A tornado tore through the Illinois villages of Mt. Clare and Mt. Olive in March, 1938.
The two-story family home of Biagio and Mary (Marata) Magelli was destroyed in the storm.
Aunt Rose Magelli remembered being upstairs at the time getting ready for a date. When the sky turned ominously darker, Grandma Magelli ordered her to join her brothers and sisters — Joe, Jen, Anne, Pete and Paul — huddled together in the living room.
Soon after, a large chunk of the ceiling crashed onto the sofa — just moments after Grandma insisted Uncle Joe move to the opposite side of the room.
The roaring vortex demolished most of the remainder of the house, she said.
“We were all OK,” she said. “Grandpa was at a tavern. We were all worried about him. When he finally walked through the door, he had cuts and scratches all over his face from flying glass. But he was fine.”
Friends took the Magellis during the two to three months it took to rebuild the house. Rose, then a nanny for the Sherman family in Springfield, stayed with her employer.
Grandma was terrified of storms from that day forward.