Not long ago I published a story about the 1947 Woodward Tornado and what the panicky effect was that Wednesday night so long ago on a far-a-way town called Stonewall. But I was asked to just go ahead and write the real story of the “Stonewall” tornado of 1959. So here it is.

I lived in Dallas on “Tornado Day” In 1959 when my dad asked me to come up and run his store so he and his brother could go fishing. So, there I was back in my favorite town, Stonewall. And I found myself very busy. Everyone in Stonewall wanted a TV. TV station KTEN in Ada had just come on the air and it was coming in bright and clear. Also, getting enough TV sets to sell was hard so dad was selling Zenith, RCA and Admiral. We had several TVs running all the time for customers to peruse.

Time passed that Saturday evening and Channel 9 put out some storm warnings for our area and by 6PM the town had cleared out. I took that as a good excuse to close early for the big meal mom had cooked. But the weather just looks bad. The large siren atop the bank building was sounding. I warned my family that we needed to go to the cellar. Mom did what she could to salvage the platters of her home cooking, but I finally got them all in our cement storm shelter. My sister Sue refused to go but after a giant hail stone hit at her feet she scampered on down, as did we all Aunt Bobbie and her two little kids lived next door. I dragged all of them to the cellar, too. Never had seen such hailstones. Finally, I got tired of nothing happening and went out and there it was. A giant white funnel just ambling along to the north. It was on the Rowe farm, between Owl Creek and Lula.

Film from an aircraft the next week showed it lifted just three miles southwest of Allen. The big storm first let down at Harden City and as it advanced across the “Harden Field” where dozens of those old-style metal oil derricks still rose up into the sky, it made quite a site as many were destroyed. As it neared Stonewall it crossed the “Frisco” road destroying any house, barn or other structure in its path. Beside the trail of broken trees loaded with sheet iron and furniture this thing left a wide trail of brown. It pretty much pulled the grass out of the ground.

The thing destroyed the Daniels complex of farm buildings including one which was filled with deepfreezers of frozen chickens. Dozens of naked dead frozen chicken carcass were strung up and down Frisco Road. One news reporter explained that the tornadic winds had plucked all those chickens. Prominent farmer Daniels was killed in the twister and daughter Dora severely injured. Ms. Daniel was a well-known receptionist at the local hospital in Ada. My friend Eldon Lynch and I were trying to help her out but we gave up on her, pronouncing her dead.

Lloyd and I turned our attention to the Box farm across the Frisco road. Fragments of their house seemed to be there but Mr. Box was out in the back yard, seated in his recliner. He was in shock. His twins had been carried away by the wind while they milked the cows. The twins (a boy and girl) were tragically found dead about 30 minutes later. A man in a pickup said that Dewey Higdon needed help. We raced over there and found his entire dairy complex wrecked. I don’t even remember seeing a cow.

Mr. Higdon had the largest barn I knew of in the area. It was very tall and I had helped haul hay for its huge loft. It had large steel girders as its main frame. The girders stuck up about 6 feet and were twisted off. The middle (hall) of the barn was wide and had three vehicles parked in there. But Mr. Higdon was not to be found. Looking for Ms. Higdon, I walked over to where their big frame house had been. Nothing was in sight. I looked back down toward the barn and I thought I heard something. It was Dewey under the cement blocks and Eldon and I raced over there. A boot was sticking out of the rubble. I grabbed it and it was his. We tossed a few blocks away and found Dewey. He was alive when we put him in the ambulance but died at the hospital.

I knew the Higdon’s, having graduated from high school with their pretty daughter Marlene a few years earlier. Later I noticed a woman walking north up the county road—toward us. It was Mrs. Higdon. I asked her where she was going. She pointed toward where their house had been and just kept on walking. Later I learned it had blown her “away.” Their home was a good quarter mile north of SH-3. She said she found herself in the hayfield they owned north of the highway near a place called “Carter’s Hill” Eldon Lynch pointed out to me that the café down the hill from Higdon’s on the highway was missing. Perhaps six or eight cars lay tumbled about 800 feet north of the café. The café had been bushwacked by the tornado, catching its patrons by surprise. The small café was sheared off, its counter, booths and tables just sitting there undisturbed. The customers took to the floor and escaped harm. Its owner, a one-armed cook named Sullivan saw it coming and ran away. The thing caught him and he hung onto a small tree. Sullivan told me later that the storm tried to beat him to death, up and down against the ground— but both he and the tree survived.

The twister had moved on crossing the “Owl-Creek Road” just north of Stonewall. By now it had killed seven people. One last farm, the “Rowe” farm waited on its arrival. The family saw it in plenty of time and went to their good cellar, tied the door down tight and secure. The slow-moving storm finally arrived and even with two men holding on the rope, the storm ripped the door off. By then, the terrified cellar dwellers were at the far end of the cellar. About the time Mr. Rowe thought he was brave enough to go have a peek, they heard the thing coming back. And it did. This time much of the berm that constituted the top of the cellar was peeled away. The entry stairs of cement were bared of dirt on both sides.

This site was the only place that I saw things like broom-straws blown though a big Chevrolet truck’s wheel rim. Iron spikes and nails driven into poles and trees. The house and barn were just gone as were his cows. Rowe was left with a brown dirt desert and that’s what he saw as he drove off to his new home that next week in California.

The Saturday morning of the day of the twister, Dewey Higdon had driven home a new international pickup. He parked it in the big hall of the barn. A week later there was still no sign of it. Anywhere. I drove back up there from Dallas and ran into Marlene and her husband. He asked me to help him look for this pickup. “If I can find any piece of it the insurance company said that might pay off on it.” We found it over on the Box place, wrapped up in timber. We found the speedometer and the left side door frame. We carried it over to the farm and the insurance man was able to verify its millage (38) and VIN. They paid off the purchase price. I went back to Dallas and stayed away from Stonewall for a while.

Be sure and go to church Sunday.

Wayne Bullard, DPh cwaynebullard@gmail.com