June 28, 1924. It’s a day etched into the fabric of so many northeast Ohio families. A deadly and devastating tornado touched down in Sandusky and moved east to Lorain, taking lives with it.
Carolyn Sipkovsky’s grandfather died that day. “He was a fireman at the shipyards during the tornado, he was told to go and close the door, when his foreman seen the storm brewing out west, he ran to close the door and the smokestack fell and killed him,” she said.
“My grandma didn’t know until the next day that he had passed in the tornado.” At the age of 28, her grandmother was left to raise five children.
Sipkovsky led the charge to get a historic marker in Lorain to commemorate what happened.
“It was like my personal goal to get the marker, I thought that was very important to the people of Lorain to have that event marked, it affected so many lives,” she said.
More than seventy people died, hundreds of homes were damaged or destroyed, and thousands of people were left homeless.
Over the years, Dennis Sadowski has collected postcards that show the destruction.
“Postcards started coming out in the 1870s by the turn of the 20th century, through the early 30s that was the golden age of postcards because that’s how people communicated.”
His father was 9-years-old at the time of the tornado. “For 25 cents you can get a movie, a pop and a candy bar and you know, enjoy a good film,” he said. “He comes out right around five o’clock when the matinee is over and he sees the storm brewing, really black clouds…so he just decided, I’m taking off and he ran home.”
Sadowski said his father barely escaped the tornado’s wrath. “If he had stayed for the second movie that started around five, because everything hit shortly after five, I probably would not be here.”
Sadowski said about 15 people died at the State Theater that afternoon.
Some of the postcards he’s collected show messages about the recovery starting in the days and weeks following the storm.
“In the newspaper clippings they’re already talking about sightseers or gawkers starting to come here,” said Curator and Senior Collections Manager at theLorain Historical Society, Kaitlyn Donaldson.
She said the postcards were a way of going viral at the time. “They were mailed all over the country, you came here to see if you didn’t have a photo, a camera, you could buy postcards, and then send them to people and just talk about what happened.”
Friday, June 28, there will be a commemorative ceremony at Lakeview Park at noon, as well as other events throughout the summer.
“One of the reasons we want to highlight the tornado is to commemorate those who lost their lives but to talk about how quickly the city came together to rebuild, how neighboring communities came here to help,” said Donaldson. “There’s just a legacy of stories here that, you know, are still impactful today.
Sadowski said it’s important to preserve this history because we learn from our past. “It’s important to know where we’re from, we can’t forget the people who preceded us and built our society up to what it is and hopefully that will inspire folks to want to make our lives, our community better today.”
