Fifty years ago this week Bluffton experienced the sound of “a thousand freight trains.”
That sound was the Palm Sunday, April 11, 1965, tornado.
At 9:45 p.m., it ripped across the rural Richland and Orange Township landscape. It was like no other natural disaster experienced prior or since then in this community.
Had the tornado’s path been one mile north it would have struck the Village of Bluffton. Had it been 600 feet farther north it would have hit 32 planes parked at the Bluffton Airport.
Nine persons in rural Bluffton died in the tornado. They were:
• Mrs. J. I. Luginbuhl
• Mrs. Ulysses Reichenbach, her son, Joseph, and her mother, Eva Clymer
• Mrs. Lillie Manahan
• Emma Dunlap
• Mrs. Merrill Arnold (died in Bluffton Hospital)
• Mr. and Mrs. Adrian Pifer
The tornado touched down at 9:45 p.m. It left a path of destruction and death in a straight line from Cairo to Hancock County.
The hardest hit area was from the Emmanuel UCC to Hancock County Road 29.
The tornado tapered off and ended near State Route 68.
Here are some of the facts concerning the tornado:
• Property damage in the Bluffton area was estimated at $4 million
• 333 buildings in Allen County and 316 buildings in Hancock County were completely destroyed
• More that 20 families had total loss of homes
• Over 40 persons were treated at the Bluffton Community Hospital
• The storm destroyed the Bethesda EUB Church five minutes after the last worshipper left the building following a Sunday evening service.
• The storm destroyed the Emmanuel United Church of Christ on Phillips Road.
Here are some of the aftermath statistics:
• 200,000 hours of volunteer clean-up took place
• More than 5,000 meals were served to volunteers
• Clothing was provided to between 200 and 300 persons
In a conversation in 2013 with Richard Jordan, the Icon obtained this summary of Jordan’s experience the evening of the tornado. His story is one of hundreds that could be told about the event:
“About 10 p.m. Charles Hilty, at the time, the Bluffton News editor, came to my house and told me that he thought a tornado hit. So, we went out in different directions to check.
“I first went to the fire department and Chief Dillman sent me out south of town. Wires were across the road, so I rerouted and arrived at a house next to the then-Richland Grange Hall. It was in ruins as was the house north of it where a woman was supposedly trapped in rubble.
