#tbt - A blizzard, a baby and "our better angels" : remembering the January 26, 1978 Blizzard

It was a nail-biting drama the likes of which we had never seen. And the worst part?

Most of us were forced to play a role in it.

If you were in the Middletown area -- or the Midwest, for that matter -- on Thursday, January 26, 1978, then you know we’re talking about the storm-to-end-all-storms:

The Blizzard of ‘78.

Upholding its mission to report the news in a timely manner, The Middletown Journal recorded many aspects of the fearsome event in a remarkable edition it published on the day the blizzard occurred. Its banner headline didn’t mince words:

“Area Paralyzed”

“This was the big one,” Staff Writer John Leach wrote in a front-page, above-the-fold story. The “bona fide blizzard” which paralyzed the Middletown area and the Midwest that fateful Thursday was “the worst storm to hit the area in the IOO years the weather service has been keeping records,” he continued.

Actually, Mother Nature started looking scary the day before.

According to Leach, “The rain that fell Wednesday froze as hard as the pavement itself when winds gusting up to 60 miles per hour and temperatures dropping below zero whipped through Ohio and nearby states early Thursday. Major thoroughfares were transformed into ribbons of ice.”

Catastrophe arrived in many forms : drifting snow, impassable roads, deserted automobiles, stranded motorists, shuttered factories, businesses and schools, power shortages, homes with no heat and repairmen who couldn’t reach them, mail delivery halted because carriers couldn’t get to work, the closing of the county animal shelter. Even making a phone call was difficult in some cases. The list went on and on.

While most of the news was very, very bad, “the better angels of our nature” populated press reports, too. Surely President Abraham Lincoln, who coined the phrase, would have been very proud of the citizens who put themselves at risk to help others in perilous straits.

Those who came to the aid of an expectant -- and snowbound -- couple were among those angelic beings whom Lincoln would have admired. One of the front-page headlines in the January 26 Journal said it all: “Snowy drama for first baby.”

In the accompanying article, Staff Writer Donna Witte chronicled the adventure of the Shurz Road couple who, anticipating their child’s birth, began a nearly nine-mile trip to Middletown Hospital around 7 a.m. that fateful Thursday. Unfortunately, their journey came to an abrupt end when their vehicle became stuck in a snow drift down the road from their home.

From then on it was high drama, starting with an announcement of their plight over Middletown radio station WPFB.

Battling impassable roads, a Wayne Township ambulance arrived about 45 minutes later as close as possible to the couple’s location, the Journal reported. Squadmen then abandoned the idea of driving to the couple’s car and instead got out to run the remaining half mile to reach the expectant mom, whom they carried to the Dyehouse residence on Stubbs Road.

With labor contractions three minutes apart, a bulldozer was called to clear a way to the hospital, the article continued. In the meantime, squad personnel remained on the phone with Mom’s doctor, who -- we learned the following day -- was Dr. Charles Kresge. He had “started out for the home in a caravan of three four-wheel-drive vehicles. When one got stuck, he transferred to another and reached the house” on Stubbs Road, the Journal reported the next day.

Upon arriving at the residence Dr. Kresge realized “there was time to get to the hospital,” the newspaper noted. He and the squad members carried the mother on a stretcher to a vehicle and made the trip into Middletown.

Recalling the dramatic event the next day, the Journal reported that “A number of babies got an early start on inconvenience yesterday and today, arriving when a trip to the hospital was like a trek through the Arctic.”

Of course, among them was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Cordell Downing Jr. of Shurz Road, who made his long-anticipated entrance to the world at Middletown Hospital shortly after 12:30 a.m. on Friday, January 27, the Journal reported.

It continued : “For a while yesterday it appeared that the first part of the world he would see would be a snowdrift.”

Sources:

Middletown Journal, January 26, 1978

Middletown Journal, January 27, 1978

Library cardholders can access past copies of The Journal and other newspapers on its e-Library, accessible via its website: www.MidPointeLibrary.org

Click on Research Databases>Magazines and Newspapers>Newspaper Archive

Microfilm copies of the Middletown Journal are also available for viewing at MidPointe-Middletown, 125 South Broad Street.

Several photos of the 1978 blizzard and one of the 1918 blizzard in Monroe, Ohio, appear in MidPointe’s Digital Archives accessible through the e-Library at:

http://www.midpointedigitalarchives.org/digital/