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Cheryl
Mau Bramhall never will forget May 6, 1975, the day a car
fell from the sky onto her mother’s head.
Tom
Lindsay and his family remember the day for the “guardian
angel” who appeared out of nowhere to pull them, shell-shocked,
from the ruins of their home.
For Rose Marie
Jackson, it marked the last time she ever walked.
May 6, 1975 –
the day a tornado slashed a nine-mile scar into the heart
of the city – is a day that will live in infamy for
Omahans.
Anyone who lived
in Nebraska’s largest city during that time probably
still remembers where he or she was when the sirens bean to
wail and the terror touched down.
For those who found
themselves in the midst of the storm’s fury, the date
holds even more memories and meaning.
Three people were
killed that day. Even more remarkable was the number of people
spared.
It was estimated
that 30,000 people lived, worked or went to school in the
storm’s deadly path. They heeded the sirens and huddled
in basements, under tables or wherever they could find cover.
On Saturday, 20
years – in the case of many families, a generation –
will have passed since the Tornado of ’75.
But many survivors
say the events of the day continue to touch their lives, both
for good and for bad, sometimes in ways they are only now
beginning to realize and to understand.
Here is the story
of May 6, 1975, as told by some of those who lived through
it: the Maus, the Lindsays and the Jacksons.
Tuesday, May 6,
started out hot and hazy.
Colleen Mau remembers
the uncomfortable, sticky heat. She rarely wore shorts but
chose to that day, not knowing that by the end of the day
she wouldn’t own any clothes.
She felt something
ominous hanging in the thick air. She had heard about the
threat of severe weather and hoped that her four daughters,
Cheryl, 16, Cindy 15, Lori, 12, and Kristi, 8, would be dismissed
from school early.
Rose Marie Jackson,
then 42, liked the warmth. When she came home for lunch from
her job at the post office near 72nd and Pacific Streets,
she thought about how she soon would be working in her garden.
By mid afternoon,
it started to rain. That meant the end of the workday for
Tom Lindsay, a plumber who had been working on an outdoor
job in Papillion. He headed for his home (on) Nina Street
in Omaha’s Westgate neighborhood.
The rain didn’t
stop the Ak-Sar-Ben races, where Lindsay’s 17-year-old
son, Tom, went off to work after school.
Lindsay’s
13-year-old daughter, Roseann, walked home from school and
watched the dark clouds in the southwest as they parted, came
back together, and then parted again.
The churning in
the sky that Roseann saw was caused by the lethal mixing of
the hot, humid air with a new front of cool, dry air coming
in from the north. By the time she got home, there were severe
thunderstorm warnings on the television.
At 4:14pm, the
National Weather Service reported a possible tornado.
At 4:29pm, a resident
reported a funnel cloud descending west of 96th and Harrison,
and the civil defense alarms sounded.
At 4:32, police
reported a tornado on the ground, tearing the roofs off apartments
at 96th and Q Streets.
Lindsay stood in
a back yard with his neighbor and watched the black, swirling
cloud, less than a mile away and closing fast.
It went through
the railroad trestle, on to the Westgate ball fields, and
headed for the Interstate. Lindsay and is neighbor joined
Roseann, Lindsay’s wife, Delores, and two neighbor children
under a table in the basement as the tornado roared into the
Lindsay house.
“I remember
opening my eyes twice in the whole thing,” Rosann said.
“The first time there was a blue flame in the air. The
second time I saw the basement steps being sucked up. Then
all you could see was sky.”
The tornado was
gone as quickly as it had come. The Lindsay’s home was
gone, hurled into a neighbor’s house across the street..
Even the table was gone. But they all were OK.
The Omaha twister
at that time was following the northeast path most tornadoes
take. But at 72nd Street, it took a freakish turn due north.
That took the black
funnel right down Omaha’s glittering strip and put it
right on top of Mrs. Jackson.
She and 10 co-workers
had watched the approaching storm before taking shelter, Mrs.
Jackson under a metal work table. The force of the storm slid
the heavy table away, leaving Mrs. Jackson exposed as a hail
of bricks came down. She was buried in the debris.
“Please,
God, not yet,” she said she thought. “I have so
much left to do.”
Farther north,
near 70th and Blondo Streets, the Mau children disagreed on
what to do about the tornado warning. Cheryl thought they
should take shelter. Lori caller worried sister a “Holy
Joe”.
Butt all headed
for the basement after their mother looked out the window
and in a frantic voice said, “There’s stuff flying
around.”
