P
alm
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unday
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ornadoes
| 50
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| Saturday, April 11, 2015 The Goshen News
R
emembering
M
idway
T
railer
C
ourt
The initial blow
z
Residents recall that
horrible day; one survivor
taken to local morgue
By JULIE CROTHERS
GOSHEN — Richard Gresso
was as good as dead.
His attempt to outrun the
lethal tornado barreling toward
him had failed and he was left
clinging to a tree.
“The tree came out of the
ground, roots and all, and I slid
off of it and turned around and
slid into a stop sign that was em-
bedded into the asphalt,” Gresso
said. “And that’s the last thing I
remember.”
He later
learned two po-
lice officers had
picked him up
near the intersec-
tion of Ind. 15
and U.S. 20 after
finding his mo-
torcycle running
nearby and had
thrown his body in the trunk of
a police car.
“They took me out to the
morgue out at Goshen hospital
and stuff and had me, I guess,
laying in the hallways some-
place,” Gresso said. “They just
assumed I was dead.”
Today, 50 years after twin
tornadoes destroyed his home
and left him to die, Gresso’s
memories of April 11, 1965 are
as vivid as ever.
Midway Trailer Court, then
located on U.S. 33 between Gos-
hen and Dunlap, was among the
areas that suffered the heavi-
est destruction as a series of
large tornadoes ripped through
Elkhart County.
Perhaps the most iconic
image of the Palm Sunday
tornadoes was taken just near
6:18 p.m. as twin twisters shred-
ded the Midway Trailer Court
and then crossed U.S. 33 and
continued on to tear through
the Jefferson Place Subdivision
north of Goshen.
Reports would later state that
at least 10 residents of Midway
Mobile Trailer Court were killed
and dozens more were injured
as the F4 tornado wreaked
havoc on the area.
The National Weather Service
reported the tornado may have
been an F5 — the most severe
type of storm identified on the
Fujita Tornado Damage Scale —
with winds upward of 260 mph.
The path of the tornado
stretched for 21.6 miles, accord-
ing to the National Weather
Service.
In the days following, newspa-
per reports detailed the death of
many victims, including six who
died in one trailer. They had
been visiting family to celebrate
a birthday party.
It took emergency personnel
and volunteers several days to
comb through the 91 trailers in
the park in search of the injured
and dead, according to news re-
ports. About 18 trailers received
little to no damage.
The Gresso family
Gresso was 18 years old and
living with his parents in the
Midway Mobile Home Park.
His father, Richard Gresso Sr.,
operated the truck stop at the
intersection of Ind. 15 and U.S.
20, north of Goshen.
On the afternoon of April 11,
Gresso had just picked up his
girlfriend in the family’s 1956
Cadillac for a date at the movies.
They planned to stop by the
trailer park to pick up his mom’s
1964 Nova.
“Before we ever got all the
way there, we had seen all kinds
of debris all over the place, stuff
hanging up in the trees, and we
couldn’t figure out what was
going on because I didn’t know
anything about the tornado,”
Gresso said.
As Gresso drove into the park,
he was stopped by Leonard
Spigutz, the owner of the trailer
park.
Behind him, Gresso spotted
his family’s trailer upside down
with his mother inside.
“I broke the windows out so I
could get in to get her out,” he
said.
After sending his mom, Lillian
(Brown) Gresso, to Elkhart hos-
pital in an ambulance, Gresso
jumped back in the Cadillac and
drove toward his father’s truck
stop.
But by the time he got there,
Gresso’s father had already
heard about the tornado and
hitched a ride with a customer
back to Goshen, he said. His
brother, Mike, took the Cadillac
and drove through what was
then Jefferson Place, flattening
all four tires as he attempted to
return to town.
