60th anniversary Colfax tornado edition of “Truth Be Told” set for June 3
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By LeAnn R. Ralph
COLFAX — Sixty years ago on Monday, June 4, a tornado tore through Colfax that killed a dozen people, injured countless others and destroyed many homes and businesses.
The 60th Anniversary Colfax Tornado Edition of “Truth Be Told” (real stories told by real people) Sunday, June 3, will feature four speakers who experienced the tornado: Nancy Odom, Chuck Mehls, Mike Henderson and Ron Fjelstad.
[emmeber_protected] The event will be begin at 6 p.m. in the Colfax Municipal Building Auditorium and is sponsored by the Colfax Municipal Building Restoration Group and the Colfax Commercial Club.
“Truth Be Told,” hosted by Colfax residents Kobi Shaw and Steve Russell, is a free event, and all members of the public are invited.
The June 4, 1958, F-5 tornado struck Colfax about 7 p.m.
In four minutes, the majority of the town’s homes and businesses were destroyed, trees were torn out of the ground, and lives were changed forever.
Here is some background information on each of the speakers compiled from “A Time to Remember … A Time to Honor” published by the Colfax Messenger in 2008 for the Colfax Tornado Commemoration marking the 50th anniversary of the Colfax tornado.
Nancy Odom
Nancy Odom is the daughter of Donna and Juel Stalson.
Juel Stalson died October 31, 2001, and Donna died January 10, 2014.
Donna and Juel, who lived in Duluth at the time, were visiting Juel’s sister in Colfax on June 4, 1958, and had just turned onto state Highway 40 in their Oldsmobile when the tornado hit.
Donna, Juel and Earling Braaten were in the car, which was flipped, from the rear, end over end, for 400 yards into a field.
The Stalsons were thrown out of the car, and when Donna regained consciousness, she was on one side of the road and Juel was on the other.
Donna recalled her shoes and glasses were gone and her hair was “standing straight up” and was packed full of dirt.
Juel came walking toward Donna, cradling a broken arm, and his face was so full of cuts, “it looked like a roadmap.”
Earling Braaten also survived and came walking toward them from the field, shirtless. Somewhere between the time he had been thrown from the car and the time he was walking toward Juel and Donna, the shirt had been removed from his body.
Chuck Mehls
Chuck Mehls has devoted his entire career to emergency medical services and served for many years as the emergency government director for the City of New Richmond.
At the time of the 1958 tornado, Mehls was 22 years old, was a member of the National Guard and also was a student at Eau Claire State.
Mehls was from Chippewa Falls, and immediately after the tornado had gone through the area, leaving destruction in a path that started in Minnesota and ended east of Thorp, he had gone home to make sure his family was all right. While he working in the yard, helping to clean up, he received a call from his company commander, telling him they were going to Colfax.
Mehls said he was not sure why they were being called to Colfax, since they were a heavy weapons company and none of them had any medical training.
All together, Mehls was in Colfax with his National Guard unit for two days and two nights after the tornado.
On the night of the tornado, he was among the search crew that located the body of Erling Lunn and his three-year-old son, Leon, on the south side of town, and a six-week old baby, lying in a muddy field.
Mehls never knew what happened to the baby or whether he survived.
Nearly fifty years later, at a garage sale in New Richmond, he saw a man wearing a Colfax Twister Run t-shirt and told the man he had been with the National Guard in Colfax the night of the 1958 tornado, that they had found a baby in the mud, but he had never known what had happened to the baby. The man told him to visit Colfax and go to Express Mart and ask for Chris.
Chris Lunn was the baby found in the mud.
Mehls attended the memorial service for the tornado victims held at Colfax High School in 2008.
The Colfax tornado, he says, is one of those events that has stayed with him his whole life.
Mike Henderson
Mike Henderson was 14 years old at the time of the tornado in 1958.
Mike was doing the milking on their home farm just south of Colfax early in the evening on June 4. Normally his brother, Dave, who was 16 at the time, would have been doing the milking at the home farm, and Mike would have been doing the milking on the other farm nearby owned by their parents, Frank and Arlene.
But that day, Dave was feeling ill and was resting in the house, and Mike was milking on the home farm, and their parents were milking on the other farm.
Part way through the evening, the baseball game Dave was listening to on the radio was overwhelmed with static, and being in the house by himself, and bored, Dave decided to go out to barn to help his brother.
The lightning in the area that had disrupted the baseball game on the radio also affected the cows in the barn while they were milking.
After a while, the boys heard a sound like a freight train, and then Dave looked out the barn door and saw the corrugated metal machine shed go flying by.
The boys ran outside where there was a slab of concrete by the barn cleaner and threw themselves down in the mud and the muck and the manure.
After a few minutes, a strong feeling came over Dave Henderson they should not be there, so they moved another 20 or 30 steps and threw themselves down in the mud and the manure again.
Moments later, two stave silos came crashing down right where the boys had been only moments earlier.
Lanny Fjelstad, Dave Henderson’s best friend, was killed at a nearby farm when the silo collapsed on him.
After the tornado was gone, Mike and Dave saw all the destruction and were certain their parents were dead.
The two boys started walking toward the farm where their parents had been milking, and they saw two people walking toward them.
Frank and Arlene and Mike and Dave had all survived.
Ron Fjelstad
Ron Fjelstad’s father, Spencer, was killed in the June 4, 1958, tornado.
On the afternoon of the storm, Spencer had been helping his brother Don on his farm. Spencer went home in the afternoon to rest before going to work that night at the Colfax Cooperative Creamery.
When the storm hit, Spencer’s wife (Ethel Fjelstad Nelson) told him she was taking the kids (Ron and Emily) to the basement. The house was blown away by the tornado, with Spencer in it.
Don’s son, Lanny, who was Ron’s cousin, was working his first job at the Dan Emmerton farm.
In the aftermath of the tornado, family members, including Don and Gladys Tandberg, searched for Lanny. They began moving sections of the silo, and when they saw something green — Lanny had been wearing a green shirt — they knew the worst had happened. [/emmeber_protected]
I hope this is video taped. I would love to see it.