Sharon Louise Roberts Patching
My Grandparents, Louise Seifert Kerber and Herman Kerber Sr. lived one block away from the Washburn University campus on Mulvane St. in Topeka, Kansas. They lived downstairs and rented apartments upstairs to Washburn students and Forbes Air Force Base military personnel.
I had just graduated
from Topeka High
School the week before this particular afternoon. My sister,
Lynn Roberts (now Traylor) had taken my old job at the
Jayhawk Theatre located inside the Jayhawk Hotel
downtown Topeka and was working. Some friends and I planned to go to a
drive-in movie that
evening and were on our way to the Jayhawk to pick up some complementary tickets
from my old manager, Mr. Crump.
We were too busy having fun in anticipation of meeting boys,
I'm sure, when the sirens started sounding and rain came down in buckets.
Somehow I was able to get parked. We all scrambled across the street to,
what we believed to be, the security of the theatre. The Jayhawk was
located only a block or so away from the
Kansas State
Capitol Building. I heard a roar and turned around just in time to see
what looked like a grey elephant's trunk in the clouds,
suck up a huge brass section from the dome!
I ran into the hall where my sister, employees, Mr. Crump and my friends were listening to someone's transistor radio as the roar was terrible outside. Everyone always tries to describe the sound they make - to me it sounded like the high pitch of a jet engine - it's just hard to describe. I mean it puts the fear of God into you!
As I think about it now, time was out of whack. My ears
were tuned to the roaring outside but split to hear the news report that
Washburn had been decimated.
All I could think of was too get home to get Mother
and to my Grandparents.
The roar was still in my ears but I could tell it was going
away. I don't even think we even discussed it, my sister, friends and I
ran for the car. Your brain just can't accept the site that awaits you
just minutes away from what you had seen before. My eyes took in what
looked like a war zone from what had been a well-maintained capitol city.
Brick and steel buildings twisted and demolished.
My Mom's car was still parked and not damaged! We
climbed in and could see behind us this monster from the sky, black now from
sucking up all the debris and two blocks wide. We actually somehow drove
the block up to Kansas Avenue watching it move through the city.
I will never forget that sight as long as I live.
It's all a mystery to me how I got those girls home, got to
our duplex located a block away from Topeka High School 812 Fillmore St.,
pulled Mother into the vehicle and drove to as near as we could to Washburn.
The soldiers were out immediately blocking off the area. We parked.
I took Lynn's hand, she took Mother's hand and we made our way through the water
and downed electrical lines.
I remember a soldier, not much older than me, ordered me to stop. He said no one was allowed in. All I could think of was my grandparents hurt in that old house. I told him he would just have to shoot me because I was going in to help my grandparents on Mulvane Street and we went in! Truly, an angel must have been protecting us because I never wore shoes in the Summer unless I had to and could so easily have been electrocuted. And I thank God that soldier didn't fire his gun!
We walked in to find a house still standing with minor damage
-
mainly shingles blown off and windows blown out.
Everyone was talking at once. We found out that the boys upstairs had, had
to pick up my old German Grandpa Kerber and carry him to the basement. He
had been through many storms before and saw no reason to get to the basement.
Even in the basement, he wouldn't stay away from the window seeing the funnel
pick up his garage and set it down on its roof. We were told he calmly
stated, "Well, I'll be damned. It took my garage." If the evenings
events rattled him, no one could tell.
Once we counted, we realized that the only one not accounted
for was my cousin Les .
(here he is working on G & G Kerber's neighbor's house after the tornado) It was
a long night worrying if he had made it through the storm. Finally, he
came in with the neck of his sweatshirt hanging loosely down to his waste.
He was out riding his motorcycle and only had time to get off his bike and hug a
telephone pole. The force of the wind had pulled his sweatshirt away from
his body like a sail on a ship. He said he was never so scared in his
life. Tornado winds do crazy things. He couldn't believe his
motorcycle was still on its stand while he was holding on to that telephone pole
for dear life.
For the next couple of weeks people treated each other with the kind of love and caring that we are taught in church. Slowly as the city recovered, life goes back to normal. But there was one more observation that I have to share: When the sirens would sound BEFORE June 8th, people took precautions hap-hazard. AFTER June 8th I was downtown running an errand and stopped at a red-light when the sirens sounded again. Everyone went somewhere, but they were gone off the street in a flash.