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Weaver, Clara Mae Fink (d. 1965)
Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 1965 Apr 22 p. 1, 7
Birth date: 1902 Jun 3
text of obituary:
Mass Service at Shore Church
GOSHEN, IND.,April 15. — Melvin Gingerich and I sat down in the back row of the Shipshewana-Scott High School auditorium.
At the front right were four bronze caskets containing the bodies of Mrs. Bernice Hostetler, 36, her mother, Mrs. Bessie Hosteler, 65, John S. Yorker, 66, and his wife, Mrs. Jennie Yoder, 60, all of Route 2, Shipshewana.
Opposite were four additional caskets. The dead were Mrs. Iva Nofzinger, 56, Frank Haarer, 71, his wife, Mrs. Grace Haarer, 70, and their son, Noble Haarere, 35, same address.
Here on a rainy Thursday afternoon, April 15, the Shore Mennonite congregation and nearly 1,000 neighbors and friends gathered in a memorial service for eight of its members killed by one of three tornadoes to hit Lagrange and Elkhart counties of northern Indiana, April 11.
WE WERE onlookers — Bro. Gingerich and I — yet participants, wishing to learn and tell the story of Indiana's (and probably any Mennonite community's) worst natural disaster of this century.
“We confess,” prayed Arnold Roth, former pastor of the congregation, “that we do not understand all these experiences through which You are leading us . . . but we draw near to You.”
SEVERAL MILES to the southeast of this school, where US Route 20 jogs around Rainbow Lake, lay a pile of rubble formerly the Shore Church. Just recently a $100,000 brick addition had been completed. A few half-walls, sections of floor, and splintered church furniture remained.
The tornado hit the community one-half hour before the Palm Sunday evening service was to begin.
(Editor's Note: Earlier reports stated that the funnel hit after the service had started, which is incorrect. The deaths resulted when homes in the area were demolished. Among the homes destroyed was that of Pastor Orvin Hooley and family, but they had taken refuge in the basement.)
We approached Titus Speicher who was awaiting the funeral procession. “My sister died this morning,” he volunteered, referring to Mrs. Mable Mishler,60, the ninth of the 275-member Shore congregation killed by the storm.
He told us an automobile was thrown into the cemetery and that 95 percent of the tombstones had been strewn across the property.
Mr. Speicher, owner of the Lagrange Monument Works, was called to replace the stones. 'i stayed to dig gravels last night,” he added.
IN THE FIELD beyond the church yard, Mennonite and Amish volunteers continued to pick bricks, corrugated iron, chickens, and house furnishings, from the area. Fires consumed piles of twisted lumber. An oil tank rested in the middle of corn stubble.
The eight caskets were lowered.
When we left the church we drove slowly west on Route 20. One collection of debris by several torn tree trunks marked the house where Leroy and Florence Yorker of Topeka (Forks Church) were visiting Willis and Grace [sic Grayce] Bontrager of Shipshewana (Forks Church). All four were killed. The two wives and a friend had been practicing a church trio. The friend sought refuge in the basement and her life was spared.
A mile west a Red Cross station coordinated the clean-up efforts. To the right a group of Amis were already laying cement blocks.
THIS TORNADO, which cut a one-fourth to one mile wide swath, to the east of the other two storms, arrived about 6:30 Sunday night. It entered Elkhart County north of Nappanee, inflicted severe but scattered damage until it reached the southeastern corner of Goshen, then hopped over the Goshen General Hospital, Goshen College, and a large Goshen residential area, but the fairgrounds . . lifted again, then ripped at ground-level through the Shore Church community in Lagrange County.
”I'll be burying 16 bodies. No, it's 17, now that Mrs. Mishler died,' reported Funeral Director Richard Miller (Middlebury, First Mennonite Church).
This funnel made its gravest impact at the Midway Trailer Court on Route 33 between Elkhart and Goshen. Eighty percent of the homes in this large park were demolished. Minutes after the impact, rescue squads, ambulances, station wagons, and police cars began carrying the dead and injured into the Goshen General Hospital. Later, J. B. Shank of Goshen College offered High Park Dormitory. Soon it too was filled with tornado victims.
Ten residents of this one trailer court had died, as of today.
Bro. Gingerich stopped the car at a point further northeast, but in the same line of destruction. Here at the Jefferson School community of Route 15 the funnel demolished the new residential area, plus another trailer court operated by Earl M. Lehman (Goshen College Church). As the ominous clouds formed Sunday evening, Lehman called his neighbors to join him under a Route 15 bridge.
Up the road a house was thrown on top of a passing car killing Mrs. Myron (Jean) Krehbiel, 28, and her five-month-old son, Timothy. Myron is pastor of the Warren Street Mennonite Church, Middlebury. The first service in their new church the Pleasant Oaks Mennonite Church, was to have ben held on Easter Sunday. Instead the first service was the funeral of Mrs. Krehbiel and infant son.
WE PROCEEDED westward to the area damaged by the third tornado. First we viewed the wreckage where Route 15 crosses US-20. Seven were killed here. Hedgerows and woodlands were defoliated or flattened. Here a house roof was torn, there a farm leveled, here a house apparently exploded, there a mile of no buildings intact.
