Survivors reflect on Palm Sunday 1965 tornado outbreak

Where were you when the Challenger exploded, or where were you during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001?

And while the answers to those questions might be different, they all surround an event in time that no one who witnessed or experienced it is likely to ever forget.

Palm Sunday. April 11, 1965. Sixty years ago.

For thousands of individuals who lived in and around the Howard County area, that day marked their own “where were you when” moment.

Because that’s the day a tornado outbreak swept through 17 counties across the Hoosier State, part of a wider system that produced 55 confirmed tornadoes throughout the Midwest region.

In western Howard County, the tornado wiped out large parts of Russiaville and the town of Alto before striking parts of Kokomo and Greentown, where Kokomo Tribune archives state it killed 10 people.

In all, more than a dozen people were killed across Howard County by the time the system passed, and many others were left with the task of picking up the pieces, wondering what to do next.

These are some of their stories, as told recently to the Tribune.

ALTO

A young mother at the time, Judith Bone was settling down her two daughters to watch television when she began to get a strange feeling.

Even now, 60 years later, she said she can’t explain what that feeling is or why it compelled her to do what she did next.

But after handing her youngest daughter to her husband, Bone announced the family needed to get somewhere safe.

The young mother then hurriedly walked to her bedroom, opened the closet doors and ushered her oldest daughter inside.

“And about the time I got it shut, it (tornado) hit the first time,” Bone told the Tribune. “And all I can remember about that was the screaming.”

That’s because Bone’s husband and youngest daughter were still somewhere in the house, and Bone knew she couldn’t leave the closet floor to go find them for fear of her oldest girl following behind.

Just then, the weather calmed, allowing Bone’s husband and daughter — scared but uninjured — to run to the closet for safety too.

Then the tornado struck again.

When the four finally emerged from the closet, there was debris and shattered glass everywhere.

Bone and her family eventually made their way through the broken landscape of downed trees and power lines to her in-laws’ house, where she was able to begin processing what she had gone through.

“It was just surreal,” she told the Tribune, reflecting on that day. “I’m just very thankful. I wouldn’t want to go through it again in a million years.”

RUSSIAVILLE

At 9-years-old, Allen Bourff wasn’t really paying attention to the weather on that Palm Sunday.

“Lassie” was on the television, and he was too pre-occupied with his cousins and siblings to care.

But then the lights went out.

That piqued the young man’s interest, Bourff — who now lives in Fishers — told the Tribune.

Around that same time, Bourff’s aunt told him and the other children to get into the corner of a room.

“She started throwing blankets and coats on top of us,” he said. “But I got up and said, ‘Well, where is the tornado?’”

Being a child, Bourff thought tornadoes looked like the one from “The Wizard of Oz,” he laughed as he reflected on that day.

“So I was standing at a window looking out, and my aunt said, ‘Look over there to the right.’ So I did. She then said, ‘Look over there to the left.’ So I did. Then she said, ‘Everything in between is a tornado. Get down.’”

Moments later, the tornado struck, sending sights and sounds throughout the house Bourff said he had never experienced before or since.

Doors slammed opened and closed, he said, and the roar of the wind rattled the house.

“And because the power lines were being snapped, you saw lightning everywhere,” he recalled, “flashes of light. And then there were shrieking sounds too. I don’t even know what that was from. Then it all stopped. After that were the moans and cries and the crackling of lights and power lines.”

But nothing prepared Bouff for what he saw when he was finally able to look outside and see the scenery he had known for years completely changed in a matter of minutes.

KOKOMO

After a trip to see his grandparents earlier down in Sharpsville, 6-year-old Rex Hutto was eating his bedtime snack of Cheerios cereal at the kitchen table of his James Drive residence on that particular Palm Sunday.

Just then, he heard his father yelling from the garage for Hutto and his mother to come join him.

“That was back in the day where you didn’t negotiate,” Hutto, who still lives in Kokomo, told the Tribune. “And that obedience saved my life.”

After Hutto — who said he didn’t really know why his father was so startled at the time — and his mother went into the garage, they were led underneath a work bench.

But it wasn’t just any work bench, Hutto laughed.

“My father was an engineer, and he was a master of overkill,” he said. “So when he built something, it was built to withstand nuclear war. So I was in a corner, and then he shoved my mom in over me. Then he got over her so his back was to the garage. And then it hit.”

Boards started snapping in the house’s rafters, Hutto remembered, almost sounding at times like the crack of a rifle.

And then there was just silence.

After a few minutes, Hutto and his family made their way out from underneath the work bench and saw a house that had been heavily destroyed.

But that work bench and a nearby wall remained intact, Hutto said, in what he calls a tribute to his father’s craftsmanship.

“My dad was an amazing guy,” he said, “and his overkill tendency likely saved all of our lives that day. It was one of the many things that gave me a really deep appreciation for him.”