“Since I didn’t have the car
to go on, I had just bought
a motorcycle about a month
earlier... so I thought maybe I
could get on the motorcycle and
outrun it,” Gresso said. “But I
turned around and started and
got no farther than across the
intersection and the wind got
so strong because the tornado
was so wide it just looked like a
rain cloud hanging down on the
ground. I just couldn’t keep the
motorcycle up so I laid it down
and grabbed hold of a tree.”
The Wheeler family
Mike Wheeler and his wife,
Carolyn, had moved into the
Midway Trailer Court with
their infant son, Dennis, in late
December 1964.
On April 11, Mike and his
brother had arrived back to the
trailer park from the New Paris
Speedway, slightly late for a 6
p.m. dinner scheduled at Caro-
lyn’s sister’s house.
“She got mad and said ‘we’re
not going. We’re going to stay
home,” Mike said. “I said ‘no,
you made the arrangements.
We’re going to go.’”
And it’s a good thing he
insisted, he added.
“We left there maybe 20 min-
utes to a half hour before it hit,”
Mike said.
They’d just arrived to dinner
when someone came on the tele-
vision and said Midway Trailer
Court had been hit.
The aftermath
Five days later, Gresso awoke
in a hospital bed.
The stop sign had split his head
open and nearly severed his leg.
His head had swollen to twice
the normal size and his body had
been sandblasted by debris.
A cut across his neck nearly
sliced his jugular vein and the
injuries to his head had busted out
a piece of his skull, leaving part of
his brain exposed.
While he was unconscious,
Gresso had mumbled something
that caught his brother’s attention
as he walked through the hall
of the hospital looking at bodies
to see if his brother was among
them.
“(Mike) realized I was awake so
they got me into a hospital room
and from what I understand they
brought in a priest and gave me
my last rights because they fig-
ured I was going to die anyways,”
Gresso said.
Two weeks later, he was
released from the hospital, but the
debris that riddled his body con-
tinued to work its way out of his
body for the next several years.
“Between my face, my neck and
hands and arms, I was still picking
stuff out years later where it was
just a little piece of a splinter, a
rock and stuff,” he said.
Sifting through debris
The Wheelers later returned
to the trailer park to sift through
the debris from homes scattered
across the area.
“We went out and picked
through the rubble to see if we
could find anything. I think that’s
when we found our marriage
license,” Carolyn said. “That’s all
we found.”
It’s hard to believe that it’s been
50 years, Carolyn said.
“It seems like it was just yester-
day. I remember everything about
it — how it looked out there, I still
remember all of that stuff,” Mike
said. “It was something else.”
Follow Julie on Twitter @jcroth-
ers_tgn
LeRoy Lambright
Guest columnist
Goshen news file photos
THIS VIEW
looking east toward U.S. 33 was taken April 13, 1965 and shows the devastation
at the Midway Trailer Court following the Palm Sunday tornadoes two days earlier. Ten people
were killed at the trailer court.
Gresso
The Good
Lord was
with us
that day
W
hat for the most part
was a typical spring
day clocked out in a
frightening whirlwind for this
family of five and our six house
guests on April 11, 1965 —
recorded as the most tragic
day in the history of Elkhart
County and the surrounding
region.
Gathered in a single-wide
mobile home at Midway Trail-
er Court between Goshen and
Dunlap, we’ve been thanking
our “lucky stars” that we
escaped a virtual home wipe-
out with nothing more than a
few broken ribs, bumps and
bruises. Totally amazing when
you consider that 16 of our
nearby neighbors (10 in Mid-
way) were killed as the power-
ful twister roared through the
court.
Fifty years later while look-
ing at pictures, it still appears
that our home was situated just
enough to one side from the
heart of the main path, that our
lives were saved from severe
harm.
My wife Georgia and I pur-
chased the mobile home just
three months prior and moved
in with three children ages 5, 4
and 2. High school friends
Frank and Judy (Miller)
Fought of Topeka came to visit
that afternoon with their four
youngsters.
