'We had never heard the word tornado:' Sandusky-Lorain tornado of 1924 remembered for devastation, inspiration

LORAIN — It looked like a typical summer storm rolling in off Lake Erie. The weather was right for it — hot and muggy still around 5 p.m. June 28, 1924. Families were on the beach at Lakeview Park, or sitting out on porches trying to beat the heat as black clouds and fierce winds moved in. Pauline Crooks, 12, remembered her mother had sent her to a dime store downtown with instructions to hurry back to her West 12th Street home before the rain hit, she said in a 1981 oral history interview. "I started back down Broadway and it began to rain — just torrents of rain," Crooks said in the interview. "So we stood in the doorway of a clothing store … I looked across Broadway and here was Rowley and Fischer Realtor, orange awning flapping away in the wind — it's strange the things you remember — and then all of a sudden it seems a great big, black cloud came down and without knowing why we ran into the store and the glass began to smash." What looked like an angry summer sky was the state's deadliest tornado in history. Crooks remembered the store owner hustling patrons and staff into the rows of suits and coats on display in the store. Minutes later, glass was up to 3 inches deep on the floor and the sidewalk had been ripped up to expose the water pipes and electrical wires underneath. "When I told my father what happened, he didn't believe me," she said in the interview. "And then, pretty soon a man came along and told him what had happened and we all called it a hurricane. We didn't know, we had never heard the word tornado." On June 30, 1924, The Chronicle-Telegram's front page declared 88 dead, $30 million in damage and 7,000 homeless. A column beside it listed the known dead from across the county. In the end, The Sandusky-Lorain tornado of 1924 claimed more than 70 lives in the International City and caused what would be millions in damage, Lorain Historical Society Senior Collections Manager Kaitlyn Donaldson said just ahead of the event's 100th anniversary. "We want to remember and honor the folks who died or the families who were forever impacted by this," she said. "We really want to recognize how the city came together after to rebuild and recover. There is a lot of symbolism for today in the revitalization of our downtown." The International City was able to pick up the pieces and rebuild in 1924, Donaldson said, and there is something similar happening in the efforts to revitalize downtown 100 years later. 'I thought I couldn't live' By today's standards the storm would be categorized an F4, Donaldson said. The tornado started in Sandusky, before coming across Lake Erie and hitting Lorain at the bathhouse in Lakeview Park where several were killed. The storm moved east through the neighborhoods, cutting down churches, businesses and homes in its path, decimating the State Theater and damaging the American Shipbuilding Company. The State Theater was between showings when the tornado hit, Donaldson said, killing 15 people and collapsing the balcony. Its replacement, the Lorain Palace Theatre, was built a few doors down without a balcony, she said. When the tornado hit, about 37 percent of Lorain's 37,000 residents were foreign-born — meaning many had never heard of a tornado before, as the weather event is an American phenomenon, Donaldson said. "I think it shocked a lot of people," she said. In another oral history from the interviews in 1981, Susan Cotton remembered her husband was working on the car in the driveway and seeing the storm coming. Cotton said he came into their G Street home while she was closing windows and told her to go to the basement — sensing how horrific the storm would be from his time on sailboats. "He just pulled me down the stone steps … he said 'lay down and put your arms over your face' and in two minutes everything was gone — our house, our car, everything. We didn't have a stick of clothes or a stick of furniture left." The couple took shelter from the rain in a chicken coop across the street, Cotton said, helping a little girl from next door in after them. The girl, about 8 years old, Cotton said, had been home alone when the storm hit and she was blown into the lot next door while holding onto a sink. "I thought I couldn't live, but I'm here," Cotton said. The tornado tore through downtown Broadway, lopping off the tops of buildings, or decimating the structures altogether. Churches and the synagogue on Reid Avenue were destroyed. The many that exist now were built afterward or underwent extensive repairs. The storm hit on George Myer's 14th birthday, he said in his oral history interview. It bent the maple trees over in front of his family's house like they were flowers, a "tremendous noise" coming with it. He said his father and others from the neighborhood spent the night bringing the injured and dead to Fairhome Elementary School on Illinois Avenue. Lorain High School and Longfellow Middle School were also home to a makeshift hospital and morgue, Donaldson said. There were instances of neighbors helping one another, like what Myers remembered of his father and others shuttling fellow residents to local hospitals as St. Joseph's