wash hung on the lines around the yard. The Maytag was drained and wheeled back onto the back porch.

Waiting for the wash to dry, she wished they had a few more chickens. She would gladly kill a couple for a better dinner this evening, but she needed to build up the flock. Raymond, her husband, was now up in Newton, in the Tuberculosis asylum, and there was no telling how long he would be there. And without his check, the aid from the state and the church barely paid the rent on this place. Times might get real tough and nothing got you through tough times like a lot of chickens.

The King family had not been long in the small home in Oxford, having just moved earlier in the spring. As Oxford native Dennis Metz put it, “We were friendly. But we didn’t really know them. We considered them transients.”

Nevertheless, the Kings persevered. The Midwest was about survival and this was still the 1950s when rural Kansas was still slowly progressing ever-so-slowly into the modern age. After all, electricity for many folks in this part was less than a decade old with power being stored for the first time as late as 1948.

The property owner's old Model T sat on the other side of the yard, out past the chicken coop, and Ruby wondered what it would take to get it going again. To buy it and to get it running. She wondered if Raymond could manage the repair. The car would be a real godsend.

Evening was coming on as the family got the wash in. And in the cool evening, as the sun set and creeped below the horizon, the entire family worked on expanding the garden. A great deal was already planted and cared for, but the bigger the better. So each day Ruby and eight of her 10 children would dig and plant in the evening. Vickie and Billie, at three and five, were deemed too young for the work and they just sat on the back porch steps and watched. But today, only seven worked. Ruby's seven year old daughter was visiting her grandmother in Wichita for the week.

Huge thunderheads could be seen far in the Southwest before the evening turned dark. Lightning was visible in all directions. After eating their egg salad sandwiches in the yard the presence of hot air around them become restless and disturbed.

About 9:15, when it was well dark, the southwest was becoming more violent. Faint, rolling thunder could now be heard in the distance. The wind had picked up and was coming from one direction after the other in turn. Hotter than normal when from the South and West and cold when from the North and East. Ruby had been in Kansas for 37 years and she knew this did not bode well. More than anything, something just felt wrong and unsettled. She could hear the nervous horses down the road at the neighbors place.

Ruby had reason to be nervous, for unbeknownst to her, a tornado had just touched down in Blackwell, Okla., an F5 wedge tornado that would take the lives of 20 people and injuring over 200 more. It would take out the town’s major employers and destroy 400 homes. But the storm was just getting started. After the first funnel dissipated at the Kansas-Oklahoma border. A second one would form. This one was less than an hour away of arriving at the King’s residence and eventually destroying the community to the north, Udall.

Meanwhile, Ruby’s fears had gotten the best of her. “Kids, come here, let's go in the house,” she bellowed to her kids.

This was greeted with groans and whines because it was so hot in the house. And there was such a show in the sky outside.

Ruby herded her nine kids into the small bathroom in the center of the house. There was only a tiny window and a door on each side of the room led to one of the bedrooms.

“We're going to pretend like a tornado's coming. Now get down and hang onto that bathtub. You two hang onto the toilet. And you, Ronnie, you grab that pipe under the sink there. Now get down low. Low I said!”

Ruby surveyed the sweating pack of kids on the floor. “OK, if I say take cover, this is what you do. Now let's get out of here and get some air.”

The kids barged back outside. In the yard they could smell rain. And the lightning in the Southwest was almost constant and the thunder was growing louder. They stood transfixed in the yard and watched the approaching storm. About the most spectacular sight the Midwest had to offer.

Huge warm raindrops began to fall and in a few moments the rain was coming down in sheets. Some of the children headed for the barn as this would be cooler. Ruby intercepted them and turned them around.

“Get in the house”, she said. “Stick together.”

The clock on the King’s wall said 10:12 when the power went out. This was not unusual. Power went out a lot and the coal oil lamps were already in place around the house. Ruby and her daughter Nancy, began lighting them when they heard the roar begin. Faintly at first.