Strange weather feel
It was a rather balmy after-
noon as Frank and I were hit-
ting golf balls at a former driv-
ing range just up the road
along U.S. 33. We talked about
how the weather had a strange
feel to it. This was in the days
before tornado warnings as we
know of them today.
Soon after, when we joined
our families in the tiny home,
we again commented that the
weather seems so strange and
wondered if this could be a
prelude to a tornado. Within
seconds, Georgia looked out a
window to the southeast and
said, “Here comes one.”
Growing up in Oklahoma
where tornado winds often
howl, she said “Quick open
some windows.” Nobody took
the time to ask why. Quickly
one window on the west side
and one on the east were at
least cracked a bit. The reason
learned later is that open win-
dows lower the compression. A
second key to this survival, we
believe, is that the day before
all storm windows were
removed and placed under the
home.
My first thought at this fran-
tic moment was that here we
are all bunched together and
that we should be spread out a
bit if we do get hit. So the reac-
tion was to grab the nearest
youngster (Doug Fought), go
outside to lie on the ground
next to a small tree, about 3
inches of trunk. Once landing
on the ground, I thought “This
is dumb. If the home next to us
tips over on its side, Doug and
I will be crushed.”
There was no time to scatter.
The storm, sounding like two
jet airplanes taking off a few
feet above our heads, had
arrived. When I looked up, the
next-door home was gone,
apparently picked up and
blown over our heads and over
the few pieces left of our home.
All of us OK
Miraculously, the nine peo-
ple who had huddled inside
our home, did some flying, but
were dumped onto the ground
as the sides of the home were
blown away and the floor was
swiped from underneath them.
By JULIE CROTHERS
GOSHEN — Although their
homes were destroyed and pos-
sessions swept away in the Palm
Sunday tornadoes, some former
residents later returned to the
Midway Trailer Court in search
of housing.
Carolyn Wheeler and her hus-
band, Mike, were among them.
The Wheelers lost everything
except their marriage license in
the tornado and Carolyn said she
hoped never to step foot in the
trailer park again.
“I was petrified,” she said. “But
we had to (move back) because
there was nothing else. All the
apartments were full, all the
houses were full.”
A little more than a week after
the tornado, the owners of the
trailer park, Arthur and Leonard
Spigutz, arranged for the debris
to be pushed away or burned
and the sites were prepared for
new trailers, according to news
reports.
Spigutz also built an under-
ground safety space for people
who lived in trailers, Carolyn
Wheeler said.
“We had to go in there a few
times afterwards,” she said.
The space continued to be
used as a trailer court for nearly
40 years until the county govern-
ment began purchasing vacated
lots for a future bridge project.
In late 2003, the final lots were
purchased and construction on
the C.R. 17 bridge began, accord-
ing to Elkhart County Adminis-
trator Tom Byers. That project
was completed in mid-2005.
In 2007, the remaining land was
purchased by Ancon Construc-
tion and the company began the
process of developing the area.
The first phase of the new
development is a two-story
5,530-square-foot dental center
for Aegis Dental, Ancon Con-
struction architect Matt VanSoest
said in an email.
The remaining approximately
two acres of land is slated for
future development of one or two
additional buildings, VanSoest
said.
The new community develop-
ment is called “Pointe 33.”
“The barren site up to now was
a stark reminder of the events,”
VanSoest said. “We are excited
to bring some unique modern
architecture to the site and create
a new community on the site.”
Follow Julie on Twitter @jcroth-
ers_tgn
A new future is in the works for Midway site
photo contributed
In this Google Earth image
, the area that was once
Midway Mobile Trailer Court can be seen, including the C.R. 17
bridge that was constructed nearly 40 years after the tornadoes
tore through the area on April 11, 1965.
An Indiana
State Po-
lice
officer
sifts through
the debris at
Midway Trailer
Court soon
after an F4 twin
tornado bar-
relled into the
community on
April 11, 1965.
Ten people
were killed at
the trailer court.
Goshen news file photo
See
Lambright
| 14
