Crucial Chapters
By Glenda Shepard
I'm Glenda Shepard from Yucca Corners Farm in rural Stanton County KS. This is my third Radio Readers BookByte for And Hell Followed With It Life and Death in a Kansas Tornado by Bonar Menninger. In this BookByte I'm going to look at Chapters Two, Four and 19.
Chapter Two: Severe Weather Watch No. 201 traces the development of an air mass into a tornado that would eventually decimate Topeka on June 8th, 1966. It begins with "a powerful low-pressure system churning northeast out of the Oklahoma Panhandle." Then "moist warm air bottled up in southeast Kansas." These two conditions had forecasters in the Severe Local Storms Forecast Center in Kansas City worried enough to issue at 2:40 am on June 8 a brief statement indicating "Severe thunderstorms would likely redevelop across Kansas by afternoon".
The forecasters used a device called a radiosonde to monitor the air masses.
This unmanned reconnaissance flight launched at 6:00 am and 6:00 pm charted the progress. In the Topeka Weather Bureau office forecaster P.N. Eiland grimly read the radiosonde findings. No doubt about it, the two air masses when they collided would spark severe weather.
By 11:00 am on June 8 Severe Weather Watch No. 201 announced:
"THE U.S. WEATHER BUREAU HAS ISSUED A TORNADO WATCH FOR PORTIONS OF SOUTH-CENTRAL AND EASTERN KANSAS AND WEST-CENTRAL MISSOURI. THE THREAT OF ONE OR TWO TORNADOES WILL EXIST FROM 2PM UNTIL 8PM THIS WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON AND EVENING. SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS WITH LARGE HAIL AND LOCALLY DAMAGING WINDS ARE ALSO FORECAST. "
Due to this forecast Eiland called on Volunteer Emergency Services Team. VEST made up of citizens band radio enthusiasts would take up vantage posts to spot severe weather. As human eyes scanned the sky, the weather bureau's radar screen showed amorphous shapes grow in size and intensity.
"Near the small town of Dover, Lester Osburn watched as two air masses, black roiling clouds, collided." He ran to a phone to report "a tornado on the ground 4 miles south of Dover, moving northeast toward Topeka."
Chapter 2 ends with the birth of the Topeka tornado.
Chapter Four: The Legend Burnett's Mound inserts a pause from the storm clouds hovering over Topeka. Menninger tells what pre-June 8th, 1966, Topekans believed was their protection from tornadoes. Native Americans in Kansas faced encroachment from three directions: south from the Spanish, east and north from the French and British. From the turbulence of clashing cultures, Abram Burnett emerged. He was a Potawatomi chief, who had enough records and oral history to develop a legend of protection for early Topekans.
Reading about Burnett, I caught Menninger's sympathy for Kansa Indians. The chief Allegawaho (Al-le-ga-wa-ho) spoke out against federal officials when he said, "You treat us Kansa like a flock of turkeys; you chase us to one stream, then you chase us to another stream--soon you will chase us over the mountains and into the ocean . . ."
A successful horse trader who had the good sense to fear his wife Mary, Abram died in 1870 at age 59. After Mary remarried and moved from her cabin, rumors of Burnett's golden treasure had money seekers digging holes in the mound and around the abandoned cabin.
After Burnett passed, Topeka shed its small-town image. The Santa Fe railway and Forbes Air Force Base produced strong growth for Topeka, especially in Southwest Topeka. Around Burnett's Mound, housing areas were built.
To the chagrin of some Topekans, both newcomers and natives, Burnett's Mound was disturbed to construct a 5 million gallon water tank. Despite knowing Native Americans were buried in the mound, Topeka officials needed reliable water for rapidly growing Southwest Topeka. (Remember this was 1960's Topeka)
The bargain was Topeka would be protected from tornadoes if Burnett's Mound was undisturbed. It was sacred as a cemetery of the bones of earlier Potawatomi, including Abram Burnett. Now, "there was considerable talk among the locals about the wisdom of the project." Would Topekans find out, " We weren't supposed to bother the mound?”
Chapter 19: Beneath the Shadow of June 8th is testament to the resilience the Topekans who moved on from the tornado. In the same order they were introduced in the book Glenn Nicely, Rick Douglass, and many others learned lessons from the tornado. One lesson all Topekans had to admit was, "The hill (Burnett's Mound) could not protect the city from tornadoes after all."
Menninger leaves the book with the tornado's best lesson: "it instills a certain indifference to adversity and a gritty determination to overcome any obstacle, no matter what the days may hold."
I'm Glenda Shepard and thank you for listening to my third Radio Readers BookByte for And Hell Followed With It Life and Death in a Kansas Tornado.
