Remembering the deadly June 23, 1944, tornadoes that devastated Mon Yough towns

The tornadoes left 137 dead and 1,000 injured.

By JIM BUSCH
For the MVI

Eighty years ago tomorrow, the headlines in the Valley Independent and other local newspapers were mostly about the progress of Allied troops fighting the Nazis in France after the D-Day invasion.

That changed on June 23, 1944, when a massive series of tornadoes struck Ohio, western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and western Maryland. Collectively known as the “Great Appalachian Tornadoes,” the storms left 137 dead and 1,000 injured in their paths, including 34 fatalities in western Pennsylvania.

The storm that cut a swath of death and destruction through the Mon Valley started slightly south of McKeesport and spun its way through Dravosburg, Port Vue, McKeesport and the Elizabeth Township communities of Boston and Greenock before traveling along the newly opened Pennsylvania turnpike, destroying homes in Donegal and Somerset before blowing itself out.

Seven tornadoes hit the Appalachian region that day, including another storm in the Brownsville/Greene County area.

In the mid-1940s, radar was still a military secret and weather satellites were a decade and a half in the future. The people going about their lives about 6:30 p.m. June 23, 1944, had no warning of the massive storm headed their way. Neither did local residents have any reason to expect a tornado to strike as the area had not seen one in living memory.

W.S. Brotzman of the National Weather Service expressed his surprise at this region being struck by what he described as an “honest-to-God western-style tornado.” Brotzman said that the 1944 storm was the first tornado to strike the area in the 74 years since the Weather Service began keeping records in western Pennsylvania.

Residents had no warning

Unlike today when television news reports tell viewers what to do in case of a tornado, local people had no idea how to respond to the storm.

Edward Pepfch reacted in a typical way when he saw the storm, “I was working in my garage when it happened. I looked out and saw the twister coming. I called my wife because I knew she had never seen anything like that. I had no idea of the danger involved and before I knew it, the wall collapsed and I was pinned to the ground.”

McKeesport police officer Fred Matheny likened the storm to the one in the movie “The Wizard of Oz,” telling the newspaper, “The twister was just like you’d imagine it from a picture show. Narrow at the bottom and wide at the top.”

When Mrs. Edith McAuliffe of Washington Avenue in Dravosburg heard the storm coming, she gathered her nine children together and began taking them to the second floor of her home where she thought they would be safer. As they started up the stairs, the McAuliffe home was lifted off its foundation and thrown against a neighbor’s home. McAuliffe and her children survived, but their neighbors weren’t so lucky. Two neighbor children, an unidentified 8-yearold and Kenneth, 11, were killed when the McAuliffe home slammed into their home. Mr. and Mrs. Baxter and their daughter Dorothy were injured but survived.

Pvt. Harold E. Williams, 24, was happy to get a pass to visit his pregnant wife. His elation turned to concern when his wife, Rita Williams, 17, didn’t meet him at the train station in McKeesport. When Williams arrived at his home on Morton Avenue in Port Vue, he learned his house had been destroyed. When a nurse on the scene asked him to identify his wife’s body, the young soldier collapsed from grief.

A number of people were caught by the storm while on the job. Two World War II “Rosies,” women welders Jean Ohrman and Mildred Danielson, were injured by flying debris while working at McKeesport’s Reliance Steel Co. An elderly couple, Mr. and Mrs. James Dennen, were killed when their grocery store in Greenock Heights “exploded” when struck by the tornado.

An unidentified boy who took shelter in another store survived, but had flour embedded deep in his skin, which had to be painfully removed from his pores by doctors using needles. Ninety coal miners were trapped in the darkness underground when the storm knocked out the power to the Hubbard Mine in Versailles Borough.

Miracles and heroes emerge

In addition to many tragedies, the 1944 tornado produced its share of miracles and heroes. A young mother, Eva McDonald was holding her 4-month-old daughter, Mary Lou, when the storm’s winds tore the child from her arms. The child was found almost a mile away, lying in the middle of a street, alive and uninjured.

Described as semi-disabled, Kathryn Yunf was blown 75 feet from her Edmundson Avenue home in Port Vue. Her home was overturned, but she survived unhurt. Tragedy was averted when Charles Feick, 17, managed to grab Elizabeth McCarty as she was being blown off the Fifth Avenue Bridge, saving her from certain death in the river.

The power of the 1944 storms is hard to imagine.

The McKeesport Daily News described its sound, “imagine all the trains on the Baltimore and Ohio, all traveling at full speed, all entering a tunnel at the same time and you have a description of the sound of the storm.”

The winds knocked 22 fully loaded P & LE freight cars off the track on a siding in Port Vue. Ronald Morgenstern, a Civil Defense official said, “The winds were so forceful that the bottom of the river could be seen as they sucked up all the water when they crossed the Youghiogheny in Greenock.”

After the storm, Ed Lyons of Coulterville found a diamond ring on the ground. He placed an ad in the McKeesport Daily News asking the owner to describe the ring. A few days later, a Greenock woman contacted him and described the ring perfectly, saying it was in her home before it was blown away.

War bonds identified as belonging to a Greenock man were found days after the storm more than a hundred miles away in West Virginia.

The storm passed as quickly as it had arrived, leaving residents to assess the damage it had left in its wake.

Accounts vary but it is believed that between 34 and 37 Mon Valley residents lost their lives in the storm. Police reported that 12 people were killed and 20 more were injured in McKeesport alone.

Recovery efforts

The structural damage was immense. The Boston Volunteer Fire Department reported 32 homes in their community were destroyed, another 20 homes were destroyed in Versailles Borough’s Peterson Plan and virtually every home in Greenock was destroyed.

Many homes and other structures were leveled in Dravosburg, Glassport, Port Vue, McKeesport, Liberty Borough, Riverton and Lincoln Place.

As soon as the winds died down, government officials and ordinary people began rescue and recovery efforts.

While 125 people were taken to the McKeesport Hospital for treatment, emergency clinics were set up in local schools and town halls.

The American Red Cross set up its headquarters in McKeesport’s Chamber of Commerce Building.

In an improvised hospital setup in the Waynesburg Armory, surgeons performed amputations by flashlight. Capt. John J. Harley of the U.S. Army Air Corps flew 200 pints of plasma and tetanus vaccine to Waynesburg, landing his plane in a field illuminated by the headlights of cars.

The wartime presence of the military in the area greatly helped the recovery efforts. Troops from the military transport command at the Allegheny County Airport and Air Corps cadets from Waynesburg College pitched in to clear away rubble and search for survivors.

The soldiers were joined by ordinary citizens who volunteered to help.

The storm claimed one more life when David Dennehauer Jr., 46, died of a heart attack when attempting to rescue a neighbor from a demolished home in Liberty Borough.

The community continued to work together to help the storm’s survivors long after the storm had passed.

The McKeesport Daily News initiated a relief fund and contributed $2,500 to it.

McKeesport’s Ohringer Furniture announced that it was canceling all debts of those who lost their homes in the tornado. It took months for some of the injured to recover in the hospital, and the effects of the storm lasted for years after the storm had passed.

An editorial published in the McKeesport Daily News about the 1944 tornado said it best, “For all those who survived, it will be an experience never to be forgotten and always to be recalled with dread.”