MANSON — If you stop and visit Jim and Doris Cunningham in their home — built in 1862 from two houses moved in from the country — chances are he will take you out into the backyard and show you their above-ground tornado shelter.

It’s made from a piece of concrete culvert with seven-inch thick walls. The door is steel. A slab of concrete was poured to create the roof.

The Cunninghams didn’t have the shelter on June 28, 1979, when an F4 tornado 300 yards wide left a trail of devastation across their town.

-Messenger photo by Hans Madsen
Gordon Hans looks over his written account of the June 28, 1979, tornado in his Manson home. Hans was in Algona when the tornado went through Manson. It took him a considerable amount of time to get to his home due to debris and blocked roads. His home was damaged heavily enough that it was torn down and rebuilt.

“I wanted to have someplace to go in case we have another one,” he said. “There’s no basement. If this blows away, the whole town is going.”

The 1979 tornado missed his home by a few hundred yards. The wind damaged a few shingles. The couple took shelter in a neighbor’s basement.

They were lucky: 110 homes were destroyed, another 139 damaged. More than 20 of the downtown’s businesses were destroyed or damaged.

“We sat in the basement surrounded by fruit jars,” he said. “Once it passed we went outside. I watched it as it headed southeast. The sun was shining. It was sparkly, just like diamonds.”

The tornado struck Manson at about 7:45 p.m.

-Messenger photo by Hans Madsen
Jim and Doris Cunningham pose in their home with some mementos from his days on the Manson Civil Defense squad. The tornado completely overwhelmed local resources.

“I was sitting in the family room crocheting,” Doris Cunningham said.

Her mom, Doris Hill, lived a few houses north of them.

“She was sitting at the sewing machine,” she said. “The neighbors came over, they said ‘Doris you come right now. There’s a tornado across the field.’ They held hands and held onto the washer and dryer.”

Hill’s home was destroyed.

“Timbers flew right through the wall,” Jim Cunningham said. “We bulldozed the house.”

-Messenger photo by Hans Madsen
Jim and Doris Cunningham hold a colorized photo collage created by their son, Bob Cunningham, that shows Manson before the tornado of June 28, 1979, completely altered the appearance of Manson’s downtown.

Cunningham was a member of the community’s Civil Defense unit.

The group was completely overwhelmed.

“When the tornado came, we were so devastated they had to bring people to help. We were almost stymied,” he said. “All the people and their homes were destroyed. One guy strapped on his .45 and walked around. There were looters.”

It wasn’t they didn’t know what to do – nobody was prepared for the amount of devastation.

“What do we do know?” he said. “That’s everybody’s question.”

-Photo courtesy of the Manson Public Library
The June 28, 1979, F4 tornado that tore through Manson was photographed near the town.

He still mourns the loss of what was. Not only what the tornado destroyed, but also what time, changing economies and demographics have done.

“I remember the town the way it was,” he said, his voice breaking. “No matter how we try, we’re not going to make it the same way. Our little town is in the throes of death.”

The narrow escape makes the Cunningham’s home a rarity in the neighborhood. It’s construction predates 1979. It has a colorful and rich history. The couple love it.

“It was two houses,” he said. “They just put them down on 12-by-12 stringers. That’s why there’s no basement. It was the first Catholic Church here. I even found slugs in the wall. That priest must have been up to no good. Some of the walls are insulated with old railroad time tables.”

He watched the town rebuild.

-Photo courtesy of the Manson Public Library
The John Dalton home was left partially standing after the tornado went through Manson. It was possible, according to reports, to see from one edge of town to the other through the path the F4 tornado took.

“There was all kinds of construction,” he said. “After about three years, we had it pretty well plugged up.”

Gordon Hans was out of town visiting his parents when the tornado hit. Several years afterwards, he took the time to write down his memories.

He still has those neatly handwritten notes.

The tornado had already hit Algona when he tried to drive through.

“About one mile north of Algona,” he wrote. “We met a steady line of cars. Many had damage. The car radio was of no use. We were not aware of what was ahead.”

Hans made his way around Algona on back roads. A roadblock kept people from entering. When he eventually got to Manson, he met another roadblock.

“No one was being let into town,” his notes continue. ‘Our neighbor, Loren Johnson, was also a member of the Civil Defense and was helping with the road block. Talking to him, we found out a tornado had struck a little while before.”

