May 1961

May of 1961 was one of the worst months for severe weather in Oklahoma history. The second of three severe weather episodes came on May 11th and 12th. On the 11th, severe thunderstorms produced 18 tornadoes across the western part of the state.

It was the 14th of May 1961, and it started as an extremely calm day but by mid-morning, the wind had picked up and was vicious.
I remember because It was Sunday afternoon and Mom was frying chicken in the kitchen.
I could smell it from outside the window and I couldn’t wait, she was probably making potato salad too. My mom was such a good cook, and I often lingered outside the kitchen window while she was baking, just to enjoy the smells.

Several of us children were playing in the yard and we saw our neighbor Clifford running towards our house and we stopped what we were doing and just watched him because it was an out of the normal thing for our neighbor to do. He ran up to the door asking us anxiously if our daddy was home. We all looked at him, one of us said yes, go on in.

Of course, we were curious so we filed in the door after him. Whatever he had said to my dad was something my dad didn’t want to hear, I could see by the look on my dad’s face and how he just plopped down in a chair.
No one spoke for what seemed an eternity at least to a seven-year-old girl.
Clifford said. “I’ll go home and sit by the radio and see if I hear an update.

I don’t think any of us even noticed him leaving, we were too worried about what was happening. We still didn’t know. My dad got up and told my mom he had to get down the hill and tell grandad before he sat to listen to the news, which he did at lunchtime.

My moms’ eyes were red and I knew she was upset, I wished I had gotten in on the conversation earlier. I watched as my dad hurried down to the foot of the hill to grandad’s house. None of us asked mama any questions, she quietly returned to the kitchen, no matter what had happened, she would keep normalcy in the house.

My dad didn’t come back until late afternoon and when he did, he didn’t eat and he stood outside pacing the yard and looking towards the hillside.

Clifford our neighbor across the street was the only neighbor on our hillside that had a telephone and he was generous with us sharing his number for emergencies with our family that lived out of the area.
When Clifford came walking across the yard he told us kids, who were sitting playing in the dirt, to run tell our dad he had a phone call.

Dad went across and returned about 10 minutes later with his head hung low.
I raced to the kitchen window to listen because I knew he would go to the kitchen and tell mama the conversation.

He said well mama, it looks like Brother Jimmy is gone, they can’t find him, they found the girls and the boat but not my little brother.

Mama didn’t talk, she just hugged him and shook her head,
She often did this to control the dam of emotions she must have been feeling but always kept locked inside.

He looked at her and said, he’s gone, I just feel it. He turned and left the kitchen. He came out in the yard and I got a stomachache watching him pace and curse the wind.

My uncle Jimmy was barely 29 and was on his second marriage at the time. He had 5 little children, our cousins whom we loved to play with but they lived in the city so it wasn’t often.

He and his new wife and another couple decided to go to Lake Hefner for the day, which In light of recent weather conditions made no sense at all. But they left and took out the small boat and as his wife later said, the wind came out of nowhere, it was calm when they left that morning.

A gust of wind caused the boat to sway and someone stood up to try and steady it but it flipped over and the girls started swimming to shore with the other man, but my uncle kept trying to get the boat turned back over. She said he had a heart attack and sunk into the water, how she knew that no one ever knew.

Only the 2 women made it to shore that day. The saddest thing was it took 3 more days for the bodies of my uncle and the other man to be found and it was torture for dad and grandad.

As small children, some events stood out in our minds for years, even though we never knew all the details until much later, the effect it had on the adults in my life had caused it to change the routine, if even for a few days, and it got stuck in my memory bank, even today I can see the anguished look on my dads face that day and the way he paced the yard for 3 days until they found his brother.

Time moves on and while it heals the wound, the scar is laid bare to remember. My dad had lost his mother when he was 12, a baby sister, and a brother in the war before this event happened that day in May. I was not alive when those earlier events happened.

Your world will shape your outlook on life, for my dad it made him a little harder, I think after that day. Like an open wound that eventually heals, it leaves a small reminder that things happen we can’t fix, only bare.

I’m not sure why this account has been in my mind lately, perhaps because I was thinking of my daddy as even grown women do from time to time, and it was the one time I saw a chink in the armor of my dad. He was the tall towering tree in my life and that day in May that oak-like tree turned into a sad weeping willow. Changing not only him but my perception of security, as it was at the tender age of seven.

Many tragedies would follow, but none would stand out in my mind as that sad fourteenth day of May