
(Local author Randy Linss’s Facebook Page holds many more treasured stories and more local content. It can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100090649446997)
It was the kind of spring day on Saturday, May 15, 1943, when residents of the Stover area had the uncanny feeling that a significant weather event might be in store at some later point that evening. Living in the Midwest, residents will recognize the volatile combination of unseasonably warm temperatures, high humidity, and windy conditions as a sign that severe weather is a distinct possibility.
The family had been in town for their weekly shopping earlier that day. As they drove to their farm home south of Stover, near Little Buffalo, lightning could be seen in the distant southwest sky. Having chores to complete before nightfall, everyone knew what was expected, so they went about their work. Once completed, the family gathered together in the house, except for the youngest daughter, two-year-old Mary Ellen, who was sleeping in a bedroom.
“It had been warm and windy all day,” Jo Ann Rapp Bormann recalled. Eighty-one years after the fact, as I sat with her in the living room of her Cole Camp home, it was evident that the effect of that day remains as fresh in her memory as it was the day of the storm. “We’d come back into the house after looking at some pigs Dad had just bought and were all together in the dining room.”
The clock was approaching 8:00 that evening, after an ominous calm. Menacing clouds hung heavily above the farmhouse when a nearby window was suddenly blown out. Rachel, Jo Ann’s mother, voiced the fear the other family members had already sensed. “A tornado is on its way!” she warned. That was the last thing Jo Ann and her seven-year-old sister, June, would remember until much later.
Being concerned about his neighbors, Mr. Hailey, walked down the road to check on the Rapps the following morning around 8:00. Finding Jo Ann’s parents and her 11-year-old brother, Burton, had been killed when the tornado ripped their house apart, Hailey came upon the three sisters in a nearby timber. Because of a nasty laceration on her forehead and her unresponsiveness, Jo Ann was presumed dead as well. Hailey walked the half-mile to Jo Ann’s grandparents, Charles and Dolly Rapp, to tell them what he’d found.
Jo Ann said she remembers briefly waking during the night. June was lying nearby and told Jo Ann she was cold. Rain, wind, and hail continued during the night, exposing the girls to the elements for twelve hours until Mr. Hailey came to check on the family. Jo Ann, who was just eight years old, replied with the thought, “Mom must be dead, or she would have come to cover us with a blanket.” Other than the brief conversation, the three girls were unconscious throughout the night. Little Mary Ellen had no later recollections of the events of that weekend.
Later that morning, Red Cross workers took the three girls for observation at the Gunn Clinic in Versailles. Meanwhile, plans were being made for a more permanent solution. The girls’ aunt and uncle, Orlyn and Ruth Merriott, had recently purchased a home in Stover where they had planned to move in August. After the tornado dictated drastic restructuring of the surviving Rapp family’s lives, they moved in early, taking little Mary Ellen to live with them. The Red Cross hired Marie Oelrichs to stay with Jo Ann and June at the farmhouse the Merriots had vacated to move into their new Stover home.
A few months later, after the situation had somewhat normalized, Jo Ann and June went to live with their grandparents. The girls attended school at Stover from then on. Jo Ann recalls, that before graduating in 1953, she worked three jobs throughout her school years in addition to a full schedule of classes. While working at one of those jobs, she met her future husband, Delbert “Shorty” Bormann. Although far from love at first sight as Jo Ann recalls, the couple was married on August 30, 1953, shortly after her graduation. They enjoyed 30 years of happiness together until “Shorty’s passing on September 6, 1983.
Their first child, LaDonna, was born in 1954. The couple purchased a building lot in Cole Camp, where they had a basement poured in 1955. They would live in the basement for seven years until the home was constructed above ground. During those years, in 1957, a second child, Burton, was born. Today, Jo Ann still lives in that same home, as she recalls a lifetime since the night that tornado drastically changed her life.
She tells how she’s carried a lifelong fear of storms since that tragic May night in 1943. She’s thankful for the basement which she’s not ashamed to admit retreating to when threatening weather looms. The three sisters, after overcoming a shock of unimaginable proportions, have gone on to live long and happy lives. One thing is certain, though, that fateful night forever changed the course of their lives and how they would react for the rest of their years.

