Manhattan hit first by destructive ’66 tornado
6:08 p.m. Thursday, June 8, 2006
Around 6 p.m. on June 8, 1966, Manhattan resident Ruth Lignitz remembers it like it was yesterday.
"Oh it was terrible,” she said. “Everything was gone."
Lignitz now sits in her living room, but 40 years ago it was flattened by a tornado.
"I remember it well,” she said. “It was strawberry season. We'd picked strawberries that day."
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Her family sat and ate strawberry pancakes that night, her nine kids fought over whose turn it was to do the dishes that night.
Forty years ago the Lignitz family was sitting down for supper when they noticed the trees in the front yard were bending violently in the wind.
“Then when the tornado hit why everything was gone,” she said. “Nobody had to do any dishes then."
The family decided it was best to head for the basement.
"We have a reinforced basement. We hadn't been there very many minutes and we heard the roof go,” she said. “And all the glass and the windows were broke. The baby was crying. I think all the pressure was hard on her ears. It didn't last very long but it just took everything."
When the storm had passed, there was destruction throughout the city.
"We had a big stock tank that the kids used as a swimming pool. The wind just picked it up like a donut and it was clear over in the university property,” she said.
The family's refuge in the basement lasted three months. They lived within concrete enforced walls for three months even cooking their meals there.
"It disrupted the whole summer. We just took care of ourselves,” she said.
A summer she will never forget, but she doesn't dwell on the past.
Lignitz said she didn't hear any sirens on that day 40 years ago. She has since found other uses for the rooms in her basement but heads down whenever she hears the sirens in her neighborhood.
Comments
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Jun. 9, 2006 at 7:42 p.m. (Suggest removal)aeperry (anonymous)
Thanks Channel 49 for interviewing my Grandma and posting it online! We got to watch the clip out here in Delaware, using the internet. My mom (one of those 9 kids) and us granddaughters were really excited to see the story that we've already heard so much about.
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