Submitted by Sue Wilden
To this day, I just “know” bad weather is forthcoming and I am positive this came from Palm Sunday. My grandmother still likes to tell people I could sense a storm when I was little and with the watch and warning systems not being as sophisticated back then as they are today, I usually gave a good half-hour lead time before the first bulletins came over the TV. I am still fascinated with tornadoes; I followed the Storm Chasers the past two seasons and I am anticipating seeing the IMAX movie Sean Casey worked so hard in filming. I would also like to see Reed Timmer get a dose of hubris by being tossed to OZ by an F5.
Other storms have come and will come, but none will be as, for the lack of a better word, special, as the Palm Sunday Tornadoes.
 |
| Modified from Photo by premasagar |
I was just less than a month from my third birthday when the Palm Sunday tornadoes came. My memories are sketchy at best, but they are lasting ones. My family lived on the corner of Clinton Street and Green Road, AKA County Road 30 and it was very rural at the time. No Greenfield Addition, no Roxbury Trailer Park, no water tower, just cornfields. And if anyone can tell me who Harry Green, Green Road’s namesake, was, I would appreciate it.
My brother and I were taken to the basement but my parents stood on the front porch facing the west, to watch the storms. They clearly could see the storm which was devastating Dunlap and the Midway Trailer Park. I am sure this was the same storm my Grandparents and Uncle watched in their dining room window, too afraid to move. We spent many an evening in the basement during 1965, choosing to take cover even for a garden variety summer thunderstorm.
My father helped in the cleanup efforts at Sunnyside and his stories were not pleasant. The most horrific story was the recovery of the eviscerated body of a young boy, which was found in a tree, with his intestines draping out like spaghetti. A wooden leg was found and it was initially feared Bob Voorhees, the local barber, was killed. Fortunately, Bob the Barber was fine and he would remember the tornadoes with a simple 4-11-65 sign on the front of his shop.
The Glad farm belonged to the grandparents of a friend of mine from kindergarten through graduation at Ball State. She in fact lived in the house before it became Peddler’s Village.
My brother and I were taken to the basement but my parents stood on the front porch facing the west, to watch the storms. They clearly could see the storm which was devastating Dunlap and the Midway Trailer Park. I am sure this was the same storm my Grandparents and Uncle watched in their dining room window, too afraid to move. We spent many an evening in the basement during 1965, choosing to take cover even for a garden variety summer thunderstorm.
My father helped in the cleanup efforts at Sunnyside and his stories were not pleasant. The most horrific story was the recovery of the eviscerated body of a young boy, which was found in a tree, with his intestines draping out like spaghetti. A wooden leg was found and it was initially feared Bob Voorhees, the local barber, was killed. Fortunately, Bob the Barber was fine and he would remember the tornadoes with a simple 4-11-65 sign on the front of his shop.
The Glad farm belonged to the grandparents of a friend of mine from kindergarten through graduation at Ball State. She in fact lived in the house before it became Peddler’s Village.
To this day, I just “know” bad weather is forthcoming and I am positive this came from Palm Sunday. My grandmother still likes to tell people I could sense a storm when I was little and with the watch and warning systems not being as sophisticated back then as they are today, I usually gave a good half-hour lead time before the first bulletins came over the TV. I am still fascinated with tornadoes; I followed the Storm Chasers the past two seasons and I am anticipating seeing the IMAX movie Sean Casey worked so hard in filming. I would also like to see Reed Timmer get a dose of hubris by being tossed to OZ by an F5.
Other storms have come and will come, but none will be as, for the lack of a better word, special, as the Palm Sunday Tornadoes.