Caught In The Path, A Tornado's Fury, A Community's Rebirth
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Product Description
Before storm sirens, before the Weather Channel, before Doppler Radar, a tornado "dropped out of a troubled May sky and twisted its way into our lives forever." On the evening of May 20,1957 three communities south of Kansas City, Missouri were destroyed by a seventy-one mile, F-5 twister. This monstrous storm left in its path five hundred injured, forty-four dead and over a million dollars worth of property damage. Nothing defines a community more than its reaction to disaster. Caught In The Path is a story of fear and courage, suffering and resiliency. The hardest hit area, four year old Ruskin Heights, was the first post-war tract housing development in the Kansas City area. Like so many of their generation, its residents, mostly first time home buyers in their twenties and thirties, came to Ruskin to raise their baby-boom families with the optimism of the fifties. When the tornado scattered their dreams along its path, they came back, and changed a housing development into a community. Author Carolyn Glenn Brewer's family was among those caught off guard by the tornado. Most of the houses on her block were leveled to the foundation. She combines her story with extensive interviews from nearly one hundred survivors and period media coverage. The narrative flow of this book reads like fiction, but makes the tornado, and the summer that followed, pulse with reality.
Spotlight Customer Reviews:
Summary:
I too, was there!
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Comment:
I haven't thought about this tornado in some years, but was reminded about it a few days ago, by someone I've recently met, who was also there.
I was very little at the time, turning three-years-old just a few months before. Even though I was very young, I remember CLEARLY that day and the events that have stayed with me forever.
My dad had loaded us up in the car to take my mom, me and my brother (he was only 6 months old at the time) to do some shopping at the Ruskin Heights shopping center. After getting something to eat, my mom took me into a store to try on some shoes. (I remember those little black patent leather Mary Janes, and remember wanting them badly! Oh...and I'm still a shoes hound today.) While we shopped, my dad was waiting outside in the car with my brother, and was watching the sky, as was typical for people to do at that time, since weather forecasting was certainly no science back then. And he had a healthy respect for our locality, known as tornado alley.
He said as he watched, he felt very uneasy. He said the sky didn't look right him. As the clouds quickly turned to greenish black and began to circulate, he KNEW we were in trouble and we had to get out of there IMMEDIATELY. He ran into the store, and I CLEARLY remember him yelling for my mom and me. I was petrified at the look on his face. I remember her protesting...she wanted to buy me my shoes! He said if we didn't get out of there that instant, we were going to be in big trouble. I remember a couple of people were looking at us, kind of standing there frozen, as my dad was saying to LEAVE NOW. I remember my parents RUNNING out of that store, and my feet sort of flying out behind me as they had grabbed me and ran. We piled into the car and drove back home as FAST as possible. As we were driving away, stuff started flying around everywhere, and some debris hit the car as my dad drove us out of the area like a crazy person. I remember my mom screaming. We lived in the area, and I remember going immediately into our storm shelter when we got back home, even though we weren't in the path of the tornado. It seemed then like we were huddled in there for hours, but I'm sure it wasn't too long at all.
I found out later the store we were shopping in was FLATTENED in the tornado, and I'd heard some people were killed there...which we likely would've been had we stayed there shopping.
Reading this book after all these years has brought back the memories like they happened yesterday. Interestingly, I've had recurring tornado dreams almost all my life (probably because of that storm) and just found out a couple of months ago, that my brother does, too! I'm amazed that even though both of us were so young...and he was just a baby at that time...we both have vivid memories of what happened that day.
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Summary:
Have got to read it!
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Comment:
I really think this is a must read for those that face disaster, natural or man-made, or anyone who is obsessed with the weather ;). I found it to be a bit thick, as far as style is concerned, if it weren't for the personal accounts, it would have read a bit too much like fiction, at a risk of making it less "real" to posterity. Don't get me wrong, I loved this book and I found it inspiring as much as anything, but I grew up with the tale of the tornado. My father was in this tornado, and told me the story of it throughout my childhood- often by request, as I was always terrified and fascinated by tornadoes, I dread every spring here in tornado alley, but saw "twister" opening day- with my dad! I guess this tornado kind of bonded my dad and me, almost 30 years after the fact, because it always made me feel safe on stormy spring nights with the sirens going off that if the "big one" didn't get him, then whatever was out there now wouldn't either, and I was safe too. The story goes that he was watching a western on tv after dinner, and that my aunt and grandma were in the kitchen cleaning up. My grandfather had gone outside to have a smoke and "do some cloud watching", as there was not really a weather prediction system then, most people in these parts instinctively knew when to watch, and what to watch for. My grandfather seemed to know the sky was up to no good, and after a while of watching the clouds he turned to my dad in the family room, and told him in a grave voice to go get his mother and sister (sign of the times, he put a ten year old boy in charge of his mother and older sister), and to tell them to get in the car. I guess they gathered a few things, and the family dog, and got in the car and sped away. My dad says that they did not have a basement, and although they say never to try and outrun a tornado, my grandpa must of known which way it was goin to go, because, my dad says, after they had been in the car not more than a few minutes he looked out the back of the car to see nothing but blackness dropping down behind them. They got away, and when they came back the next day, their house was incredibly still there! It was one of maybe two houses still standing in that immediate area, the neighbors houses on both sides were destroyed. He said the neighbors to the right would not have survived but they thought that my grandparent's had a basement and had gone over to take refuge, it was all over before they could leave, and it was only because of that they survived, as their house was leveled. My family was lucky, but my dad's third grade teacher died in the storm. I'm glad that a book has been written that can teach people the lessons of this tornado, that in the face of tragedy all is not lost, that people can rebuild, sometimes for the better. But I hope that people do take it seriously, not just as a bit of sensationalism.
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Summary:
Ruskin Revisited
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Comment:
The book was perhaps more interesting since I have not been back to Ruskin. I was also a classmate of Judy Hembree and others in the book. We did not dwell on the tornado aftermath in the 60s, but now realize that it shaped our reaction to crisis.Nice read.
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Summary:
Great content, could have used better editing
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Comment:
This book is a gripping and compelling story of the May 20 1957 tornado in the words of the survivors 20-30 years later. It has personal interest to me as a life-long Kansas City resident, tornado obsessor and '50s buff. In the mid to late 1980s, I resided in apartments which were adjacent to the railroad tracks and just south of the Ruskin shopping center. I figuratively could not put the book down once I started. My only criticism would be the large number of spelling and grammar errors.
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Summary:
A roaring success!
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Comment:
I came across this book on a visit to St. Louis and grabbed it. It may just be the best book ever written about a tornado--it's riveting start to finish and the spotlight is on people and their lives. It's a great movie in print with a terrific plot, memorable characters and a lot of heroism mixed in.
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