“Hail”, said Nancy.

“I think so,” Ruby answered. “I hope that's it.”

Both moved to the back bedroom to look at the approaching storm. There were what appeared to be two wedge tornadoes coming directly out of the West. They could be clearly seen in the almost constant flashes of lightning. They extended almost completely across the horizon. One slightly ahead of the other.

“Get in the bathroom!” Ruby screamed.

There was pandemonium in the dark as she shoved the children into the bathroom and pushed them into their places. Ruby grabbed the cold water pipe that that fed the bathroom just as it came out of the wall. She hunkered against her children hanging onto the claw foot bathtub.

The roar grew until it sounded like a formation jet planes just overhead. The windows blew out of the house and the house began to violently shake. The small house then simply peeled away. With a loud ripping noise it came loose from the floor that was nailed to the logs sunk into the sandy soil. The family found themselves without cover in the center of an F5 tornado. All Ruby could do was scream and hang on.

“Get down! Get down!” She screamed, but she couldn't be heard above the roar. Large objects flew over their heads and rocks, gravel and mud slammed at them with speeds of over 100 mph. It was impossible to breathe.

It was over in less than a minute. There was then nothing but pelting rain. Moving about in the dark, she counted four of her children. Two were semi-conscious and two were whimpering. She called out for the other five.

“Nancy? Barbara Ann? Ronnie? Billie? Vickie?” But there was no answer. But with the noise of the heavy rain it was hard to tell.

Ruby had been hit on the head very hard, maybe multiple times, and she wasn't thinking clearly. There was a lot of blood too. For a long time she just lay semi-conscious on what had been the bathroom floor, in the rain. She tried to draw a clear breath but nothing was working right.

“Ma, where do we go?” Her oldest daughter stood and asked.

With some difficulty, Ruby stood. She tried to focus on the world around her. The almost constant lightning facilitated this. The house was completely gone. It wasn't simply knocked down, it was gone. Only the floor nailed to the pilings in the sand remained. She had trouble finding her directions. The walnut tree where she had washed clothes today was gone. As was the chicken coop and the barn. But the oak where the two girls had sat in tire swings was still there, but only the trunk. They rest was gone. But the old Model T had been rammed against the trunk and was upright.

“Let's go to the car”, said Ruby, and she got the four kids moving. The frame of the car was bent and the door didn't want to open, but with a hard pull it finally gave way. She pushed the kids inside and climbed in after them. And that is all she remembered until dawn when there was someone pounding on the window on her side. It was a guy she recognized as the county coroner and three others who looked like oil field workers.

“Are there any injured or killed?” He asked.

Ruby was too addled to answer at first, but she came around.

“Five of my kids are missing”, she said. “Our house came apart and they're gone.” Blood bubbled out of her nose and mouth as she said this.

The three oil field guys looked at each other and nodded. They took off.

“They're going to search the property”, said the coroner. “They got some other guys down the road to help. You look pretty bad. You've obviously lost a lot of blood. Let's get you and those kids down to the relief station. They're trying to get a doctor in there as soon as they can.”

Ruby and the kids were carried down the drive to the cars of volunteers parked on the road, and from there they were taken to the Oxford High School where cots and a medical area was being set up.

The search team didn't have much of a problem finding the other five children. They were all North East of the house, all within a half a mile of the house and all dead. Being lifted a few feet above ground into the storm winds had resulted in them being battered with derbies. It looked like the end had been pretty quick for all of them.

All told the children who died were: Nancy, age 12; Barbara Ann King, 11; Ronnie King, 6; Billie King, 5; and Vicki King, 3. 

The King's didn't have a phone, but Raymond, Ruby's husband, had called the Johnson's who reported that the house, most of the trees and all of the out buildings were simply gone. It had been a square hit. Other than this, they knew nothing. The sheriff had been able to check the high school for him and reported that his wife and several children were recovering, but there had been deaths. But exactly who was still an unknown in the confusion. One of the staff members at the sanatorium gave him the five hour ride back to Oxford.

