LBJ Tours Storm-Struck Midwest

Apr. 14, 1965 - President Johnson toured today areas of the Middle West that had been struck by tornadoes and floods. He said it was the will of the nation that “the Government of this good and generous people should be ready and will be ready to assist in every useful way.”

Johnson’s main stop was at what had been the Sunnyside Addition housing development in Dunlap, Ind., south of Elkhart.

He and his party were stunned by the devastation. Where there had been about 200 houses, only one was standing, and three persons had died in it.

The area looked as though it had been shelled by heavy artillery. Most trees were broken or uprooted. Those that stood had been stripped of leaves and branches. 

In most cases, it was hard to discern that houses had ever stood in the area. Twisted, mangled automobiles littered the ground.

Johnson stood on the rubble of what had been a Baptist church and kicked disconsolately at a cinder block. Someone had defiantly tacked a torn and dirty American flag to a splintered piece of plank.

A persistent reporter from an Indiana television station kept asking Johnson for his “impressions.” The President only shook his head sorrowfully.

Later he said, “It’s terrible, isn’t it? Almost unbelievable.”

Twenty-seven to 29 persons, perhaps more, died in that one area of a few acres. Fifty perished in Elkhart County in the monumental windstorm Sunday.

Speaking to a crowd of about 3,000 persons at the Toledo airport before returning to Washington, Johnson said his tour had been “a day of both heartsickness and hopelessness.”“Each of us doesn’t know how lucky we are until we see what happened to our neighbor through no fault of his own,” he said. He added that he had seen “destruction the likes of which I have never seen before in all my life.”

The President said he wanted to pledge that the Federal Government would “do everything conceivably possible under our laws.”

Upon returning to Washington, Johnson formally proclaimed tornado-stricken Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan as major disaster areas.

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