Photo Potpourri: CHAPTER 32004 Memorial Day weekend tornado

On Sunday, May 30, 2004, severe weather moved across central Indiana, spawning tornadoes that touched down in several points on Indy’s South and East sides.

One of those twisters touched down not far from my house near Garfield Park, uprooting trees and destroying nearby businesses such as Cardwell’s Do-It-Best hardware store on Madison Avenue and a Church’s Chicken restaurant at the corner of Troy Avenue and Shelby Street.

The storms also forced an early ending to the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race in Speedway, and Buddy Rice was declared the winner.

I was at home, noticing the strangely dark cloud patterns southwest of my neighborhood. Eventually there was a torrent of rain, but it wasn’t until I heard the tornado warning sirens shortly before the rain that I sensed I might be in harm’s way.

Fortunately, the tornado came through south of me by about three and a half blocks. It wasn’t until I turned the TV on to catch weather reports on local channels that I realized where exactly the closest tornado had touched down.

I possessed only a Canon Rebel film camera at the time. I took it with me as I biked to the damage area and began taking pictures. After using the two rolls of film that I had, I took them to a nearby CVS store to have the film developed and prints made, using the same-day service provided. I then made digital copies of the prints using a scanner I had at home.

The scanned prints were considerably high in contrast; I did not own a sophisticated photo editing system to address that at the time. For this post, I worked on reducing the darks and highlights and pulling out what shadow detail I could. Even then, I could do only a portion of what I wanted to do.

The photo leading off the chapter is the image I felt that best represented the destruction near me. It’s a view of Troy Avenue looking west from Shelby Street in front of Church’s Chicken.

The Indianapolis Star used a five-column version of the lead-off photo on the jump page of the A section first (early) editions of Monday, May 31. I didn’t realize until many years later that the photo came out of the subsequent, city and final makeover editions to make room for story text about the storm and photos by staff photographers.

A business along Carson Avenue (above), across from Good Shepherd Catholic Church, experienced considerable damage. Below, the business owners look over the destruction.

Above and first two photos below: A two-level structure housing Dant Insurance Agency and CPA Michael Mullins at 2920 Shelby Street, just north of Troy Avenue.

Above: Maria’s Pizza, 2930 Shelby Street, boarded up after the storm.

Above and first two photos below: The damage to Church’s Chicken on the northwest corner of Shelby and Troy.

Above: Debris hanging from wires attached to a utility pole on Troy Avenue southeast of Church’s Chicken.

Above and first four photos below: Debris and damage in alleys near Albany Street, a half-block west of Shelby Street.

Several trees are uprooted along Albany Street (above), including this closeup of one of them (below). Albany is three blocks south of where I lived.

Above: A severely damaged tree on East Cameron Street near Good Shepherd Catholic Church.

Above and first three photos below: People assess damage and the repair workload along the property line between Good Shepherd Catholic Church and Emma Donnan Public Middle School on Carson Avenue. In the third photo below, a worker concentrates on repairs to an enclosure on the roof of Good Shepherd.