Patrice White, Raynham

 (These are excerpts from a letter that M. Patrice White of Raynham wrote to her daughter Judy, who was away at college during the Blizzard of ’78.)
 Hello from Day Four of what people are calling the Blizzard of the Century:
 We can't leave home because there is a penalty of a $500 fine or one year of jail, or both, for unauthorized vehicles on the road.
 Dad and Rich shoveled from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. yesterday. Nine hours straight, with about 10, maybe 15 minutes off for lunch — just to clear out the driveway!!
  The snow, as we looked out the picture window, covered the small section three-rail fence, went straight across the driveway, over to, and then OVER Dad's wagon.
  It was truly a beautiful sight, but a terrible shoveling job because all of that snow has to be lifted so high. The snow was 39 inches at the least and 4 feet at most, of the measurements in the driveway.
 After lifting the snow from a 4-foot depth up to top (of) 6- and 8-feet drifts and piles, I do not know how they had energy for a 9-hour day. When they had one strip clear to within three feet of the road around 3 p.m., I walked over the last 3-foot drift just to get out into the street.
 Others in driveways up and down the street cheered noisily when I “landed” on Orchard Street, because, of course, I did it with much fanfare.
  Rich took off his jacket for part of the afternoon because the thermal sweatshirt, sunshine and exertion has created much body heat. By the time they came in, though, he had the jacket back on, the sweatshirt hood up, etc. It had become dark and chill.
  The day itself, Wednesday, was glorious, with gorgeous blue sky, puffy white clouds, sunshine and no wind. Today is nice, too.
 Many are walking to B.P.M. (Brockton Public Market). Some have boxes on sleds.
  When snowmobiles go by, we cannot see them because they are so low and the drifts are so high, but we can hear them. I regret having no film, because this storm will be famous and I’d have liked to have had some pictures. Grrrrr!
 Our police radio has been interesting. WRLM (radio) has done a super job by keeping a call-in show in progress. For instance, families with babies, who were without milk, would call and soon a snowmobile or a four-wheel drive truck or a horse would be doing the necessary delivering.
 Tony used his bucket-loader to help an ambulance get to an Elm Street home last night. Police had to accompany him because he had no headlights.
  Ray and Bev and their kids have built an impressive fort.
  Jody was taken by cruiser to the Longmeadow Nursing Home yesterday, where she works part-time. They brought her home on a snowmobile.
  The National Guard brought Rosemary home yesterday, from BPM, and picked her up at 7 a.m. Only she and the manager are working the store. The refreshment section has not closed yet. Boys are on the market roof, clearing the snow.
 The flat roof on the Pet Shop next to the market collapsed earlier this week.
  Good and bad stories. Joe S. is working at that store today because people are causing damage and looting. But one policeman took home a couple of puppies to care for them until the store can open again, and someone else took a bird home, to give it temporary shelter.
  Most of the animals that survived are in the bank next door and one young man has stayed there with them.
 We have not lost our power, so we have not been inconvenienced. Schools let out early Monday, so I picked up the necessities, like bread and milk, before I came home.
  We have made popcorn and been relaxed at night. Rich had three interviews scheduled for yesterday, but of course they have to be rescheduled.
 When he was shoveling, Rich had a miraculous escape. Gram is convinced that her constant prayers saved him. Pratt’s telephone wire pulled out of their house while Rich was shoveling near the street.
  As it fell, a car went by, drove into it and snapped it at Rich. It left quite a mark on Dick’s heavy work gloves that Rich was wearing, and it took the shovel from his hand!! Had it slashed a foot higher his face would have been wrecked.
  What Dick thinks is so horrifying is that the insulator was still attached to it. If that had made contact with his head, he’d probably have been killed!
 Imagine...it had taken them hours to get that close the street and then, to have it fall and a car go by RIGHT THEN! I believe God was taking care of Rich.
  Gov. Dukakis was just on, extending the state of the emergency. Gram got a paper on Monday, but we have not had a paper or mail for four days.
 Frank T. couldn’t get back to Raynham from Boston, so he slept at the Park Plaza Hotel, paying $10 for a cot. The next day he went back to Fisher College with two girls who live there. He’s sleeping there, on a couch, eating for free and having a very good time. He’ll probably be able to get a bus on Friday, and he’ll have good stories to tell.

