OAK LAWN, IL -- By the time an EF-4 tornado tore down Southwest Highway in Oak Lawn on April 21, 1967, ten tornadoes would strike northeastern Illinois on what would be the worst tornado outbreak in state history.
Chicagoland residents were already hearing grim reports out of Belvidere, where an EF-4 tornado struck at 3:50 p.m., killing 24 people, 13 of them children who were boarding buses at Belvidere High School. An hour or so later, another EF-4 tornado slammed Lake Zurich, destroying 75 homes, an elementary school and damaging hundreds more structures. One person died.
But the worst of the swarm was yet to come. The precise moment the tornado hit the epicenter at 95th Street and Southwest Highway was 5:32 p.m., as recorded on a stopped clock inside Oak Lawn Community High School. Although the funnel cloud had touched down for only a few seconds, the largest death toll occurred at the intersection. Eighteen lives would be lost. Three people died at Fairway Super Mart, one at Sherwood Restaurant, three at Shoot’s Lynwood Tavern, two at the Suburban Bus terminal garage, and nine in cars waiting at a red light in heavy Friday afternoon traffic.
Walter Sobut owned Fairway Super Mart with his brother, John, at 5951 W. 95th St. The afternoon of April 21, 1967, Walter had been collecting carts from the parking lot when cars began flying across Southwest Highway and down the street. Walter ran back into the store and told his cashiers to take cover. He grabbed onto the cart pole inside the store and hung on for dear life. The wind spun him around.
“He said he prayed to God that instead of breaking his back to take his life,” his daughter later said. “It was the second time he cheated death. He was the last guy off the U.S.S. Arizona in Pearl Harbor.” (Sailor Lauren Bruner was the second-to-last person)
Fairway’s roof fell in when the walls collapsed, killing three shoppers inside the store: Charles McNeill, along with 30-year-old Joan Casey and her 18-month-old daughter Christine. All lived in Oak Lawn.
“The roof on that place was humongous,” Rita recalled.
She said the customers’ deaths haunted her father until the day he died in 1996.