was overrun. Even former Mayor Leonard Moore's family opened their home on West Fifth Street to shelter 80 people the first night of the tornado. The hulking steel mills on East 28th Street set up funds to help impacted staff, Donaldson said, and once the cleanup on Broadway turned from digging out those trapped by hand to removing rubble to rebuild, Thew Shovel lent equipment with its name emblazoned on the side. Neighboring cities flooded Lorain with police and firefighters, the Red Cross and the National Guard on their heels. A steamship from Cleveland ferried doctors and nurses, taking patients back to the city. Within 24 hours the estimated 7,000 left homeless in the storm's wake were given a tent or sheltered with a neighbor, relative or friend. The city was plagued with rain for days on end after the tornado dissipated, prompting the Red Cross to send a nurse to speak to every family in the city to make sure there were no disease outbreaks or lack of medical treatment. A pharmacist from Youngstown drove through the night to deliver medical supplies, she said. And Amish came up from central and southern Ohio to lend a hand. "Natural disasters aren't going to stop," Donaldson said. "But it's really the community coming together — everyone becoming neighbors." Rebuilding There are several theories on how word spread so quickly in an age well before the internet. Those include a ship offshore that saw the storm make landfall and radioed to Cleveland; an amateur radio enthusiast able to get word out and bicycle messenger boys navigating the damaged streets to get to Elyria for help. The details of how word initially spread may be lost, but local newspapers spread reports of the damage and soon photographers and onlookers traveled not to help, but to sightsee, Donaldson said. Some of those gawkers were corralled by the National Guard and turned away — or given something useful to do like help with cleanup. Soon, postcards circulated the devastation, the funds raised from those postcards' sales helped with rebuilding costs. Once the debris was cleared and funerals attended, the city moved forward. "There's trauma there, surviving something like that," Donaldson said. She touched on the Van Duesen family, who had relatives in from out of town when the tornado hit their West Fifth Street home, killing five of them. "... There's people alive today who never got to meet their grandparents because they were killed." Homeowners often rebuilt within a year or moved out of the city entirely. Businesses capped off buildings with their lower three floors — like Lorain Hardware Co. at 502 Broadway — or moved forward with new spaces like the Wagner Building — now the Ariel Hotel — built in 1926. Churches were often slower to rebuild, having to raise funds from congregations facing their own hardships. But First Congregational Church, 423 Washington Ave., replaced its circa 1876 structure in 1926. And Church of the Redeemer continued construction after the storm — meaning the 647 Reid Ave. structure still has its original stained glass windows. Other businesses, like the old Majestic Hotel at 742 Broadway, saw its third floor blown off and took the opportunity when rebuilding to add a 60-foot extension onto the space. Newspaper articles in the months after the tornado noted how quickly the city rebuilt, Donaldson said. A postcard from August shared similar sentiments. That September, residents hosted what was akin to the International Festival, she said. Community members came dressed in traditional clothing from their respective countries, danced and played music along Broadway and West Fifth Street. The same month, The Chronicle-Telegram reported American Ship Building Co. was rebuilding after its $1 million loss, with plans to replace wooden structures with brick ones and put 600 men to work compared to the 230 employed before the storm. In December 1924, Henry Baker, director of relief efforts for the Red Cross, said the city had come back quicker than any other community he had worked in, according to The Chronicle's archive. A relief fund for the city, managed by the Red Cross, reached more than $1 million. For Donaldson, who has been extensively researching the tornado since its 95th anniversary, the takeaway is not what path the storm took or the architecture the city lost, but the individuals affected. While not from Lorain herself, Donaldson connected with the families she read about, and the stories shared with her. During her research in 2019, she remembered her husband asking if she needed to check on her parents in Dayton because a storm was rolling in there. "I was like 'Oh, they're fine,'" she said. "Fourteen tornados ripped through Dayton in 2019. My family was fine, but there's that feeling, that fear." Her husband's family members are from Xenia, she said, and remembered the 1974 tornado there. "I want to honor the people who went through this and I'm grateful for every chance that I can talk to people about the tornado because the stories are so powerful," she said. "I just want to share what Lorain went through and we really are focusing on how the community rebuilt … that's what's most inspiring." Contact Carissa Woytach at (440) 329-7245 or cwoytach@chroniclet.com.