Thursday, July 14, 2011

Flint Photos: June 13, 1953 Funeral for Tornado Victims at St. Agnes



5 comments:

  1. Wow. The trees are so small and it's so bright around the building. All my memories are of the perpetual shade around the building.

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  2. Interesting. I have heard about the Beecher tornado from my mother all of my life even though it happened long before I was born. Left quite an impression on her. She mentioned it to me just a few weeks ago and she is now 85 years old.

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  3. My buddy Jackie Dubaj and I surveyed the tornado district on day two after the storm. We were 12 years old and rode our bikes from Baltimore Blvd to the Beecher District. The sight of the devastation was numbing, something you will never forget, especially as a 12 year old.

    Ron Smith
    St. Agnes '59

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  4. I was only five years old when this tornado struck, but I, too, remember riding past the devastation with my parents. That was likely the first subdivision in Flint.

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  5. My parents joined the parish in 1955, but they remember the funeral for the sixteen.

    This was all relived in May of 2011 when the Joplin storm hit...thoughts return today with the aftermath in Oklahoma and now so close to the 60th anniversary of the Beecher storm

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Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.