75-years later: Recollections of the 1949 Cape tornado

A group of men survey the destruction of the 1949 tornado that killed 22 and injured hundreds.

Southeast Missourian archive

During the evening of May 21, 1949, a large tornado ripped through Cape Girardeau, killing 22 people, hospitalizing 72, injuring hundreds and causing more than $3 million in damage in 10 minutes.

Seventy-five years later, memories remain vivid for some who survived the twister.

The tornado touched down at 6:56 p.m., beginning its destruction on Gordonville Road. It traveled north near U.S. 61 and turned east upon reaching Broadway, roaring through New Madrid Street, Dunklin Street and Henderson Avenue, before leveling the Red Star and Marble City Heights subdivisions and moving across the Mississippi River. At its peak, the tornado’s width stretched 352 yards.

A spread in Life Magazine following photographer Gordon Coster’s experience shooting the 1949 tornado. The article reads: Tornadoes are a peculiarly American hazard. They require enormous open spaces in which to form. They require great masses of warm, moist air moving in one direction and of cool, dry air moving in another. Nowhere in the world are these requirements so completely-and so tragically-met as in the prairie basin which stretches between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, where tornadoes occur an average of 46 days annually. May 21 in the prairie states was a warm, sultry day. In Cape Girardeau, Mo., Photographer Gordon Coster was working on an assignment. Shortly before 7 p.m., the sky turned prematurely dark and Coster, looking up, saw a massive black cloud bearing down on the town from the southwest. He raced to the rooftop of a hotel and set up his camera. In his first picture (top, left), he caught the tornado's funnel, half formed, between the spire of the Trinity Lutheran Church and a radio mast. In the second photograph the black snout of the funnel first touched the ground. Then, in pictures 3 and 4, it began a steady march to the right at 40 mph. In pictures 5, 6 and 7 the twister, still moving to the right, approached, obscured and then passed the dome of a building on the campus of Southeast Missouri State Teachers College. In the final picture the storm was only 2,500 feet from the camera on its way out of town. In just 10 minutes Photographer Coster had made his biography of a tornado, which killed 22 people, injured at least 150 others and left $3 million worth of damage behind it.

J.C. Reeves ~ Southeast Missourian

Most of the fatalities were in the Red Star and Marble City Heights neighborhoods, east of Sprigg Street, where 19 people perished. Along the path, 202 homes and 19 businesses were destroyed; 231 other homes and 14 other businesses were damaged; and the city’s power and water systems were heavily affected.

In the aftermath, National Guard troops assisted and rescue crews worked diligently, appearing to have removed all of the injured and dead by midnight. Temporary shelters were established at Cape Central High School, St. Mary’s High School, John Cobb School and the Knights of Columbus Hall, before a long-term shelter was made at the Arena Building.

Days later, the American Red Cross national headquarters gifted $500,000 in relief funds to help families affected by the string of dangerous storms in Missouri, Kansas and Illinois. The final death in the city occurred on the evening of May 25 when Mrs. Roy Rose — whose first name is not listed in Southeast Missourian archives — died at age 63 after spending four days in the hospital with a critical chest injury. Another death was reported on the morning of the 25th, bringing the total number of deaths to 23 in Cape Girardeau County, as Casimir Wilson of Oak Ridge also succumbed to his injuries. It’s unknown if Wilson’s death was caused by the same tornado.

The upper portion of the Limbaugh family residence was blown away during the 1949 tornado that killed 22 and injured hundreds in Cape Girardeau.

Southeast Missourian archive

Other deaths included Rev. R.P. Basler, 81; Rev. G. Jack Crowe, age not listed in Missourian archives; Jerome Foeste, 6; Helen Frey, 30; Peggy Judith Frey, 3; Sarah Graff, 67; Eva Hayes, 55; Rodney Hayes, 15 months; Ida Hahn, 81; Rev. R.L. Liley, age not listed in Missourian archives; Bertha McCain, 64; Hazel O'Bannon, 39; Roy Rose, 75; Colleen Thorne, 10; Jewell Thorne, 43; Merlyn Thorne, 15; Jack Welker, age not listed in Missourian archives; Luther Welker, age not listed in Missourian archives; Marvin Welker, age not listed in Missourian archives; Fred Wise, 38; and Parker Zimmerman, 74.

“The whole town was pretty much devastated”

Jerry Ford, director of the Jerry Ford Orchestra and former Missouri state representative, was 9 years old when the tornado rolled through. He remembered playing catch in the yard with his younger brother when the storm hit.

“All of a sudden, a hailstorm hit,” Ford said. “It was dry, no rain, no water, no nothing. Hail just pounded, so we jumped up on the front porch and about that time, it started raining. I mean, it was like a monsoon. Dad came out and took off, and we said, ‘Where are you going?’ He said, ‘A tornado hit the west side of town. I'll see you later.’ He came back about a day and a half later.”

Ford’s father was Cape Girardeau mayor Walter H. “Doc” Ford, who served in the role for 12 years from the late 1940s through the early 1960s, served as 2nd District Judge of the Cape Girardeau County Court and founded Ford and Sons Funeral Home. While the Fords’ house wasn’t touched by the twister, Doc’s leadership as mayor was instrumental in the city’s recovery.

