Butler Township woman defied death, survived Kansas tornado 65 years ago
BUTLER TWP — Isabelle Stephens should have only lived to be 22, but she said God sent his legions of angels to care for her more than six decades ago when her life was miraculously spared.
Stephens, of Butler Township, is spending the month of June celebrating her survival 65 years ago, when a devastating tornado dropped from the Kansas sky and onto the car in which she was riding.
“The wind was going 140 mph,” the spry octogenarian said. “It threw me out of the car and landed me 500 feet away through a wire fence.”
She explained she and the driver of the vehicle had stopped at a rest area on June 10, 1958, in El Dorado, Kan., gassed up their car, and reentered the turnpike when the eye of a major tornado descended from above and onto their car.
