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Sunday, 11 April 1965
The county's course is proven from the official record; Liberty Township's share is not shown in it, and this article's work is to keep those two statements separate. The National Weather Service, Northern Indiana, records the outbreak of April 11–12, 1965 as 47 tornadoes and 261 deaths across the Midwest. Its table's St. Joseph County tornado: F3, "NE of Knox to S of South Bend," across Starke, Marshall, St. Joseph and Elkhart counties, path 35.6 miles, 10 deaths — "30 cottages were destroyed and 70 others were damaged along Koontz Lake. 26 homes, one church and one high school were also destroyed. There were 82 people injured. Severe damage took place near La Paz and in the town of Wyatt." Narrative carriers run the track Hamlet and Koontz Lake → La Paz → Lakeville (the high school under construction, LaVille Jr.-Sr. High School) → Wyatt. The night's second county tornado (F4, southeast of South Bend toward Shipshewana, 36 deaths) is county context at pointer size. Conflicts print whole: the injury count stands at 82 in the Weather Service table and 180 in some narrative retellings (conflict C69), and retellings vary the first tornado's rating (F3 in the table; F4 in some carriers) — the variance is noted, not resolved. The assigned test ran name by name and place by place: no carrier read names North Liberty or Liberty Township in the 1965 outbreak; the named damage places all stand east and southeast of the township, on a track that passes east of it. Verdict: the township's share is not shown — assumed in neither direction. Settlers: the Fujita path maps (1970), Storm Data Vol. 7 No. 4, and the town paper for April 1965.