The first thing Raymond saw when he entered the medical facility at the high school was that things hadn’t gone well. Having been affected by tuberculosis, he was not well, and he walked slowly toward Ruby who was lying in a cot.

“How bad is it?” he finally asked.

“It's really bad”, Ruby gasped. “Nancy, Barbara Ann, Ronnie, Billie and Vicki are all dead. Everyone else is going to be OK. And I don't know why some died and some didn't. We were all in the bathroom together when it hit.'

Raymond just sat silent for a long time.

“You couldn't have done anything if you were here,” Ruby counseled. “It was like a bomb went off. And there's a hundred people dead in Blackwell and Udall.”

“I heard”, Raymond replied. “I understand what you say, but I still can't stop feeling bad for being away.”

“Hell”, said Ruby. “You're having a hard time sitting up in that chair. Better you were away and survived. We got a tough time ahead of us.”

The local Baptist Church purchased a trailer for what remained of the family and they were able to install it on the land where the house had been. The relief operations were providing an adequate amount of food. But then some members of the Baptist congregation began to worry about the trailer being uninsured. It was a sizable asset for them and had been purchased with majority of their treasury funds.

“Insure it with what?” asked Ruby. “My husband is in a TB institution and I'm living on relief. We don't have enough to eat right now. I can't afford an insurance policy on the trailer. I haven't had any money for months.”

Some at the church felt that they should cover the insurance for the family, while others felt that they had done enough, and that the Kings simply needed to try a little harder to cover their day to day needs, of which home insurance was one.

Raymond King had recovered somewhat and the Kings resolved the problem by leaving the trailer and moving to Colorado, where Raymond began working in his cousin's garage.

But the family never really recovered. They survived for a few more years until their son Jerry was killed in a car wreck in 1960. This finally tore the family apart, and Raymond left the family and moved to New Mexico, where he took his own life in 1967. His body was returned to Colorado.

No one has been able to locate Ruby and the remaining four children. They seem lost to history.

The King’s history is just one story. In Kansas alone, 80 residents lost their lives - 75 of those in Udall that night. Much like the Kings, Udall residents were as surprised of the tornadoes as the King family. All told there were 102 deaths from this storm and more than 300 injuries. Sixty-three years later, it is still the deadliest tornado in Kansas history.

Reviews

[Julie McCarthy (juliesp..]

Awesome the detail
The intricate detail and conversations is amazing so sad
You wrote such a great story about these poor people thanks so much wonderful

[Miss Fedelm]

Make sure you read the one at the news paper. There is more info there.

[Miss Fedelm]

And thanks for reading. This is a 100% true story. Everything in it comes from the witness. The two tornadoes, finding the mother in the car, the TB asylum, etc.

[Julie McCarthy (juliespenhere)]

Thanks
Great

[Miss Fedelm]

This story is out in a Kansas newspaper where the disaster took place:

http://www.sumnernewscow.com/memorial-day-feature-the-1955-udall-tornado-the-miraculous-survival-of-oxford-and-the-king-family-disaster/#more-46806

The newspaper has added some interesting material that really helps the story.

[Vivian Fisk]

I just read it, and it is WONDERFUL, Miss Fedelm. So good, and I'm so proud of you!

[Miss Fedelm]

Did you go to the newspaper to read it? They have some good maps and some additional interesting information.

[Vivian Fisk]

Yes, I used your link to the newspaper. I had read it before, but this time I got the extra information from the Sumner News Cow.

[Vivian Fisk]

That is a tale of terrible woe. The poor King family...

[Miss Fedelm]

I'm trying to find out more now. It's a very weird, sad story.

[Samuel Dickens]

Such a violent, tragic tale. That family's life was already hard enough, and then nature launched a cruel attack. Why life dealt them such a terrible hand, I just don't know.

[Miss Fedelm]

It's an all around weird story. The ten kids, the dad in the TB asylum and the fight with the church that nobody talks about, etc.