It was the day that Mary Tintes’ friend was born in the old St. John’s Hospital in Fargo.
“Her parents,” Mary writes Neighbors, “recall the building shaking and the hospital staff praying while the tornado barely missed them.” That was the tornado that struck north Fargo the evening of June 20, 1957 — 60 years ago today.
That terrible storm, which took 11 lives, and its parent thunderstorm approached Fargo from nearly due west, creating terrible destruction, according to Greg Gust, who is with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Grand Forks.
“I was 3½ years old, living on our family farm northeast of Amenia, N.D., and I recall the ‘excitement’ of that stormy day,” Mary Tintes, now of West Fargo, writes.
“The trees surrounding our farm were young trees, so it was easy to see the approaching ominous black cloud with the long tail not yet touching the ground.
“My parents, my two older brothers and our farmhand were scurrying about the farm, opening up the barn, the fences and the chicken coop doors so all of our animals were free to run from the approaching tornado. Then we stood there for a few moments and watched the powerful cloud as it passed by our farm and headed east toward Fargo (about 20 miles away).
“Mom insisted we kids go in the basement, and we did. Some time after, we heard on the radio that the tornado had hit north Fargo.
“The next day,” Mary says, “we all drove to Fargo to see the damage. We knew by then that several children had died in the storm. We saw the debris all over the sidewalks and streets, and I remember my dad commenting on how much help they would need to clean it all up.”
John Bartholomay, now of Fargo but then of Grand Forks, who worked for Northwestern Bell Telephone at the time, was with the crews that rode 15 communication trucks from Grand Forks to Fargo the next day and spent 10 days helping repair phone service in north Fargo.
“We left Grand Forks at 5 a.m. on the 21st,” he writes Neighbors. “The trucks went through Fargo’s back streets to the Graver Hotel, where we stayed, then to the Northwestern Bell communications supply building on 21st Street and First Avenue North.
“The first and second days were spent removing all damaged aerial wire to homes in, I believe, about the area of 10th Avenue North to about 15th Avenue North and west of University Drive.
“The next couple of days were spent trying to estimate the heavy damage between Fargo and Lisbon, N.D., where the toll line for long distance service was at that time. Then back to Fargo again, removing damaged wire and phones in the Oak Grove area, then to Broadway and 12th Avenue trying to repair damaged aerial cable which was all on the ground.
“Crews had to replace a cable in the conduit system, so we spent about a week in the manhole at 10th Avenue and Broadway.
“Then we were called back to Grand Forks to repair problems there.”
John started working for Northwestern Bell in 1948 in Fargo. After seven years, he moved to Grand Forks and worked for Bell for 25 years, then was in Williston, N.D., for three years during the oil boom. He retired in 1983. He’s turning 87 this year.
Forum wins prize
Going back to the 1957 tornado, here’s a note from Jim Bond, Fargo, who was at Lake Sallie in Minnesota when the storm hit.
“I remember my mother trying to reach my brother, who had a summer job at St. John’s Hospital,” he says. “She also was given the task of telling a Forum staffer’s wife (I can’t remember who) that her home had been destroyed.”
The Forum won a Pulitzer Prize in 1958 for its coverage of the tornado, because a small staff got a paper out within hours of the disaster. “That staff,” Jim reminds folks, “dedicated the Pulitzer to my grandfather, Happy Paulson, who had retired in early 1957 after 40 years as The Forum editor.” And Jim clicks off some of the Forum staffers who put that paper out: Cal Olson, Chet Gebert, John Paulson, Ross Phipps and Phil Matthews, all of whom are deceased, and John Lohman, who still lives in Fargo.
Cafe loses roof
The news of the fire at the Bison Turf restaurant, near the North Dakota State University campus in recent months had special meaning to Lance Johnson, Moorhead, because it has a link to the Fargo tornado for him.
“I was a freshman at NDSU in 1956-57 and took all my noon meals at this restaurant, which then was called the Hasty-Tastey,” Lance writes.
“I was going to summer school in 1957 when the tornado hit. The entire roof was ripped off the Hasty-Tastey, and the brick college ‘Y’ next door, to the south, was whittled down to one story.
“I was not able to get to my dorm room for almost one week because of the wreckage in the streets. When I finally got to the dorm (Churchill Hall), all the first floor windows were green due to the grass being uprooted and thrown against the building.”
Good decision
This column opened with a woman having her baby the day of the 1957 tornado. But here’s the story of a woman who escaped the storm when her baby was due.
Carol (Thorpe) Nelson, now of Park Rapids, Minn., was living in Minneapolis in 1957 and expecting her first child.
“I had given some thought to going back to Fargo and having the baby there, because I was from Fargo and all my relatives were there. But I decided to stay in Minneapolis.
“On the evening of the 20th, Cedric Adams (a Minneapolis Tribune columnist and a radio announcer in the Twin Cities) reported on the Fargo tornado destruction on the 10 o’clock news. I tried to call my parents but couldn’t get through.
“The next day my daughter Kim was born, and I was very relieved, with all the confusion in Fargo, that I had stayed in Minneapolis for the delivery.”
Kim grew up, married George Toops, now lives in New London, Minn., and in 1981 presented Carol and her husband with grandchildren: two boys and a girl — yes, triplets.
And Mary Tintes, whose recollections of the 1957 tornado led off this column?
Well, just 23 years later, on June 20, 1980, her son Matt was born in Fargo, and “thankfully,” she says, “there were no storms that day!
by Bob Lind
June 20, 2017
