Man vividly recalls 1917 tornado in Dongola, Ill.

~ Ivan Bidwell flew out of his house and landed in a patch of plum sprouts.

Where is our house?

Those were the first words I spoke after the Dongola Cyclone on Decoration Day, 1917. I was six years old and had spent most the day playing With my three brothers, Cletis, Henry and Len. Mother and Sara Newell were in the house doing housework and making preparation to get supper. Sam Jackson was working in the ridge field south of the old log barn. Sam and Sara were helping with the extra work that comes on the farm in the spring. Dad had taken some plowpoints to the blacksmith shop to be sharpened and as yet had not returned.

As Cletis drove his "hoop car" and I rode my stick horse across the yard, strange things began to happen. Big limbs and trees started dropping out of the sky and hitting the ground on the 30-acre field in front of the house. We yelled this news to Mother.

Her immediate reply was, "Get into the house. We are going to have a cyclone." And was she right!

We had scarcely gotten into the house when everything began to happen.

Windows were popping out and the whole room was filled with dust and falling plaster. From the parlor I headed back through the front room out into the kitchen where things seemed to be more in order, but out of the kitchen and onto the west porch was my next move.

I could barely see the combination smokehouse and surrey sheds 60 feet away, so I looked up. Forty feet above the house was a swirling cover of leaves, limbs, dirt and dust, all moving from the south west to the northeast.

Terrified, I ran back into the kitchen and toward the east porch and the cistern top. Just as I got to the door, something very drastic happened because the next thing I remember I was out in what was left of the orchard.

To be more specific, I was in a patch of plum sprouts. Every time I raised up to a sitting position, the wind flattened me back on the ground. On my four or fifth effort, I was able to get up. It was getting lighter after the passing of the tornado and I could see a man walking around some 50 or 60 yards away. It was Sam Jackson.

After I got to him, I said, "Where is our house?"

The news was so bad as any 6-year-old ever got. "Your house is gone, even the foundation."

The cellar under the combination kitchen and dining room was the only part of the house that was intact.

It was then that dad appeared. He seemed unusually glad to see me. Mom, Sara, Cletis, Henry and Len were under an 8-by-10 section of roof from the house which dad had propped up to make a shelter from the driving rain that followed the storm. Mother was in pain from a cut on her leg; Sarah had numerous cuts and bruises; Cletis' right cheek looked as if it had been sandpapered; Henry had three bad gashes on his head; Len and I had no marks on us. The family was sure I was lost. They were all blown down the lane and I was blown into the orchard which made me the last to be found.

A word as to how the other neighbors fared: To the south west, Fulton Cooper lost everything and Mrs. Cooper was killed. To the east, my Grandma Crites lost everything and my Aunt Dora Crites and my great-grandmother Killian were living with her. Grandma Killian was killed. Further east toward Dongola, Uncle Henry Crites saved himself and his family by getting under a bridge near the house.

I'm no longer six years old and many times Kathlyn and I look at a pink rosebush in the backyard. The bush is cut from one Dad and Mother set out in the yard before the tornado. Somehow this bush seems to keep saying to us, "This is where your roots are."

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