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| Saturday, April 11, 2015 The Goshen News
R
emembering
S
unnyside
A
ddition
The second blow
z
In a day filled with death,
Sunnyside suffered most
By ROGER SCHNEIDER
DUNLAP — On April 11, 1965
10-year-old Stevie Forsythe was
sitting in his family’s modest
home, keeping track of the
warnings about tornadoes in
the area. By about 7:15 p.m. he
didn’t need the TV anymore,
he could see the swirling mass
approaching at 50 mph along
Mishawaka Road through the
home’s picture window.
“He said ‘Mom! There is a tor-
nado coming here,’” is how his
sister, Debbie Watters described
how the family became aware
their lives were in immediate
danger.
Debbie, 6 years old at the
time, Stevie and their mother
Shirley shot to their basement.
Moments later their home ex-
ploded over their heads.
That home was at the corner
of Cole Street and Amy Avenue
in the Sunnyside Subdivision, a
collection of modest post-World
War II wood-framed homes.
The deadly twister first
touched down in St. Joseph
County farm fields southeast of
South Bend. It traveled north-
east, growing in size. By the
time Stevie Forsythe saw it,
the tornado was a frightening
monster.
The tornado that struck the
Forsythe home was classified
years later as an F5, the most
powerful of storms, but then
reclassified as an F4. An F4
has wind speeds of 207 to 260
mph, according to the National
Weather Service. Such storms
are killers, they devastate
everything in their path. Just 2
percent of all tornadoes reach
such fury.
The Sunnyside tornado lived
up to that description, taking 27
lives in Dunlap.
That tornado became known
as the “Sunnyside tornado”
because it obliterated the sub-
division. But it also plowed into
the adjacent Kingston Heights
subdivision. A report in The
Goshen News on April 22, 1965,
said the tornado destroyed 134
homes, heavily damaged 25
more and 14 houses received
minor damage. After the Sun-
nyside tornado hit the subdivi-
sions, it continued northeast,
almost to the state line, before
disappearing northwest of
Howe.
Helping others
Stevie’s and Debbie’s father,
Charles, was a Concord Town-
ship firefighter. He saw the tor-
nado approach his home from
atop a fire truck at the Midway
Mobile Home Park. Forsythe
had gone there to help in the
rescue effort from the earlier
tornado strike on the families
hunkered in their frail alumi-
num homes.
When he realized the dan-
ger from the second tornado,
Forsythe quickly drove to Sun-
nyside. But death had already
reached his family.
As Watters visited recently
on a sunny Saturday morning
on the lot where her childhood
home once stood, she looked
into the distance of time. A few
feet away was a fading picture
of her brother, forever young in
the image, on a marker at the
memorial.
“He will always be Stevie,”
Watters said.
After the tornado strike, all
that was left of the home were
the family’s crumpled washer
and dryer in the basement and
one basement wall. Debris cov-
ered Stevie.
“I had uncovered my brother
partially and I just knew he was
gone,” Watters said. “Thank
God I didn’t uncover him all the
way.”
“Then I went over and helped
my mom up, who was severely
injured,” she said. “Obviously
we were both in shock. Every-
thing was gone in a matter of
seconds. When I looked around
it just looked like a bomb had
just hit.”
Watters and her mother stag-
gered over the nearby railroad
tracks that run parallel to C.R.
45. There a Good Samaritan had
stopped his car. He shouted,
“Lady stop, lady stop!”
Shirley Forsythe was about to
walk into a live electrical wire on
the ground.
Watters said she had to pull
on her stunned mother to keep
her away from the wire.
The Good Samaritan then
helped them. He carried Shirley
Watters to his vehicle and
returned and did the same for
Debbie. They waited for ambu-
lances to arrive.
When Charles Forsythe ar-
rived, “He found our dog on my
brother’s body, like guarding
him,” Watters said.
Stevie’s life ended at age 10,
A visit
from God
I’ll never
forget
ROGER SCHNEIDER |
The Goshen News
LISA NORMENT
, daughter of Palm Sunday tornado survivor Debbie Watters, uses gold paint to fill in the text on the event’s
memorial marker in the Sunnyside Subdivision in Dunlap. On April 11, 1965 an F4 tornado flattened the neighborhood, killing 27
people there.
roger schneider |
The Goshen News
JANET AND DON CHUPP
stand in their front yard and talk
about Janet’s childhood home that once stood where the green
house is on Greenwood Boulevard in the Kingston Heights
subdivision.
In memory of | To those who died in the Palm Sunday tornadoes April 11, 1965 | We miss you | To the many
heroes who gave their assistance | We thank you | To the remaining victims | To everything there is a season
and a time to every purpose under heaven and the Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm and the
clouds are the dust of his feet | Someday we will understand it better by and by
— The inscription on the Palm Sunday tornado memorial at Sunnyside Subdivision by the Forsythe family: Chuck, Shirley, Mike and Debbie
From OUR READERS
By RACHEL BRACKER JACKSON
A
s an almost 8-year-old lit-
tle girl living in Dunlap, I
have very vivid memo-
ries of the deadly tornado that
hit the area on April 11, 1965.
