From the Files of the Kosciusko County Historical Society

Editor’s note: This is a retrospective article that runs a few times a month on InkFreeNews.

Information for this retrospective series is courtesy of the Kosciusko County Historical Society.

April 4, 1974 — One person is dead and at least 44 others injured as a result of the tornado that swept across Kosciusko County Wednesday evening, according to State Police Lt. Edward Anweiler.

More than 200 National Guardsmen are assisting 52 state police units today with security, traffic and prohibiting looters, Anweiler said. The National Guard was called by the state police to help patrol the seven northeastern counties of Indiana, which the mad mass of wind ripped through Wednesday.

According to state police, the tornado entered the southwest corner of the seven-county northeast district which includes Kosciusko, Steuben, Noble, Whitley, Elkhart, Lagrange and DeKalb counties.

The Super Tornado Outbreak on April 3-4, 1974, was the worst tornado outbreak in United States history. Within a 16-hour period, 148 tornadoes touched down across 13 states from the Great Lakes to the Southeast. When the storms finally dissipated, 330 people were killed, over 6,000 were injured and thousands more were left homeless. The damage path created by this tragic event covered 2,500 miles across the Midwest with damage costs totaling around 600 million dollars.

In Indiana,  21 tornadoes affected 46 counties. Many of these tornadoes traveled at nearly a mile a minute, and several were visually observed to have multiple funnels. Three F5 Tornadoes touched down in the state, the only time since 1950 that F5 tornadoes occurred in Indiana.

The tornado devastation started in Boone county when a brief F2 tornado touched down around 9:30 a.m. on April 3, 1974. The main event, however, commenced in Indiana later that day at 2:20 p.m. and lasted until 8 p.m. as 20 additional tornadoes ripped through the state.

Among the most destructive Indiana tornadoes was the Monticello tornado. This half mile wide F4 tornado tracked from just southwest of Monticello to north of Fort Wayne, killing 19 people. It had a path length of 109 miles, which was the longest path of any tornado during this outbreak.

Other locations heavily hit by the twister include parts of Fulton, Kosciusko, Noble and LaGrange Counties. Rochester, Talma, Atwood, Leesburg and Ligonier were hit particularly hard. The tornado killed 19 people, with six of those in Fulton County and one in Kosciusko County.

April 6, 1971 — Officers of the Kosciusko County Humane Commission revealed yesterday the loss of an estimated $20,000 worth of registered Guernsey cattle due to neglect and starvation.

Chief of Police Eugene Brumfield, who is president of the Humane Commission, and Humane Officer Wilson “Nate” Konkle, said approximately 54 cattle out of a herd of 95 on a farm owned by Dr. James Leffel, of Indianapolis, starved to death when a tenant on the farm apparently abandoned the cattle without feed.

In addition to the cattle, a number of hogs starved in a hog house. Approximately six survived by eating the remainder as they died.

April 18, 1967 — Warsaw school board members last night took several “steps” towards avowed goals of one junior high school and smaller class sizes on the elementary level.

On a motion by Matt Dalton, the board voted to close the Adams Elementary School now located in the junior high school building. The decision was also to transfer 93 junior high school students from Leesburg to Warsaw.

The changes will be made effective with the beginning of the school term next September.

In another step, the board voted on a motion by Dale Tucker to make the Silver Lake and Claypool schools a single administrative unit. At the present time, there is a full-time principal at Claypool and a principal who teaches part-time at Silver Lake.

– Compiled by InkFreeNews reporter Lasca Randels