OAK LAWN, IL -- Even in the 1990s, retired community newspaper publisher Elmer C. Johnson was still lamenting the day he left his camera at home, missing an opportunity to photograph the legendary aviator Charles Lindbergh.



The young freelance photographer had gone to Chicago Midway Airport to see Lindbergh after the aviator's daring solo transatlantic flight in 1927 from New York to Paris. Elmer, along with a few others, got to talk to Lindbergh and even walked him back to his plane. "The one and only thing that my gramps and I ever talked about when it came to photography was literally the last thing he ever said to me," Jeffery Johnson recalled, a third-generation shooter carrying on the family's photography tradition. "Always carry your camera with you."

'Portrait of a Killer,' Oak Lawn Tornado, April 21, 1967 | Elmer C. Johnson After that, Elmer never went anywhere without his trusty Rolleiflex. Elmer started out in the newspaper business laying newstype and shooting pictures for the Chicago Daily News and the Chicago Tribune, as well as contributing humorous columns to the South Side News. In 1945, he was hired as managing editor of the Brookfield Enterprise. By 1949, after buying out a partner's half interest in the newspaper, Elmer and his wife, Genevieve, became the Brookfield Enterprise's sole owners. The community weekly soon became known as "Brookfield's Picture Newspaper" and as "A Picture News-Weekly," prominently featuring Elmer's photographs.

Elmer expanded the Enterprise's focus to hard news, as well as community and government news. The Johnsons went on to acquire the Lyons Times, Summit Valley Times and the Clear Ridge Times, all published under the Enterprise banner.

Oak Lawn Tornado takes shape, April 21, 1967 | Elmer C. Johnson Although the publisher of a number of successful community news weeklies by the 1960s, Elmer still kept his Rolleiflex camera near at hand in case of breaking news or heartwarming human interest shot.

During the late Friday afternoon of April 21, 1967, Elmer was picking up an ad for the Enterprise at the Southfield Plaza Shopping Center at 8715 S. Harlem Ave. in Bridgeview. Looking south down Harlem Avenue, Elmer was astounded to see a tornado forming before his very eyes.

Running 150 feet through the driving rain, Elmer ran back to his car "where he kept his Rolleiflex, a legacy of his days as a freelance photographer 25 years ago," the Chicago American would later recount. "I opened the lens way up and shot. It was moving so fast I kept losing it behind the buildings," Elmer told the newspaper.