When I close my eyes today,
I can still see clearly the images
of devastation and feel the cold
fear that gripped me as the
thunderous twister roared by.
Around 7 p.m. that Sunday
evening I was, as usual, in a
church worship service. But
unlike usual, I was up front
with a group of children sing-
ing for the congregation. We
were singing the hymn “How
Great Thou Art,” but little did
we know that we were about to
find out how awesome the won-
der of God’s power would be
displayed in a storm that was
about to hit our community.
It had been a hot and humid
day and the rain was a welcome
relief. As the rain picked up and
the wind began to blow I
remember glancing at the
milky window of the church
building and seeing the silhou-
ette of small sticks and leaves
smacking up against it. Almost
as soon as the sound of the
rushing rain on the roof began,
it stopped.
We began singing and my
focus returned to what we were
doing. Not far into the song our
attention was grabbed from our
director and we couldn’t help
but watch the strange commo-
tion taking place in the rear of
the auditorium.
My father was the pastor of
the Elkhart Grace Brethren
Church, located on Mishawaka
Road. So it was his responsibili-
ty to try and calm the man who
had just rushed into the build-
ing and was frantically waving
his arms and pointing outside
as he spoke quickly and loudly.
We dutifully kept singing and
watching intently as the scene
escalated and my father turned
from the man and began speak-
ing to the congregation.
The man, with his family, had
been driving toward our church
building when they saw the
immense tornado barreling
toward them. They quickly
pulled into the parking lot and
ran in to ask if they could join
us in the basement for shelter.
As my father quickly under-
stood the gravity of the situa-
tion he first informed the man
that they were welcome to join
us but there was no basement
in the building. I remember
him later saying that as he
turned to address the congre-
gation he quickly prayed, ask-
ing God for wisdom about
where to take everyone. He
knew he had only two options
and only minutes to move the
Building codes progress to help keep families safe in severe weather
By ROGER SCHNEIDER
GOSHEN— It takes a disaster to
improve homes so they are better
able to withstand the next powerful
natural phenomenon, according to
local building inspectors.
When two Class 4 tornadoes
swept into the county on Palm Sun-
day 1965, homes and businesses
were crushed by the 260 mph
winds. It’s hard to imagine anything
other than a reinforced concrete
bunker withstanding that sort of
wind pressure.
The post-World War II homes
that dotted the gradual sloping
ground in the Sunnyside and
Kingston Heights subdivision in
Dunlap, were designed to be built
quickly, cheaply and house large
baby-boom families. They were
functional homes that met the
building codes of the day. So when
a killer twister bounced its way
down Mishawaka Road, it exploded
those houses into shards of wood,
glass and brick.
“I am sure they did,” was how
Kevin Williams, Elkhart County
building commissioner, answered
the question if building codes were
changed across Indiana following
the 1965 outbreak.
“I kind of look at building codes
as coming from the insurance com-
panies,” he said. “If an insurance
company has a major loss, they are
going to look at that in the future.”
“Major loss” the
tornado disaster
was.
According to the
National Oceanic
and Atmospheric
Administration,
the Palm Sunday
outbreak occurred
April 11 and 12
in 1965 in six Midwestern states.
There were 47 tornadoes that killed
261 people and caused immense
damage to structures.
“Building codes have progressed
so much since 1965,” said Goshen
residential building inspector Steve
Bice. “And that is due in part to
high-wind situations.”
State on down
Indiana has state building codes
that are adopted at the local level,
Bice and Williams said. Those lat-
est codes have numerous speci-
fications for builders to follow to
mitigate wind damage.
One requirement is the use of
“hurricane straps” when builders
use factory-made trusses. Those
trusses are held together with per-
forated metal plates that are placed
on each side the truss joints. The
inspectors indicated that while that
assembly technique makes trusses
quicker and less expensive to build
in factories, the plates need the help
of reinforcing hurricane straps to
hold them to the top wall plate in
high winds.
“A lot of times when they nail
them in, they are just toenailed in,”
Bice said. “You can’t get enough
toenails in a truss to get the 90 mph
wind-load requirement.”
The inexpensive hurricane
straps are sold at all big-box home
improvement stores and local lum-
beryards. They are two small metal
plates set at right angles to each
other and are nailed in place with
five nails in the truss and five nails
in the top plate.
“You will find that a lot of the
wind problems are occurring in the
older truss systems that were not
engineered to today’s standard,”
Bice
See
safe
| 15
See
Bracker
| 30
See
Sunnyside
| 14
