Infant who survived 1944 Shinnston tornado

On Paula’s flight from Cleveland Hopkins to Orlando, she sat next to a couple from Mentor, Ohio. The husband, Ron Mastrodonato, was reared in Fairmont. His wife, Dawn, was from Shinnston and survived the 1944 tornado – as a 3-month-old!

Dawn Mastrodonato, John Olesky

“They handed me up from the rubble through the trees that had sprawled all over the ground,” Dawn said in The Villages, Florida, where she and Ron live today.

It had to rank as a miracle.

The June 23, 1944 tornado ripped through her Pleasant Hill home, hardest hit in Shinnston, where 30 of the 103 victims died and 50 domiciles on the hill were leveled.

That total was nearly half the people killed in the United States by tornadoes that year. From 1950 to today, only 2 people died in tornadoes in West Virginia. The state ranks only 35^th in tornado deaths.

No wonder it was such a shock that a tornado hit the West Virginia hills.

When Paula tried to sign up for a colored pencils class she noticed that Dawn was one of the leaders.

When Paula and I showed up at an art show featuring colored pencil paintings in one of the many recreation centers for The Villages’ 100,000 residents, there was Dawn again as one of the volunteers.

West Virginians are everywhere in The Villages, and hundreds more will show up for the West Virginia Day picnic March 1.

Pat Meredith Wills, Class of 1950, who plans to attend with husband Don Wills by driving from their winter home on Crescent Beach near St. Augustine Beach, said 500 were at the 2014 picnic.

John Matkovich, Class of 1948, and wife Dolores Sweede Matkovich, Class of 1953, also plan to attend. They live in Palm Harbor, Florida, near St. Petersburg.