While Ford was too young to remember many of the stories his father may have told him about the cleanup efforts, he joyfully recalled a telegram Doc received from President Harry Truman that is currently on display at the Cape River Heritage Museum.

“Harry Truman sent Dad a telegram saying the federal government is issuing $15,000 to the city to help with getting it back in shape,” Ford said.

Ford said the devastation he saw was “substantial” and there were “trees everywhere.”

“Power lines were down, and rugs were hanging over power lines,” Ford said. “It was hard to even drive around. The streets were semi-blocked, I guess you would say, and this was the day after where they hadn't had time to get in there and start cleaning it up much. It was just overall destruction. … The whole town was pretty much devastated.”

Gordon Coster, a photographer with LIFE magazine, happened to be on assignment in Cape Girardeau on the day of the storm. With some quick thinking, Coster was able to capture several photos of the cyclone as it formed and moved through the city. A spread was published in LIFE’s June 6, 1949, edition, of which Ford has a copy at the museum.

“This guy was on assignment and was staying at the Idan-Ha Hotel, and when he saw what was going on, he took his camera and jumped up on the roof of the Idan-Ha, which most of it is gone (now),” Ford said.

“I didn’t know if my family was alive”

Gary Rust Sr., board chairman of Rust Communications, parent company of the Southeast Missourian, was spending a day at the Broadway Theatre with his friend, and Ford’s older brother, Walter Joe Ford. After hearing several people being paged to the lobby, the pair decided to find out what was going on.

“They started paging people, I'd never seen (anything like) it,” Rust said. “‘Paging Mr. Smith.’ ‘Paging Mr. Jones.’ Paging Mr. and Mrs. so-and-so.’ After about seven pages, we got up and walked out (and asked), ‘What’s going on? They said, ‘Well, there's been a tornado in North Cape Girardeau around Dunklin and North Henderson’ and I said, ‘I live on Dunklin.’”

Rust said he and Walter Joe ran from the theater toward Dunklin Street and began seeing destruction as they approached Southeast Missouri State College, now Southeast Missouri State University.

“We got up around the college campus, and that's where the trees and telephone poles were down,” Rust said. “We were able to walk down the street, though, and get around it. We got to Dunklin, and homes were destroyed. We got down to my property and my family home, and my family was there. It was my mother and father and two brothers, Jim and Harry. Jim is still living, and my grandmother was living with us. …

“I didn't know if my family was alive or what state (they were in). They had seen the tornado coming. We had a house on a hill and the kitchen was on the backside, and they could see the tornado coming in so they went down to the basement.”

Rust recalled his across-the-street neighbors’ basement collapsing because of the storm and a garage near his home that had been destroyed.

“The family across the road from us on Dunklin had a brick home, and it had collapsed,” Rust said. “The family had gone to the basement, and it collapsed the basement, but not the section they were in. No one was hurt there even though it collapsed everything. …

“The unusual thing to me was there was a two-car garage that was sitting back where we could see, and it was gone. … The car was in it, and, when it got daylight, there were no scratches on the car, but the wooden garage was just obliterated.”

“The house was just a total loss”

Stephen Limbaugh Sr., a former U.S. District judge, wasn’t in Cape Girardeau when the tornado occurred, but he certainly felt the aftermath.

Limbaugh’s brother Rush Limbaugh Jr. was getting married in Kennett on the day of the storm. Limbaugh was a 22-year-old first-year law student at University of Missouri and in the middle of his final exams when he made the trip to Kennett for the wedding.

“I was taking final examinations, but I came down to Kennett on Saturday afternoon. My brother, Rush Jr. was marrying Mildred Armstrong from Kennett, so I got a ride down from Colombia to the wedding. Then I got a ride back after the wedding to Colombia, so I wasn't there for the tornado.”

A week later, Limbaugh returned home and saw the results of the twister firsthand.

“I was living with my mother and dad then on 814 North Henderson, and the house was just a total loss,” Limbaugh said. “There are a lot of pictures in the newspaper about it, and they were apparently, right in the middle of the tornado. …

“I came back home for the summer a week later, and it was an interesting impression because I walked in the front door of the house, the front door was blown open, but you walk into the main room on the ground level, and you could look up at the sky. Everything else was gone except the outside walls.”

Limbaugh served in the U.S. Navy before attending law school 1946-48 and said his family’s clothing and his service memorabilia were all blown away. Sometime later, Limbaugh received a phone call from a man in Herrin, Ill., who had found some of his Navy apparel with his name stenciled on it.

The former federal judge recalled helping clean up his home and the surrounding neighborhood, and the “heartwarming” response of the community’s “united effort.”

“The community really banded together and assisted people who had no place to go,” Limbaugh said. “For example, in the Red Star area on North Spring Street, close to where the Show Me Center is now, there was a church there, the Church of God. The minister was named Shirrell, and all of that congregation really helped everybody there. People just banded together and took them into their own homes, just like my aunt did for us, and kept them until they could find someplace to be established. …

“We had to borrow wheelbarrows, and that's about the only thing we could get. The mechanized equipment was us. We helped clean up a lot and everything was in great demand because people all along that stretch of the tornado were cleaning up as well. We took advantage of every wheelbarrow, rake and hoe that we could find to get all of the debris together.”