The Blizzard of '77 March 4, 2001 This evening a lot of people have the jitters over the current weather forecast for a whole lot of snow for the east coast. I understand that it's being forecasted as the Storm of the Century. Well, here in Niagara County, we're hoping it will just slide by us to the south and then make its way up to the New England states and not dump a lot of that fluffy white stuff on us. But frankly, I get the jitters when I think about what if we get dumped on too. You see, I experienced the Blizzard of '77 and I still remember what we went through. It started on an ordinary Friday workday in Buffalo, January 28, 1977, around noon. I noticed that downtown Buffalo was having a bit of a weather problem. It had been snowing normally enough before I went to lunch but by the time I made my way back over to the Federal Office Building on West Huron Street, the wind was blowing so hard that I had to grab onto parking meters to keep me from being blown into the street. I could see that the combination of the high wind and more snow coming down could cause a bit of a problem in driving back to Town of Lewiston, where I lived at the time-about 30 miles away. I was on active duty in the Navy at the Navy Recruiting District headquarters in Buffalo and as more of the people returned to the office from lunch and witnessed what I had witnessed, it became obvious that if we didn't leave the office right then and there, a number of us just wouldn't be able to make it home through the snow. Our commanding officer agreed and we were given permission to "secure" early. I was in a car pool with two male chief petty officers and Chief "P" was the driver. By the time we had left the office, we had heard that the Thruway was already closed because of the weather and Chief "P" chose the safest route to get back to the Niagara Falls area-Niagara Falls Boulevard. By 1:00 all of Buffalo was in a panic. Everyone was trying to get home and the storm kept getting worse and worse. The high winds were whipping up the snow already on the ground and you couldn't see more than a few feet in front of you. Many times there were total whiteouts where you couldn't see anything at all except blowing snow. I sat in the back of the car rigid with fear while the two chiefs in the front seat made jokes and laughed, no doubt to bolster my spirits. But I could see what a navigation problem there was as we inched up Niagara Falls Blvd. You didn't know if the car ahead of you was stopped or not and in many cases they were stalled and you had to drive around them without being able to see if there were any cars coming in your direction. But Chief "P" just drove slowly on without incident. We drove and drove in the blowing snow for hours, inching our way back to Niagara Falls. And then we had to come to a dead stop. We were told that there was a huge snowdrift across the road that was too high for even a snowplow to break through it. We had gotten as far as the Bell Aerospace plant on the outskirts of Niagara Falls and by that time it was 6:00 in the evening and we had left Buffalo around noon. It normally would have taken about a half an hour to drive the distance. We weren't the only ones who had been stopped dead in their tracks and we all scrambled around trying to find an alternate route but there wasn't one. All roads were drifted over. We assessed the situation and realized two things right off. First, we needed to call home to let our families know where we were and then we needed to get something to eat. Papa Leo's Pizzeria was nearby so we went there. As soon as the person in front of us got off the pay phone one of us tried to dial home. But by that time, the minute you picked up the receiver you got a busy signal. The phone lines were jammed with calls. We finally agreed that one of us would continue to try to put a call through and to have them call our other two families to tell them we were OK. We eventually managed to make the one call. The pizzeria was packed with stranded people and so what did Papa Leo do? He served pizza to everyone, free of charge! I'll never forget his generosity. The three of us knew that we were stranded for the night so we decided to make the best of it. Across the road nearby was the White House bar, I think it was called, and so we went over there to have a couple of drinks and to spend the evening. It was especially important that they have a TV set because none of us wanted to miss the next episode of "Roots." As the three of us sat up at the bar, I could see out of the front window facing the road and I remember being startled to see someone on skis slowly making his way down the middle of what is normally a very busy road. The wind and snow was whipping around him. But there came a time when we knew that the bartender would close up and so Chief "P" made one more attempt to get us home and we started down another road. We soon found it was also totally drifted over and we realized that we needed a place to stay for the night. Our only hope was a motel back up the road and so we made our way there. The manager came out to the office and told us that he was filled up. But when he realized that our only other choice was for us to sleep in the car in the bitter cold, he told us that he had one vacant room but that it was in process of being remodeled and didn't have any heat in it whatsoever. We gladly took it. (No charge!) Now here's something I didn't mention. All three of us were in our Navy uniforms and because the motel manager might have thought it a bit kinky for two male sailors and one female sailor to rent a single motel room, I just stayed in the car out of sight. But when the three of us went into the room and realized that there was only one double bed, we knew that it would be a VERY crowded bed. Did we take any of our clothes off? NO WAY!! It was freezing in there and all that we took off were our shoes and loosened our ties. But with the three of us in one bed we were able to keep warm enough even though none of us slept very soundly that night. When we got up in the morning, we realized just how cold the room had been. All the snow that we had tracked in on our shoes the night before was still on the floor. Nonetheless, we had gotten some rest and when we looked outside, the sun was shining. The