Bob Hartig
EF5
There is something about historic tornadoes that, for me at least, sets them apart emotionally. Perhaps it's the black-and-white photos, which give their subjects an eerie, otherworldly appearance. Perhaps it's the thought of what it is that makes the storms historic. People died--lots of people. Then again, part of it may lie in knowing that some of these events played out in my own regional backyard. The 1974 Superoutbreak occurred the year I graduated from high school, and I remember seeing a woodlot of splintered treetops as I was hitchhiking past Monticello, Indiana.
And then there were the Palm Sunday tornadoes of April 11, 1965....
The Palm Sunday event has had a strange hold on me since my childhood. Living in Niles, Michigan, the tornadoes bypassed our area, but not by much. I remember a hot, windy day...relatives visiting from Chicago...tornado warnings on the television...the South Bend Tribune and Niles Daily Star filled with news the next day of the disaster...and, on a drive into the Elkhart, Indiana, area a few days later, a scene of devastation that left a lasting impression on my eight-year-old mind.
Yesterday I revisited the small community of Dunlap, just south of Elkhart, where two tornadoes, roughly an hour apart, claimed nearly fifty lives. It was halfway between here and nearby Goshen that Elkhart Truth staff photographer Paul Huffman stopped his car alongside U.S. 33 and snapped a series of photos as the first tornado swept across the fields and into the Midway trailer park. One of those images, depicting twin funnels straddling the highway, became an icon of the outbreak and remains one of the most vivid and horrifying tornado photographs ever taken.
As Huffman joined in rescue operations, another storm moved in from the west, and an even larger, more powerful tornado swept directly through Dunlap, wreaking F5 damage in the Sunnyside division.
Driving through Dunlap yesterday, I had a haunting sensation of two realities--of the past superimposed on the present; of the community as it stands in 2004, going about its business under the bright August sun, mercifully heedless of what transpired there on that long-ago Sunday evening.
Huffman's photos depict a rural setting--a white two-story farmhouse in the foreground, railroad tracks to the right paralleling the road, and open fields. Today, U.S. 33 is developed. Businesses, shopping centers, and auto dealerships line the road from Dunlap to Goshen, and as I write, bulldozers are shoving dirt around where the Midway trailer court once stood. I don't know what's going in at the site. More businesses? New homes? Whatever is planned, it will sit on top of land with a story to tell.
After my visit to Dunlap, I headed to the Mishawaka Penn-Harris Library to research the tornadoes. I will probably continue to make such visits. I have the crazy notion that if I do enough legwork, I may write a book. We'll see. It's one thing to talk about it and another to do it, and so many of my great ideas remain nothing more than great ideas. Still, the ones I actually pursue have a way of turning out. The resources are certainly available. The Palm Sunday event is remarkably well documented. And there are memories, many memories, and stories that have been told and retold, and perhaps, after all these years, tears that are still close to the surface. Area natives in their late forties and older haven't forgotten that day nearly four decades ago when the great winds came calling.
And then there were the Palm Sunday tornadoes of April 11, 1965....
The Palm Sunday event has had a strange hold on me since my childhood. Living in Niles, Michigan, the tornadoes bypassed our area, but not by much. I remember a hot, windy day...relatives visiting from Chicago...tornado warnings on the television...the South Bend Tribune and Niles Daily Star filled with news the next day of the disaster...and, on a drive into the Elkhart, Indiana, area a few days later, a scene of devastation that left a lasting impression on my eight-year-old mind.
Yesterday I revisited the small community of Dunlap, just south of Elkhart, where two tornadoes, roughly an hour apart, claimed nearly fifty lives. It was halfway between here and nearby Goshen that Elkhart Truth staff photographer Paul Huffman stopped his car alongside U.S. 33 and snapped a series of photos as the first tornado swept across the fields and into the Midway trailer park. One of those images, depicting twin funnels straddling the highway, became an icon of the outbreak and remains one of the most vivid and horrifying tornado photographs ever taken.
As Huffman joined in rescue operations, another storm moved in from the west, and an even larger, more powerful tornado swept directly through Dunlap, wreaking F5 damage in the Sunnyside division.
Driving through Dunlap yesterday, I had a haunting sensation of two realities--of the past superimposed on the present; of the community as it stands in 2004, going about its business under the bright August sun, mercifully heedless of what transpired there on that long-ago Sunday evening.
Huffman's photos depict a rural setting--a white two-story farmhouse in the foreground, railroad tracks to the right paralleling the road, and open fields. Today, U.S. 33 is developed. Businesses, shopping centers, and auto dealerships line the road from Dunlap to Goshen, and as I write, bulldozers are shoving dirt around where the Midway trailer court once stood. I don't know what's going in at the site. More businesses? New homes? Whatever is planned, it will sit on top of land with a story to tell.
After my visit to Dunlap, I headed to the Mishawaka Penn-Harris Library to research the tornadoes. I will probably continue to make such visits. I have the crazy notion that if I do enough legwork, I may write a book. We'll see. It's one thing to talk about it and another to do it, and so many of my great ideas remain nothing more than great ideas. Still, the ones I actually pursue have a way of turning out. The resources are certainly available. The Palm Sunday event is remarkably well documented. And there are memories, many memories, and stories that have been told and retold, and perhaps, after all these years, tears that are still close to the surface. Area natives in their late forties and older haven't forgotten that day nearly four decades ago when the great winds came calling.
