I was barely into my sophomore year at Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, Oklahoma. It was a Monday, the middle of the afternoon, as I recall. I really don’t remember much before or during the tornado, except that it was unusually dark for an October afternoon; there was no light streaming through the windows of Brotherhood Dorm. Pretty eerie. I don’t recall any tornado warnings or any precautions we took to protect ourselves.
NY Times article, 10/6/1970
My main memory of that day – 50 years ago today, October 5, 1970 – is the aftermath of the tornado. My roommate, Cary Wood, and I lived in one room of a two-room suite at the end of the hallway in D section. The other room was occupied by Paul Krueger and the resident assistant of our section, Ron Russey, who also happened to be the president of the OBU Ministerial Alliance that year.
OBU was spared the wrath of the tornado – I have to admit that I don’t in any way believe God spared our campus because we were so holy. Believe me, we weren’t!
But OBU did escape Mother Nature’s wrath that afternoon. Tragically, much of Shawnee didn’t, as the tornado cut a wide swath through downtown Shawnee.
Ron Russey was obviously keeping his ear to the ground, or – more likely – tuned to the radio reports. As soon as it became apparent that the tornado had moved on, Ron began knocking on doors, gathering a bunch of guys to go downtown and help the residents of a trailer park that had been demolished by the tornado. WIthin minutes, all of us had climbed into the back of a truck for the trip to the trailer park.
Well, that’s not quite accurate – not ALL of us made it to that truck. Perhaps the most haunting memory for me is the response Ron got when a door opened to reveal several ministerial students gathered in a room. Ron said, “Fellas, we’re going downtown to help out some folks whose homes got hit by the tornado, and we’d like you to join us.” No, came the response, we’ve decided the best help we can give is to stay here in the dorm and pray for them.
Fifty years later, that still bothers me no end. Did they really think we weren’t going to pray as well? Only, we figured we could pray AND go help, all at the same time. Pray as you go . . . what a concept . . . a Jesus concept.
Upon arrival at the trailer park, we found a lot of destruction. The tornado had taken people’s homes and thrown them around like dollhouses. There was nothing but wreckage everywhere . . . of the trailer homes and all that had been inside them. Our job was to salvage whatever we could out of the wreckage, find whatever belongings hadn’t been totally destroyed so the homeowners wouldn’t lose everything.
Personally, I remember my main impression as I sifted through the wreckage was the fear that I might stumble upon a body . . . or a part of a body. We didn’t know which residents had been accounted for and which of them hadn’t. So there was the possibility that we would find a person among the debris. Thankfully, as far as I knew, no bodies were found among the wreckage.
After we finished, we returned to our safe, secure dorm rooms and returned to our lives as before. I can’t help wondering, though, what happened to the people who lost their homes and belongings (what we weren’t able to salvage) that day, how they were able to go on, the kinds of things they had to go through to ultimately get back to any semblance of a normal life. I hope we helped them a little that day, but I have to hope, too, that others came behind us to give them more substantial help for getting back on their feet.
It’s amazing how our lives can change in an instant . . . for the good . . . or for the bad.
Even for those of us whose lives weren’t torn apart that day, we’ll never forget October 5, 1970. I can still see that trailer park . . . what there was left of it . . . in my mind’s memory 50 years later. It will always be with me.
I’m thankful for Ron Russey, that his immediate impulse was to go where people were hurting and do whatever he could to help them . . . and that he gave a bunch of guys like me the opportunity to be a part of his ministry to those people at such a tragic time in their lives. Russey (who died in a car accident in October 1979) wasn’t perfect . . . anyone that knew Ron knew that he struggled with, as he put it, some ethical issues in his life . . . he was very upfront about that. But what I’ll always remember most about my dear friend Ron Russey is that he had a Jesus heart . . . a heart for loving people who were hurting.
I guess that’s what October 5, 1970, really means to me . . . a reminder that, if we aspire to be like Jesus, then we’ll go where people are hurting. We’ll be Matthew 25 people.
Regarding the tornado that hit Shawnee. Yes, I well remember that day, although i had both of my wisdom teeth removed that day and the dentist gave me some powerful drugs to ease the pain, so went back to my room in Storer basement, took the drugs and fell asleep. I slept through the tornado! When I woke up, it was about dinner time, but it took me a while to find anyone on campus and before I knew what had happened. Yeah, Ron Russey was such a good, good man and his response to go help was what he was all about.
Thanks, Ray. That’s amazing – you slept through the tornado! Reminds me of the summer of 1975, when I worked two jobs in Reno, NV, in preparation for beginning OU Law School that fall (TWO things most friends don’t know about me – working in casinos AND my three semesters in law school, which convinced me I wasn’t cut out for a life as an attorney). Near the end of June, there was a mild earthquake in Reno during the day. I had about 4 hours to sleep every day, between the time I arrived home a little before 10 a.m. from my “graveyard shift” and 2 p.m. when I had to start getting ready for my 3-11 shift. It was apparently during that four-hour “sleep window” that the earthquake occurred, and I slept right through it!