“We will long remember his words,” Hans wrote. “Our house is gone, but I think yours is still standing, but tore up.”

Hans was able to survey the damage the next morning.

“It was damaged too much to repair,” he said. “Half a block over, that whole street was gone. It was beyond anything you could repair.”

“All the windows were out,” he said. “If you could get a door open, you couldn’t get it shut. Everything was sprung so bad.”

It was driven home when the home was inspected.

“The house was 12 inches out of plumb,” he said. “Everything is all twisted, they recommended not to repair.”

Tornado damage often takes strange twists and turns. Hans saw plenty of that on his own lot.

“We had three roofs in our backyard,” he said. “One on top of the other. The doors were closed on the fridge. When you opened them, there was dirt in there. You open the doors and there’s all that dirt and a little debris in there. There were big chunks of tar that came off a roof. It was inside the washer and dryer.”

One of those roofs was from his own garage. The walls, constructed of plywood, exploded. Along the garage wall, the family had rabbit cages attached to them.

“The garage was gone,” he said. “In the morning, here’s the rabbits underneath a tree in the backyard. I never found a single piece of the rabbit cages.”

With the home unlivable, Hans and his family moved into a trailer.

“We got a FEMA trailer,” he said. “It was our home for close to a year.”

He had to return to work full-time. His spare time was initially spent just trying to clean up.

“I didn’t get a chance to help much,” he said.

The tornado changed the appearance of the town.

“It’s strange to see a picture of what’s here and where it was at,” he said.

The rebuilding took time.

“I’m sure it took a minimum of two years,” he said. “If you hadn’t rebuilt by that time, you weren’t going to.”

Had Hans been in town when the tornado struck, he may have been the person that had to set off the sirens.

“We were the ones that turned them on,” he said. “We would go and look. It was a little iffy for all of us. The rule was you don’t blow the siren unless a funnel is spotted on the ground.”

He has memories but no pictures.

“There was so much going on I never did take any pictures,” he said. “You just try to take care of everything that had to be done.”

Craig Nieland was on his fourth year of service with the Manson Fire Department in 1979. He retired with 40 years in August of 2015.

“We searched,” he said. “Our job was search and rescue. We had no radio communication. We did a block then reported back. We had people who were not accounted for. We would go see if their car was there, if they were home or not.”

He said they accomplished the search in about three hours.

Going into the damaged homes was dangerous.

“Some of the residences you wouldn’t dare walk into,” he said.

His own home escaped.

“I had a nick out of the siding,” he said.

He was out of town a few miles that night.

“I was at an accident 10 miles out,” he said. “I watched it come in. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky except that one. It sounded like a low rumble, like a train.”

Nieland owns Craig’s Service, where he has a direct view of the tall grain elevators just across the railroad tracks.

“There was the impact of car wheels left in the paint,” he said, looking towards the tall silo. “It was probably 10 feet from the top.”

Two cars he was working on migrated a bit.

“They blew up a block,” he said.

Forty years later, the scars left behind have to be looked for.

If you pay attention as you drive through the residential neighborhoods, you’ll see homes that date to the late ’70s or early ’80s where four-square or other old architecture should be. There are few really old buildings along Main Street in the business district. One, where Big Beve’s is now located, is made from heavy pre-fabricated concrete.

The trees, after 40 years of growth, give little away.

-Photo courtesy of the Manson Public Library
Residents look over piles of debris left behind in downtown Manson after the tornado.

-Photo courtesy of the Manson Public Library
Vera Stein looks over what’s left of her home at 1237 Eighth St. Stein took shelter under the workbench/shelter that she’s pointing at.

-Photo courtesy of the Manson Public Library
The Carl Steinberg residence had most of its roof torn off and was left partially intact in a field of destruction.

-Photo courtesy of the Manson Public Library
Fitzpatrick’s Drug Store and Foley’s Clothing were essentially demolished by the tornado. The building was located where Big Beve’s is today.

-Photo courtesy of the Manson Public Library
The alley side of Lee’s Grocery, at 931 Main St., had the walls completely blown out by the tornado. Merchandise sits on the shelves completely undisturbed.

Newsletter

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)

• Daily Newsletter
• Breaking News
• Obituaries

Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *

• Yes
• No