This western tornado entered Elkhart County and killed one its members, Mrs. Merrill (Clara Mae) Weaver, 62, of Route 2, Osceola. Next it ripped into Prairie Street south of Elkhart, just missing several homes of Mission Board and Elkhart Seminary personnel. However, it leveled a large area including the homes of Harold Hartman, Elkhart high school teacher, Dr. Leonard Smucker, Dr. Otto Klassen, and Alden Bohn, all staff members of the Oaklawn Psychiatric Center. All of the families were in the basements of their homes, none was injured.
NORTHEAST A MILE the destruction was worse. The tornado crossed US-33 and rammed into Dunlop, wiping out a 25-block area including the entire Sunnyside Addition, killing 28 people (at last count.)
National Guardsmen admitted our car when they saw the Mennonite Disaster Service badges. The acres of wreckage lay before us.
Two days after the storm, President Johnson came to Dunlap, stood across the street from the rubble of the former Sunnyside Mennonite Church and said, “I have never seen such complete destruction.” Even today, four days after the storm, rescue workers found another body.
The Sunnyside Church lost one of its children, Carolyn Ford, 4, whose parents are members.
OUR TOUR ENDED at the Mennonite Disaster Service headquarters in Dunlap. At the moment they were preparing to move to larger quarters, next to the Concord fire house.
MDS was activated immediately after the tornadoes hit. First the organization gathered food and clothing. In the Goshen College Church are rows of coats, boxes of shoes, and cans of vegetables. As soon as Red Cross and the National Guardsmen cleared MDS, volunteers went to practically every area.
Today more than 200 volunteers were at work at Sunnyside, Midway Trailer Court, and farms in the Wakarusa area, according to Glenn E. Bixler, secretary-treasurr. Carloads of volunteers from out of state have joined local workers.
Just now I read the offer in the newspaper: PERSONS WANTING HELP SHOULD CALL, 875-5134. This is the number of the Mennonite Disaster Service headquarters in Dunlap.
OUR TOUR of northern Indiana has come to a close and I ponder what to write. There are statistics: Killed; Lagrange County 19, Elkhart County, 48; of these 17 were Mennonites. There are memories; the winds sounding like freight trains, the ambulances flashing through the rain, MDS clearing the debris from the Walter Drudge home, the folks sitting quietly in the Shipshewana-Scott auditorium.
But these darker memories are blended with two brighter ones. Shortly after the tornadoes, I assisted the staff of Radio Station WKAM in its emergency communications. Among the calls from pharmacies and doctors offering bales of bandages and cases of medicines came the soft offer from an older woman: “I just wanted to tell you I have three sheets and one pillow case you may use. They are ready now.”
And tonight, after returning with Melvin Gingerich, I chatted with a neighbor who described another funeral in our area, this for a mother and her infant son, “I haven't been to a funeral in a long time,” he said, “that baby was the same age as ours . . . at the close of the service, when the congregation sang 'Praise to the Lord,' I looked up — the bereft husband was singing.”
Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 1965 Apr 22 p. 3
text of obituary:
Services Held For 18 Who Died In Two Counties
Funeral services were conducted in Elkhart and Lagrange Counties in Indiana last week for 17 Mennonites who died as a result of the Palm Sunday tornadoes. Services for an 18th victim were held last Sunday.
A mass service for eight members of the Shore Mennonite Church was held Thursday at the Shipshewana-Scott High School as reported elsewhere in this week's Review. Orvin H. Hooley, the pastor, was in charge, assisted by Rev. Arnold Roth of South Bend, a former pastor of the church, and Dr. Dean Brubaker of the Plato Mennonite Church, Lagrange. A 12-member choir sang a hymn in memory of each of the eight dead.
The same afternoon the Pleasant Oaks Mennonite Church near Middlebury was filled to capacity for the double funeral service for Mrs. Myron Krehbiel, 28, and her infant son, Timothy. The husband and father is pastor of the church. Rev. Vernon F. Miller, Brethren ministr of Goshen, officiated, assisted by Rev.Wilbur Yoder of the First Mennonite Church, Middlebury.
Mrs. Krehbiel was the former Jean Noffsinger, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Noffsinger, Dayton, Ohio.
The services for Mr. and Mrs. Leroy Yoder of Topeka were held Wednesday forenoon at the Forks Mennonite Church, with Donald Yoderand Sylvester Haarer in charge. The following day a memorial service was held at the Honeyville School for Mr. Yoder who was pricipal of the school and had served in th Topeka-Honeyville schools for 35 years.
The services for Mr. and Mrs. Willis Bontrager also were held at the Forks Church, although details are not known.
Services for Mrs. Lester J. (Josephine) Miller, 42, were held Wednesday afternoon at the Griner Mennonite Church. She was visiting at the home of her parnts, Mr. and Mrs. Simon Graber, near Middlebury when it was hit by a tornado. Her parents and a daughter Emily were seriously hurt. The Miller home nearby was also demolished.
The funeral of Mrs. Clara Mae Weaver of near Osceola was held Thursday afternoon at the Olive Mennonite Church. Services for four-year-old Carolyn Jane Ford, who with her parents attended the Sunnyside Church, were conducted Thursday at an Elkhart funeral home by Rev. Leonard Garber, pastor of the church.
Mrs. Mable Mishler of Shipshewana died April 15 in a Fort Wayne hospital of injuries sustained in the storm. Services were to be held Sunday at the Forks Mennonite Church.
Ref. MennObits May 4, 1965 [1]
