Oak Lawn Tornado Survivors: 'God Had A Bigger Plan and It Wasn't Us At the Time'

OAK LAWN, IL -- Laurie Weber Harrington and her younger sister, Lynn Weber Werkmeister, were six and three years old when the 1967 Oak Lawn Tornado announced itself by knocking a telephone pole through their grandmother’s kitchen.

The sisters’ grandparents, Louise and Frank Chiapetta, lived across the street from St. Gerald’s Church and School on Central Avenue. Their grandmother had just put supper down on the table when she looked out the window and saw the southwestern sky turn black. When Louise went to close the back door, the wind blew it off the hinges cutting Louise’s leg.

“Even though her leg was bleeding I remember my grandmother pushing us down the basement stairs,” Laurie said.

Huddling in the basement, the tornado stripped apart their grandmother’s house, as well as St. Gerald’s across the street. When it was all over, neighbors came and pulled them out of the foundation. The only walls left standing of their grandparents’ home had crucifixes on them, but the three of them had survived.

“God had a bigger plan and it wasn’t us at the time,” Laurie said. “I hope the reason we are here is because we’re doing something good.”

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