Three survivors from the 1947 Woodward tornado spoke to the Oklahoma Northwest Summer Institute history class on Thursday afternoon.
Each of the three speakers told different stories about the most deadly tornado in Oklahoma history that left 107 dead in and around Woodward.
Bill Heaton was the only one of the three to suffer physical injuries that day. Heaton was a junior in high school. At the time the tornado hit Heaton was at his girlfriend’s house on 18th Street and Main Ave. They were baby sitting the girl’s younger sister.
“The weather just kept getting more intense,” Heaton said.
Eventually he told his girlfriend to get her sister because the three of them were going to make a run to a ditch just off the home’s front porch.
But when Heaton opened the house’s front door all the windows exploded. Heaton told the girls to get down. The next thing he knew he said he saw a stucco pillar coming at him.
When Heaton woke up the house had been moved a block away to where the Woodward Regional Hospital is now.
Heaton found an open car and took his girlfriend and her sister and placed them in the car. Help finally arrived.
“I couldn’t turn or move without terrible pain,” Heaton said.
Heaton was taken to the hospital where his mother had arrived.
“I remember being taken out the next morning and seeing that front lawn (of the hospital) filled with people,” Heaton said.
The front lawn of the hospital on Fourth Street was filled with dead people.
Heaton ended up with a broken back, a crushed hand and a fractured skull.
“I feel like a miracle as far as what happened and what could have happened,” Heaton said.
Wilma Nelson had a different experience. Her apartment building was relatively untouched. She hid under the kitchen table when the tornado first hit. Then she said it was quiet.
She went to the front door of the apartment to see how bad the damage was. Just then the second vortex of the F6 tornado hit.
Back to the kitchen Nelson ran. Eventually her roommate returned from church. She was brought back to the apartment by a young couple.
“They were crying because they had seen the devastation,” Nelson said.
Nelson and her friend went walking around the wreckage. With the help of two unknown men they removed a man, woman and child from a fallen structure.
The men, who had a truck, brought the family to the hospital where Nelson said she saw her boss. He took Nelson home with the family’s baby and said that if any more children were found he would bring them to Nelson’s apartment.
Later that night another baby was brought by. The power had been out, so Nelson was unable to get a good look at the baby girl. The next morning though, when the girl was brought to the hospital, Nelson noticed that she had been covered in splinters.
While at the hospital, Nelson was told by a staff member to leave the little girl on a cot and go home. Nelson said she could not do that. But the staff member said it must be so. As Nelson left, the little girl raised her arms and began crying.
“So I left with the little girl crying and I was crying,” Nelson said. “I cried all the way to my apartment.”
Nelson’s mother stopped by and loaned her car. She went back to the hospital, but could not find the girl.
“To this day it still haunts me when I think about it,” Nelson said.
Ann Hohweiler was also a little girl when the tornado struck. She said her house was demolished in the storm and that her sister, younger brother and mother had trouble finding their father and older brother. Eventually they did.
Hohweiler’s story is more about what happened after the tornado though. She lived in Tornado Town, which is now the Woodward Regional Airport, but was an Army base at the time.
Hohweiler’s family lived in the barracks while their house was being rebuilt. She said the Red Cross gave the kids toys and all of their meals.
“The Red Cross was a very active organization,” Hohweiler said. “I don’t know what Woodward would have done without them.”
Since the tornado has struck Hohweiler and the others have tried to keep telling their stories and find other survivors.
“We ae some of the few survivors left and we have to keep the story alive so people know what we’ve been through,” Hohweiler said.
