"There's a certain smell. There's a certain look to the sky that has kind of a greenish tint, then I start getting nervous and the hairs on the back of my neck start to pick up," Carolyn Glenn Brewer says, looking out the window.
The feeling is almost like an extra sense, she says, one only tornado survivors have.
"I remember it being very loud and there being a roar. But I had no idea what was happening. I didn't really know what a tornado was," Brewer remembers.
But soon the whole Kansas City area would come to know it as the Ruskin Heights Tornado.
Just seven years old at the time, Brewer's home was in the path of the tornado that hit the evening of May 20, 1957.
What's now classified as an EF-5, the storm traveled 71 miles from Willamsburg, Kansas to the Ruskin Heights neighborhood, leaving devastating destruction in its wake.
"I remember seeing my toys flying around the room and being really upset about that," Brewer says with a laugh.
In a time where there were no tornado sirens or extensive TV weather coverage, many families had less than a minute to hunker down. And no one had basements, Brewer says.
Brewer remembers a screen window falling on top of her. She had just climbed back into bed, still feeling sick, while her family huddled underneath blankets in the hallway. They lived on east 110th Street.
Luck kept her family alive, but 40 people died, including small children.
Over the years, Brewer has become a sort of social historian, writing two books. She's collected stories and pictures from hundreds of other survivors, many of whom were also kids at the time.
She's heard heartbreaking stories, like the infant who was swept out of her mother's arms, or the mom who was blown away on the front lawn of the only church around with a basement.
Those are memories that many families suppressed for decades. Brewer recalls talking to a man who was five years old at the time, and said his family never talked about the tornado, so he'd convinced himself it was something he made up.
"Things were different then," Brewer says. "They didn't have school counselors that could talk about traumatic experiences. Our parents grew up in the Depression and World War II era, and they had to deal with all kinds of things that they didn't have any power over. They kind of learned to just accept it and move on."
Brewer says to this day, she still finds herself mindlessly doodling tornados. As kids she remembers playing "tornado" with her friends. She thinks it was a coping mechanism.
She's found, for most, talking about what happened on May 20, 1957 is therapeutic.
"Once we realized, I'm not the only one who did that, that was a comfort, even after all these years later. It kind of created its own community," Carolyn says.
The Ruskin Heights Homeowners Association laid down new wreaths in front of the tornado memorial at 110th & Blue Ridge. It includes a plaque with all the victims' names.
Although an extremely traumatic experience, Brewer says the tornado is an important piece of Kansas City history that we should never forget.
