We continue our stories about the Tornado that devastated the Pinkstaff area seventy years ago on February 25, 1956.

The tornado then began its destructive work in the town of Pinkstaff.

The house on the left is the Roscoe and Naoma Selby house.The building in the far right with the peaked roof was the Free Methodist Church. (#12 on map)  Look closely at the church photo on the right and you can see the pews on the left.

Maurice and Laura Zehner lived in the big two- story white house on the main street in Pinkstaff. In 1956, Rube Zehner was 62 and Laura was 60. They had no children and Rube hung out at Tony’s store and Gibs Barbershop. Laura helped her good friend Naomi Selby at the Post Office. During that time Pinkstaff was a thriving little town.  Everybody knew everybody.This story was reported by the Robinson Daily News.

  "The storm left a freak situation at the Zehner home located just south of the Hill’s grocery store. After the storm Saturday morning, Mrs. Laura Zehner found half of a lace living room curtain floating in the breeze outside the living room window while the other half of the curtain remained fastened to a curtain rod inside the living room. The lace curtain was undamaged. In some manner it had blown through a crack in the window during the height of the storm. After the storm, the glass came back in place, pinching the curtain on both sides of the window.

The interior of the Zehner home appeared to have been ransacked during the night by burglars. Old folded newspapers were found scattered about the house, glass from broken windows were scattered over the floors, and table and floor lamps overturned and broken. Mrs. Zehner said “I was awakened by the terrific noise of the storm shortly after 1:30 AM. I was in the upstairs bedroom and since my husband was spending the night at the home of his mother who was sick, I just stayed in bed until the storm was over. I felt I would be just as safe there as any place in the house.

(Lady in the photo is Naomi Selby, Pinkstaff Postal Clerk)

 (The 2 story Zehner home is still standing on the main street in town. #13 on map)

Everybody in the area knew Tony Hill, mainly because he and his wife Mary ran a busy little grocery store in downtown Pinkstaff. In 1956, another grocery store was run by Ralph and Sue Warner. It was just up the street north of Tony Hill’s. Both stores seemed to stay busy and were great places to hang out. The ten-cent ice cream cones from Tony Hill’s store were the best around and in 1956, gasoline was only 30 cents a gallon. Big noisy freight trains on the New York Central Railroad would roar through town and some would switch box cars and load grain at the local elevator. This was all before February 25th, when a violent tornado destroyed the town. 

     "Tony Hill, grocery store owner for 11 years, told the Daily News that he considered himself  “the luckiest man around.”  The main force of the storm passed directly between his store and his home, a couple blocks away with no damage to the house and only minor damage to the store. His wife Mary said that when they opened the store shortly before 7:00 in the morning, they were greeted by their two bird dogs who had spent the night in the store and they were very happy to get outside. She said that most of the canned goods and the groceries on the top shelves of the store were scattered over the floor and large pieces of window glass from the south windows had blown across the room and were found with their jagged ends stuck into the North wall of the building." #14 on the map

View of Pinkstaff business area showing Dollahan building (#15 on map)

In a conversation with 88 year J.W. Dollahan, the son of Hugh and Agatha Dollahan, he recalls the tornado in Pinkstaff. Fortunately the Dollahan farm was north of Pinkstaff and was out of the main path of the twister. The Dollahans owned a couple buildings on the Main street in Pinkstaff, just north of Tony Hills’ store.  The old empty Haines and Stoltz Store, a three- story wooden building was severely damaged with part of the front completely blown out. The old building was abandoned for several years. At one time it was a dealership for International Harvester which later relocated to Smith Sales east of Lawrenceville. The top floor of the old building had a basketball court which at one time was used by the old Pinkstaff school. This building stood taller than the others along the Main street. It was not taken down by the storm. On the north side of that building was a fairly new concrete block and steel truss farm storage building. It had housed farm equipment and implements. This building for the most part was destroyed with the roof collapsing on farm machinery. Miscellaneous items were scattered all over Main street with rubble blown easterly into W O Pinkstaff’s field. Amazingly, another big wooden building to the north of it was not harmed by that ferocious storm.  Downtown Main street in Pinkstaff was virtually impassable.