Sunset on Sunday evening, June 10, 1945, was at 8:26 p.m. By all accounts, it had been a beautiful weekend of weather, with Saturday’s “Daily Almanac” on the front page of The Post-Journal calling for “some cloudiness with continued moderating temperatures today and Sunday.” No one in the City was prepared for or expected the havoc that Mother Nature was to bring in the twilight of the evening as a tornado struck …
The tornado began at 9:31 p.m. just west of the City Line near Third Street and Harding Avenue, where a garage lost its doors, and a chicken coop was leveled. Trees were uprooted near Hallock and Palmer streets and a corner of Lincoln Junior High School on Front Street was damaged. As the tornado made its way down the hill to Brooklyn Square, there was heavy damage to homes and buildings on Tew Street and Steele Street, the City’s Municipal Light Plant and Jamestown General Hospital.
At 24 Harrison Street, The Salvation Army Church was just ending its 1945 Congress. “Just as Colonel Axel Beckman had concluded the meeting in prayer and before the audience of 300 had time to leave even the platform, the tornado smashed into the building,” The Post-Journal reported. Guests at the Congress threw themselves to the floor and some crawled underneath the platform as parts of the roof, timbers and glass from broken windows showered down upon them.
At this same time, the roof and part of the top floor of the sprawling Maddox Table Company at 101 Harrison Street fell victim to the winds.
Under the headline “Soldier Honor Roll Disappears”, the Post-Journal story told of how the “$2,500 servicemen’s honor roll” in Fenton Park was demolished and “not a stick was left to mark the spot where it had stood.” Parts of the honor roll were found at the Maddox Table disaster site, and Elmer E. Olander of 437 Camp Street, told The Post-Journal he had found a four foot section in a field east of the city reservoir. It contained 64 names, including two with gold stars, Charles Parson and Stanley I. Anderson. Mr. Olander planned to cut up the segment into individual names and present the pieces to relatives of the soldiers whose names were on the piece of wood.
Mrs. Raymond Akin of Frewsburg, walking in Brooklyn Square in the aftermath of the tornado, looked down at the sidewalk to see a piece of the Honor Roll … with her son’s name on it. Corporal Clayton L. Akin was still at war serving in the Pacific Theater. The 14-inch “splinter” also contained the names of Raymond Johnson, Clarence T. Forsberg and Anthony L. Ranieri. Another piece of the Honor Roll was found near Willard Street and Willow Avenue.
With the tornado staying on the south side of the Chadakoin River, the Brooklyn Square area was the hardest hit. Damages were reported to the Maddox Table Factory, Lindquist Grill at Foote and Harrison Street, Crescent Tool, Blystone Mattress Company on Briggs Street, and the Jamestown Worsted Mills. Clayton G. Pickard of Highland Avenue, manager of the Downtown Garage, was trapped in his vehicle on Market Street after live electric wires fell on the vehicle.
The tornado lasted less than five minutes and traveled through 3.3 miles of the City. Every tree along Barrows Street from King to Willard Street was destroyed with buildings on the North side of Barrows heavily damaged. The tornado whirled away, lifting back into the sky at the City Line southwest of Willow Avenue.
In the aftermath, almost 4,000 residences were left without electric and telephone service because of downed poles and wires. The New York Guard, Company E, 74th Infantry, was called into service overnight on Sunday. The local Boy Scout troops helped by directing traffic and being couriers, among other duties. German POWs from the POW camp at Dunkirk, were brought in to help clean up debris. About 70 Jamestown Police Reserves reported for duty Sunday night as “assistance flooded in from every quarter to help relieve over-taxed personnel of normal emergency forces.
