Wichita Falls, TX Tornado, Apr 1964 - Twister Slams Wichita Falls

I was there. I was nine and watched it from the back door of my trailer.

I was there--an eight year old just home from school minutes before the tornado destroyed our Sunset Terrace home.

I was there, lived on Hooper in lincoln heights near train tracks, saw that freight car! I was in 1st grade we used to talk about a can at Virgil's liquor store that had a stick running through it from the tornado.

I was 8 years old and attended Mrs. Loveless 3rd grade classroom at Jefferson Elementary. The school knew bad weather was coming but not just how bad it was going to be. They sent the 1st to 3rd grade kids out that day at 2:30pm with the instructions to go straight home to our own mothers at our own houses and not stop anywhere. We kids lived at the height of the cold war and a lot of imagined the USSR was coming over to fight our United States Air Force. The previous October was the Cuban missle crisis. We all decided our Air Force out at Shepard would kick the Russian's butt and there was nothing to worry about. I had an older sibling at the school. The big kids in the 4th to 6th grade didn't get out until 3:30pm. By that time the weather was so bad they kept them at school and would not let anyone leave. On the way home I remember the sound of the wind way up in the sky. It sounded like jets but nothing was flying. The sky looked wierd that day. After I got home we could see the tornado on the outskirts of town going right to Shepard AFB.
This was a terrible F5 or what many of you know as an EF5 tornado. There were brick buildings shredded like they were made of sand. After the tornado the Air Force just bull dozed up the mess at Shepard and made repairs in a short time. I remember 7 people dying in the tornado. A F5 does some wierd things. There were plenty of stories. Fifteen years and one week to the day later the town was hit with another one and a half mile wide monster F4. This tornado did killed many more people and did a lot more damage.

I was there and just 7 years, I was at one of the Base Chapels at Sheppard AFB and took cover under the pews with one of my brothers who was 9 and there was a lady praying and speaking in tounges the tornado came our way and gained altitude and flew over the Chapel and pulled some pieces from portions of the roof. We looked after it went by and there were several small funnels outside departing and leaving us all clear. They were so small, although taller than me, they looked like it would be fun to play in them, because the were not high off the ground free of dangerous objects and could just pick you up and throw you arounjd a little bit. I knew there was no danger to them and the thought of playing in them came to me. Unfortunately, now that I am older and in pain a lot of the time I don't think I would care to play in them anymnore, perhaps if the were rigged for therapy. (smile)

I was in school at Sheppard Elementary School on base. We took cover under our desk. When we went home our neighborhood was gone!!! I was in 3rd grade at the time.