Dan Cherry holding his book in Rough Draft. Aubrey Gulick | Collegian
When the lights went out, Penny Wingate and her twin sisters were watching “The Wonderful World of Disney.” She remembers their dad ushering them into a small well pit in the bathroom and closing the cover. It was Palm Sunday, 1965, and Wingate was six-years-old.
The Category EF4 tornadoes cut a wide swath of destruction across Southern Michigan on April 11, 1965. Local historian and author Dan Cherry decided to release his expanded account of the tragedy this year.
“It’s an event that a lot of people in this area experienced, but no one ever talked about it because to talk about it was, for some, to relive nightmares,” Cherry said.
More than 15 years after its first release in 2004, Cherry re-released “Night of the Wind.” Cherry’s work, almost double the size of the original book, takes an in-depth look at the Palm Sunday Tornado through the eyes of its survivors.
According to the National Weather Service, the tornado was the fourth deadliest in U.S. history and is estimated to have killed 271 people while injuring 1,500 others across Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan.
Born and raised in Addison, Cherry grew up without hearing many stories about the tornado. The original book grew from a conversation with a friend after church in 1999.
“It was always a topic you didn’t broach,” he said. “I said, ‘It’s been almost 36 years since the tornado. Do you think it’s okay to put together some sort of project on it?’”
Cherry planned for the original work to only span 30 pages, but it quickly grew to a 230-page book after members of the community were willing to share their stories.
While Cherry initially hesitated to publish the work commercially, he said family members of the survivors reached out to persuade him to publish it on a wider scale. Cherry eventually sold more than 3,000 copies of his original book.
When a printer lost the work’s digital copy in 2017, Cherry decided it was a good time to expand the project with information and interviews he had collected since 2004.
Wingate, who initially heard about Cherry’s project on Facebook, decided to reach out and contribute her story after he interviewed her on WCSR.
“When Dan said he was going to be doing a second book and was looking for photos and stories, I reached out and sent him some photos plus some of my memories of the event,” Wingate said.
For several years, Cherry worked on the book slowly, choosing to focus on his marriage and family more than his project. But in 2020, the book began to take up much more of his time.
“During COVID-19, everybody was home. I was working from home, so I didn’t have my commute time,” Cherry said. “I took that commute time that I would have been spending and started working on the book.”
In February, Cherry finally stopped accepting interviews and photos. The books arrived in March.
“It was 2004 all over. I got 10 requests daily for a copy of the book leading up to the date they became available,” Cherry said. “I showed up to my first book signing on March 11 in Hudson, and the line was out the door — and it was out the door for over two hours.”
While many survivors find it difficult to talk about the tornado, Cherry said he believes sharing their story has offered them closure.
“The book has been healing for a lot of the survivors because they held it in for so many years,” Cherry said. “Once they sat down and talked about it, it was therapeutic for them.”
According to Cherry, research was emotionally taxing, but he said that he is grateful for its impact on his life.
“It has enabled me to meet many unique people and people who have gone through horrible times,” he said. “It has given me a deeper appreciation for life.”
For Wingate, she found her experience as a child meant she was not afraid of storms while growing up.
“I enjoy a good spring storm and raised my children to respect the weather,” she said.
