The Deadly Tornado of 1935

 I am indebted to Marcy Sterling, the librarian at the Fairfax Library, and her assistant, Linda Renegar, for their help in accessing the archives of the Fairfax Chief needed for this historically -based posting.

Seventy-one years ago today, June 2, 1935, a tornado described on https://www.weather.gov/oun/tornadodata-county-ok-osage as being 42 miles long and 50 yards wide began west of Fairfax and blew itself out in Perth, Kansas. Three injuries were recorded. Once again Mother’s little worn diary gave additional information on this tragic event.

Mother’s family and the Perry Woods’ family attended a memorial service for John Lynn in Fairfax, Oklahoma, that same afternoon. He and his co-pilot, his brother-in-law, lost their lives in the plane crash during a thunderstorm near Chicago. John Lynn had grown up in Fairfax. Perry Woods had driven both families that day in his two-seater car. Somehow four adults and five kids ranging from age 10 down to age 4 fit in the early day vehicle.

As the two families returned to the Bend, they observed an angry, dark sky. My grandpa, Calvin Callcayah Smith, known for his few words, commented “That looks like a bad storm.” Perry, always a jokester, began to laugh off Grandpa’s prediction. Grandma, Gladys Rainey Smith, reached up from the back seat and “popped” Perry. She spoke sternly to him, “Cull knows storms. You better listen to him. This is serious.”

Even though Perry’s family and Mother’s family escaped injury, little did they know how heartbreaking that day would turn out to be for their friends just a few miles north. Around 4 p.m. that afternoon, near Doga Road, the Russ Hoss farm and Jess Thompson farm were both hit by a violent tornado. According to the June 6, 1935 issue of The Fairfax Chief, a pasture of Huffaker-Hadden Ranch was hit first. It then struck the Hoss farm, but the four members of the family had taken shelter in a cellar. The house stood but the roof was blown off incurring loss of household items. The destructive cyclone brutally attacked the Thompson home. The local paper reported that Mrs. Thompson and her two daughters sought refuge in a “storm cave.” Mother recalled a cave-in of their shelter injured the younger Thompson girl, Geraldine.

Her family rushed her to the local hospital.  In the Thursday issue of the Fairfax newspaper, following the tornado, Geraldine’s condition was described as “satisfactory.” However, infection ravaged her badly torn leg. On Saturday, June 8, her leg was amputated above her knee. Despite the valiant efforts of the doctors, the 14-year-old, who had just completed her freshman year at Fairfax High School, died on Sunday, June 9, a week after the vicious tornado.

Photo taken from findagrave.com site.

           The Fairfax Chief reported the loss of 50 head of cattle in the storm’s path. The front-page article told gruesomely of the skin being blown off a hog and the necks of livestock being “wrung or torn off and lying every direction.” Only the head of the bird dog belonging to the Thompson family could be located. The impact of the deadly twister on the Thompson farm was characterized as “everything above ground was destroyed.”

The fencing was rolled into balls or wrapped around trees. Implements at both the Hoss and Thompson farms were blown about as though toys. The tornadic suction pulled the casing out of the bored well at the Thompson farm.

Unfortunately, disasters reveal the heartlessness of human nature. Near the end of the article describing the destruction and tragedy of the June 2, 1935 tornado, Jess Thompson made an appeal. During the days following the tornado, “crowds of people” thronged to the Ross Day community where the Hoss and Thompson families lived. The unthinkable happened. The Thompson family had so little of their material possessions left and their younger daughter was hospitalized with an injury that would prove fatal. Some unscrupulous, despicable bystander “carried off” a precious Thompson family heirloom – a double-barreled shotgun that had been in the family for 60 years. Mr. Thompson asked simply, without malice in his plea, for the vintage firearm that survived the horrific tornado be returned.

Mother, at 94, recalled a couple of recollections that imprinted her impressionable 10-year-old mind. She remembered being told many of the dead cattle were lined up along the fence. Another unusual memory of hers involved seeing an unbroken glass pitcher with a crow bar bent around it.

No other year on record in Oklahoma, prior to the introduction of the Fujita Scale, had more tornadoes than 1935. Exactly a week after Geraldine Thompson’s death, my father’s brother, Fredrick Daniel Gates sought shelter from a thunderstorm that blew up while the boys and my grandfather were working in the field. On Fredrick Daniel’s 14^th birthday, he was struck by lightning and killed. Springtime weather in Oklahoma has been deadly.

Geraldine Thompson’s nephews, Richard Thompson, Gary Thompson, and Rod Thompson, still live or have connections to the area. Her grandfather, John Keenon Thompson aka J.K. Thompson, is buried in the Pixley Cemetery.

I must acknowledge how much my grandmother, Gladys Rainey Smith, would have added to this account. Her longtime friendship with Jess and Ethel Thompson would have contributed so much. Nevertheless, once again friendships made in the Bend and surrounding small rural communities endured. The sharing in sorrow and extending of empathy ran deep in the residents who subsisted off the drought-parched soil and tried desperately to keep livestock alive during the Great Depression, one of the darkest times in Oklahoma’s economy.

This yellowed newspaper clipping is from my
grandma's scrap book and commemorated
Jess and Ethel Thompson 50th wedding
anniversary in January of 1967.

God inspired Paul to speak of the importance of sharing in all of life when he wrote to the Roman believers in Romans 12:15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. So many people have “passed through” the Bend and other rural communities and now live in urban areas. Yet most of those former Benders retain that concern for others and willingness to help. May that be a daily goal of ours – no matter where we live.