blizzard was over. But then we knew we would have to dig the car out where it was buried under the snow. With the help of a snow shovel that someone had conveniently left stuck in a drift nearby, we got ourselves back on the road. We drove back to the area of Bell Aerospace where we had been stopped originally and went into a simple little restaurant across the road called My Place, I think that was its name. When we walked in, I could see that it was in shambles with tables that hadn't been cleared off. It was obvious that they had been serving customers all night long and we were lucky that they had any food left whatsoever. After I ate my bowl of soggy hot oatmeal, I went back to the kitchen to see if I could be of any help. I found a tired-looking man washing dishes and when I questioned him, I found that he was just a customer like I was who offered to help them out. With that, I busied myself clearing off the tables and bringing the dishes back to the dishwasher. In the meantime the two chiefs tried to find us a way home. By this time it was Saturday, the wind had died down, it had stopped snowing and one of the roads had been opened with a snowplow that allowed us to start home again. Our first destination was to get Chief "K" to his home in Town of Niagara where he lived in military housing. However, we got only as far as the fire hall on Saunders Settlement Road in Town of Lewiston when we were stopped again in our tracks. A snowdrift up ahead had blocked the road and the plows couldn't budge it. We went into the fire hall that was filled with people who had taken refuge there the night before. Everyone looked weary but what was amazing was that the volunteer firemen had already set up a soup kitchen affair and the women of the company were pleasantly serving everybody tasty home cooked food. Free of charge, of course. Chief "P" and I left Chief "K" there at his insistence. He felt he could make his way back home from there, by hook or by crook. Note: He eventually did--by snowmobile. Chief "P" and I then traced our steps back to Military Road that had been plowed out sufficiently. We eventually reached his sister-in-law's house off of Military Road and she took us in. This was Saturday and her husband hadn't made it back home from work from the day before. Later that day he almost stumbled through the door. He was so relieved to be home again. He told all of us what he had gone through to make it home but there was one thing that he said that I felt he exaggerated. He said that as he was making his way down a street on foot, he realized that what he was walking over wasn't just a snowdrift-he was walking over a car that was buried under the snowdrift. I knew that he was exaggerating because you don't just walk up a pile of snow in the road and back down the other side without realizing that there's an entire car underneath! Chief "P" and I had to stay put at their home all day and they put us up for the night. But what sticks in my mind that day is the radio that had been turned on. She had it set for the local radio station WHLD and we heard very little music if any all day long. It was one continual local news broadcast covering everything from the few roads that were open, to what grocery stores still had food, to broadcasts of individuals who needed help. There were people who were out of prescription medication and needed someone to pick up medicine; there were people who were stranded away from home whose pets needed looking after; there were stranded people who couldn't contact their families and there were people in need of medical attention and babies about to be born. And the cries of help went out to those people who had snowmobiles, the only form of transportation with the exception of skis or snowshoes. As I listened to the broadcast I became more and more aware of how local people had already banded together and were helping other people and I was deeply touched. We suddenly became one tight-knit community. By Sunday morning we learned that some key roads had cleared sufficiently enough for Chief "P" to drop me off at my house in Town of Lewiston and then to continue on to his home in Ransomville. He had to drop me off at the end of my street because the road was totally drifted over but I knew I could trudge the distance to my house. Step by step I walked through the deep drifts getting closer to home. But at one point I looked down from where I was at the top of a huge snowdrift and I saw something sticking up out of the top of the drift. It was a car antenna-I was walking over a car that was totally buried under the snow! When I arrived safely back in my own home and found that everything was safe and sound, I almost fell to pieces. I was HOME!! It had been TWO days since we had left the Federal Office Building in Buffalo to make the 30-mile trip home. Two days of fear, frustration, fear, cold, discomfort and a feeling of helplessness. Several days later the AAA tow truck rescued my car from where I had parked it in the K-Mart parking lot-snow had blown up under the car and totally buried the engine. During my conversation with the tow truck driver, I realized just how serious the blizzard had been. He had been given instructions to check the interior of all cars he was to pick up to see if there was anyone in them. At least eight people froze to death in their stalled cars during the blizzard! It made me remember the number of stalled cars that we had to make our way carefully around on our way home. But I also remember something else about that awful drive home. I remember noticing that more and more snow was being blown over the road and causing dangerous deep drifts that we could have gotten stuck in. But the people who lived in the houses along the road tried to do everything they could to help mark the drifts. The most lasting memory I have of that time is seeing the hockey sticks they stuck into the snowdrifts to warn the motorists who were trying to get home. And we were total strangers to them. That's what I remember most about the Blizzard of '77. In my memory it resulted in the greatest example of neighbors helping neighbors, and strangers helping strangers. Everyone was at his best. To paraphrase Charles Dickens in his A Tale of Two Cities; "It was the worst of times; it was the best of times."