Submitted by Ron Lantz Sr.
My Palm Sunday story starts on a cloudy Sunday early evening I was 16 and sitting with my parents watching Disney's Wonderful World of Color when all of a sudden a car storms into our driveway on the corner of Hively and Southdale Dr. A couple jumps out, runs up to our front door, practicably beating It down and hollering, "A tornado coming, tornadoes coming can we get in your basement?" Well of course my parents let them in and we ran to the basement.
Within a short time, we heard the sound everyone talks about, the sound that makes you think a freight train is running beside your house. We looked out the basement windows and could see the twin tornadoes in the air eastbound looking as they were following Mishawaka Road, probably just seconds before the famous picture was taken. Well, they passed and after a little while the couple that burst in our door headed home to check on their family, they told us how much they appreciated our basement as they left.
About an hour or less after they went through, my dad, Delbert Lantz, got an emergency phone call that sent him to Sunnyside subdivision to turn off gas lines, as he was a construction foreman for NIPSCO. When he had arrived and began to work, he received word that his stepbrother's house and garage were gone, his stepbrother was found deceased in his neighbor's basement, believed to have been blown there from out of his own home. His wife was not found for 3 days, farther away as she was caught by the storm between her house and her son Fritz Griffin's house. She was on the way to warn them. My uncle had just built a new 24x24 garage and all that was left were the bolts sticking up from the concrete. He also had a fishing boat and motor that was never found.
My Palm Sunday story starts on a cloudy Sunday early evening I was 16 and sitting with my parents watching Disney's Wonderful World of Color when all of a sudden a car storms into our driveway on the corner of Hively and Southdale Dr. A couple jumps out, runs up to our front door, practicably beating It down and hollering, "A tornado coming, tornadoes coming can we get in your basement?" Well of course my parents let them in and we ran to the basement. Within a short time, we heard the sound everyone talks about, the sound that makes you think a freight train is running beside your house. We looked out the basement windows and could see the twin tornadoes in the air eastbound looking as they were following Mishawaka Road, probably just seconds before the famous picture was taken. Well, they passed and after a little while the couple that burst in our door headed home to check on their family, they told us how much they appreciated our basement as they left.
About an hour or less after they went through, my dad, Delbert Lantz, got an emergency phone call that sent him to Sunnyside subdivision to turn off gas lines, as he was a construction foreman for NIPSCO. When he had arrived and began to work, he received word that his stepbrother's house and garage were gone, his stepbrother was found deceased in his neighbor's basement, believed to have been blown there from out of his own home. His wife was not found for 3 days, farther away as she was caught by the storm between her house and her son Fritz Griffin's house. She was on the way to warn them. My uncle had just built a new 24x24 garage and all that was left were the bolts sticking up from the concrete. He also had a fishing boat and motor that was never found.