were conducted out of the
booth. Calls were received
and radio dispatches were
handled there.
“Larry Sarver was on
duty in there by himself
going nuts with all the
phone calls and radio
traffic,” Snyder said. Word
came through that more
ambulances were needed at
Midway. Snyder worked out
of the Water Department,
where an old civil defense
ambulance was stationed.
He told Sarver he would
head there.
“I always kept that run-
ning,” Snyder said of the
ambulance. “It did have a
cot in it and some equip-
ment and stuff like that. I
figured it would be of some
use out at the scene.”
Snyder started up the
ambulance and headed out
on U.S. 33 to the mobile
home park.
“I got to the scene, and
never saw anything like it in
my life, and never want to
see anything like it again,”
he said. “Everything was
gone at Midway. It was a
shambles.”
At Midway
Most of the injured had
been accounted for by
the time Snyder reached
Midway. Search efforts
were focused on the miss-
ing and the dead. Snyder’s
ambulance wasn’t needed to
transport anybody. Elkhart
County Sheriff Woody
Caton, Goshen Police Chief
Glenn Kindy and Goshen
Fire Chief Bob Moriarty
were taking command at
the scene.
Time passed. Snyder
remembers an announce-
ment being made over the
loudspeakers from a fire
truck doubling as command
center: Another tornado
was approaching.
“At that point all you
could see were black clouds
rolling in,” Snyder said.
“They told us to get out,
everybody evacuate. They
thought they had all the liv-
ing people they could find.
They didn’t want to lose
anybody else.” The sheriff
and the two Goshen chiefs
stayed at the scene.
Snyder left Midway in the
ambulance and pulled off at
C.R. 28.
“I made a U-turn and
pulled around so I was
headed back to the west”
and got out of the ambu-
lance, Snyder recalled. Also
at that spot was Elkhart
Truth photographer Paul
Huffman (“We always called
him ‘Pic,’” Snyder said).
It was there that Huffman
snapped the famous photo
of the twin tornadoes.
“As soon as (the torna-
does) crossed the tracks,
I got back in the ambu-
lance and headed back
to Midway,” Snyder said.
“You wondered if you’d
ever see any of your fellow
officers or any of the other
emergency crews that were
there that stayed — if they
would still be there, and be
alive. We couldn’t tell if (the
tornado) had hit Midway
again or not. Luckily, it
didn’t.
“I got back there and a
short time after that, they
told us that Sunnyside had
been hit in Dunlap, and that
we should go over there,”
he said. Snyder rejoined
with then fellow GPD
reserve officer Maynard
Hartsough, with whom he’d
earlier partnered with at
Midway, and the two went
to the Sunnyside housing
area.
“It was raining, and the
temperature was dropping,”
he said. “You got over there
and you could tell — every-
thing was gone.”
At Sunnyside
“We were one of the first
(emergency responders)
in,” Snyder said. “All the
units were just then arriv-
ing.”
Neighbors and families
were looking for their loved
ones. The emergency per-
sonnel helped them search.
“We started going house
to house,” Snyder said.
“You could tell where a
house had been.”
Snyder also recounted
being with the ambulance
at Sunnyside Mennonite
Church along C.R. 13.
“… Some firemen took
the stretcher out of the
back of the ambulance and
took off with it someplace,”
he said. Then a nurse ap-
proached him.
“They found a girl in a
basement close by who
was hurt pretty bad, and I
said, ‘Well, I don’t have a
stretcher,’” Snyder said. “So
a couple guys, just strang-
ers, said, ‘Well, put her on a
door.’ So they put her on a
door and brought her over
and put her in the back of
the ambulance, and we took
off for Elkhart hospital.”
Snyder said U.S. 33 was
packed with traffic. Getting
the girl to the hospital was
neither easy nor direct.
“People by then knew
that something happened
and were coming out of
Elkhart,” he said. “A lot of
them were just sight-seers,
and other people were com-
ing because they had family
out here, either in Midway
or Sunnyside.”
The girl made it to the
hospital via Snyder’s am-
bulance. Snyder made two
more runs after that. Those
trips were to deliver bodies
to the temporary morgue
that had been set up.
By the time those runs
were completed, it was 3 or
4 o’clock in the morning.
Snyder was done for the
night, but would spend the
next week working in the
disaster area.
Changing times
How do emergency
responders deal with the
mental toll taken by a disas-
ter like the Palm Sunday
tornadoes? Snyder — who
dealt with the Palm Sunday
catastrophe, homicides,
crashes, etc. over the
course of his decades-long
career — provides a then-
and-now.
“Back in those days it
was, ‘Suck it up and accept
it,’” he said. “It’s not like
today where they offer you
counseling. Back then, it
was part of the job and if
you couldn’t handle it, you
weren’t made for the job.”
“…Now later on, after I
was an administrator, I had
been to some schools and
was aware of employee as-
sistance being a necessary
thing you should have,”
he continued. Sheriff’s
department administrators
saw that assistance for their
officers was important.
“We made sure we had
available for our officers
some type of counseling
they could go through
instead of ‘Suck it up and
accept it,’” Snyder said.
Fifty years have gone
by. Snyder still remembers
Palm Sunday, 1965.
“It’s not something that
will ever go away,” he said.
“…I can cry easily and I’m
not ashamed of crying.
Thinking back, if I’m by
myself, I can still get teary-
eyed thinking back over
things like this, Palm Sun-
day and some other things
I’ve been a part of.”
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Snyder
Continued from page 12
Just let the red phone ring
R.T. Snyder has many memories of
the Palm Sunday disaster. He also has a
story to tell about a photograph.
Snyder was a Goshen Police Depart-
ment reserve officer when the tornadoes
struck. A 50-year-old black-and-white
photo shows Snyder and other officers
gathered at the command center for
tornado relief. It was taken the after-
noon President Lyndon Johnson was
in Elkhart County to survey the storm
damage.
Snyder points out an interesting detail
in the picture.
“There’s a phone sitting right in front
of me,” he said. “Actually, the phone
was red. That phone was a direct line to
Moscow.”
This was during the Cold War, and
President Johnson had to have contact
with Moscow wherever he went. The
day the photo was taken, Snyder had a
question about the phone.
“I said, ‘What am I supposed to do if it
rings?’” Snyder recalled. “They said, ‘Let
it ring.’”