The girls pulled
a mattress over their heads. Within seconds, glass whirled
around the basement. Cindy Mau watched from under the mattress
as the corner of the house lifted off the foundation. She
also grabbed Lori, who was bobbing up off the floor.
When it passed,
the girls found their neighbor’s car suspended just
above their heads, and their mother on the floor bleeding
from a deep cut, apparently inlicted by the car’s bumper.
“I thought we were going to be orphans,“ Cheryl
said.
Mrs. Mau was knocked
out by the blow but was revived by the gasoline that was pouring
out of the car onto her face.
“I said,
‘We have to get out of here. The house is going to blow
up,’“ Mrs. Mau said. “I didn’t realize
there wasn’t a house anymore.”
Blood streaming
down her face, Mrs. Mau took the family dog in her arms and
led her daughters down the street looking for help. Her cut
would require 40 stitches to close.
The Maus didn’t
realize at the time that one of the twister’s three
victims lay dead in their back yard.
Margaret Baker,
86, who lived across the yard and four houses to the north
of the Maus, was deaf, and may have been oblivious to everything
until her home blew apart.
Back at the post
office, co-workers dug frantically to pull Mrs. Jackson from
the rubble. A doctor happened to be driving by on 72nd Street.
He fashioned a back board from a piece of wood so she could
be taken to a hospital. She had suffered a broken back and
crushed ribs. At the hospital, a doctor told Mrs. Jackson’s
husband, Verne, she might not make it through the night.
The Lindsays also
received help in the storm’s aftermath, from a man who
in their memories holds a mystical air.
Almost immediately
after the storm passed, they recall, the young, bearded man
was standing above them on the edge of their home’s
foundation, asking if they needed help. One by one, he pulled
them out of the basement.
“I was not
a small person, and he lifted me like a feather,” Mrs.
Lindsay said.
“Though it
was raining the man’s hair and hands were dry,”
Roseann said. And after asking if there were any other people
around who needed help, he disappeared almost as suddenly
as he had come.
“I don’t
know who he was,” Lindsay said. “He was sent by
someone, I guess.”
Said Mrs. Lindsay,
“He had to be our guardian angel.”
Minutes later,
the Lindsays had a tearful reunion with young Tom. He had
left Ak-Sar-Ben, where 9,000 spectators waiting for the sixth
race had watched the tornado pass within a mile of the grandstand.
The poignant moment
was captured by World-Herald photographer S.J. Melingagio
and spread across the front page the next morning.
Now, 20 years later,
all three families consider themselves lucky.
Mrs. Jackson was
left paralyzed from the waist down. She has been confined
to a wheelchair but has refused to be bitter.
“What’s
to be bitter about? It happened. That’s all,”
she said. “Besides, my husband wouldn’t stand
for me being bitter. Thanks to him, I’m able to get
by.”
The Maus and Lindsays
both say they were lucky to survive.
The wall of the
Lindsays’ basement foundation collapsed, except at the
spot where they were crouched. The Maus still wonder how their
neighbor’s car somehow got hung up on the foundation
of their home. That was the only thing that kept the car from
crashing down on top of them.
“By all laws
of physics, it should have fallen on us,” said Lori,
now Lori Mau Groves.
All three families
say they were amazed at how quickly the city recovered from
one of the most destructive storms in U.S. History.
Within a year,
nearly all 572 homes, two schools and 55 businesses destroyed
or severely damaged by the twister had been rebuilt. The Maus,
Lindsays and most of their neighbors all rebuilt on the site
of their former homes.
Said Roseann Lindsay,
“You didn’t have time to get depressed.”
All the victims
also said they were touched by the outpouring of assistance
from other Omahans who gave their time and money. Neighborhoods
pulled closer.
“Where there
were problems with other neighbors, there was all of a sudden
communication,” said Bob Mau, who was at work when his
wife and daughters rode out the storm. “People got along,
and we still do.”
Other effects of
the storm also live on. The Maus said they all were turned
into skywatchers.
“I think
we spent that whole summer in the basement,” said Cindy,
now Cindy Mau Gottsch, who recently had a tornado shelter
built into her new home in hastings.
Lori said the tornado
may have been the reason she grew up to become an emergency
room nurse. “My most vivid memories are of Mom in the
emergency room,” she said.
Lindsay said the
Tornado of ’75 is something the people who lived through
it think about all the time.
“It
was a terrible time, and a very fortunate time,” he
said. “You look at that
picture, and you thank God you’re alive.”
Written by Henry J. Cordes, World-Herald Staff Writer
Transcribed by J. Scott Hayden, Webmaster
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