Dick Bergeron

 (This letter comes from the Caritas Good Samaritan Medical Center newsletter in February 2003 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Blizzard. At the time of the blizzard, Goddard and Cushing hospitals were separate.)
 Every so often Mother Nature reminds us that she is still a force to be reckoned with.
 (When) she zapped the Northeast with the Blizzard of ’78, like so many traumatic events, individuals are quite likely to retain vivid memories of where they were, what they were doing and how they coped with the situation.
 Caritas Good Samaritan Medical Center went by the name of Cardinal Cushing Hospital back then, but a number of current staff members who were there as well as many who were at the neighboring Goddard Hospital, after a quarter of a century now, share their memories with us.
  Then-26-year-old staff pharmacist Jimmy B. remembers awakening on Tuesday, February 7 and looking out at the parking lot at Madrid Square and seeing only the tops of automobile antennas.
  Trudging through swirling gales and mountainous drifts on Oak Street, he made it to work and was the only pharmacist on duty until late Tuesday afternoon, yet he was able to distribute all of the unit dose medication carts to the 275 bed hospital until help arrived later that day.
  Many still refer to this storm as the “Blizzard of the Century,” as it lasted approximately 33 hours and dropped over 27 inches of snow. Strong winds, however, severely restricted vision and caused mammoth drifts paralyzing traffic and littering highways with abandoned vehicles.
 Mary Jo Feresten (case manager) was transported in the back of a pick-up truck. During her four day and night shifts, her husband frequently called to see if she remembered that she had a husband and three kids.
  Judy Goldberg (endoscopy secretary) remembers being transported to Goddard Hospital via Army truck and police cars. She also told of visitors who were stranded at the hospital for days and ended up as volunteers feeding patients and running errands. She especially remembers a blind girl who could not get home and volunteered by answering phone calls.
  Then there was Dr. Gray, who cross-country skied from Canton to the hospital to perform surgery on an accident victim injured on Route 27.
  Nurse Mary Pelaggi Scabellizn worked the entire week and remembers patients arriving by ski-mobile and sleds to the Cushing. Food, blood and supplies were flown in by helicopter. Remember, this was the pre-SUV era and 4-wheel-drive vehicles were scarce.
  Dottie Lewis, a nurse, was called in and arrived by Ski-do and worked in the emergency room, SCU and ICU for three days, sleeping on a gurney between shifts.
  Payroll manager Lorraine Peterson trudged to work through snow so that employees would get their checks.
  Linda Pulsifer, patient accounts, was stranded at her parents’ house for days coming from work.
 Jimmy B. reminisces: “As days progressed we continued to work long shifts, yet the camaraderie of employees from department-to-department grew stronger ...
  It was a week I will never forget.”
  Twenty-nine people died in Massachusetts as a result of that storm.
  We were family then and we are family now. Let it snow.

Brad Bashner
Hometown: Brockton

 I was 8 and lived in Canton at the time of the Blizzard of ’78.
  I remember being sent home from school around 11 a.m. or so.
 As the day went on, my family looked out the window and we were amazed at the snow blowing around.
  I remember my father opening the front door to let our dachshund “Drums” out to answer the call of nature.
  Well, Drums stood less than a foot tall, but he had the power to jump up on to the snow bank that was inches from the door. It was less than five minutes before my father had to climb the snow bank and rescue the poor dog.
  It was then that my father climbed back “down” into the house off the snow bank that a wall of snow slid into our hall way. It was pretty funny seeing someone use a snow shovel inside a house!
  My older sister had a CB radio in her room. Back in the 70s, I think everyone had a CB radio. My mother was involved with a citizens group called the South Shore React, which was a group of CB users that helped people out with many problems.
  That group was put to the test when many motorists were stranded on Route 128 in Canton because of the snow. I remember my mother telling dozens of people to make their way to Morse Shoe on Route 138 in Canton, which is now the corporate office of Casual Male. As I recall, the cafeteria at Morse Shoe was opened up as a shelter for some of the motorists.
  After the snow had stopped on the second or third day, my mother got a ride on a snowmobile and went to Canton Town Hall to volunteer for the people that were stranded there as well. I wanted to go, but I was too young. I think I just wanted to ride on a snowmobile.
  My two older sisters at one point volunteered at the Massachusetts Hospital School in Canton the previous year. Well, they both walked all the way down York Street, turned left on Randolph Street and went to the Hospital School to help out there. I think they were there for the better part of the morning and afternoon.
  My brother and I had a blast playing in the snow once we dug a tunnel through the snow bank at the front door. The snow man we made stood in the same spot for almost two months before finally melting.
  Amazingly, we didn’t lose power. No one in the neighborhood did.
  Lastly, I remember going back to school a week later. My third-grade teacher at the Hansen School, Mrs. Haddad, had made a sign out of purple construction paper, which read “Phew, we made it!” Best week off of school that I can remember.

Donna Ryan, East Bridgewater

 My father, Don Smith, of East Bridgewater, was stuck on Route 128 on his way home from work. The contractor said he wouldn’t pay my Dad and his partner if they left early because of the snow.
  In these days before cell phones, Dad was getting very nervous thinking no one knew where they were or how desperate things were getting.
 They must not have had on the right radio station, because they heard nothing of the massive rescue effort on their behalf.
  Eventually, he and his friend, Henry, were rescued and brought to the cinema in Dedham, then to Hillary’s restaurant where they were well cared for.
  Ham operators were relaying phone calls to anxious loved ones throughout the night on behalf of the marooned commuters. My Mom got hers around 3 in the morning and spent worried hours shoveling a space in the driveway should Dad manage to get home.
  None of us kids were at home anymore but were very worried as the news grew more and more dire.
 The next day, Dad decided things were going nowhere fast. He didn’t realize how paralyzing the blizzard had been for everyone. So, being an old-time, self-reliant Yankee, he decided to hike home on his own.
  We saw him on the Channel 5 TV news asking a state trooper something. After what seemed like forever, we got a call from the state police stationed where the highway and Route 18 meet.
  No one was allowed on the road unless they had a four-wheel drive so my brother-in-law went to get him in his truck and finally Dad came safely home.
  At one point, he said, plows came down the highway three abreast and he had to dive over the embankment to save himself. His friend who had decided not to hike home, said he wished he’d had gone with my father because a day or two later, rescuers started bringing in bodies.
  One of the highlights of the blizzard’s aftermath for me happened just after the first plow was finally able to make it up Route 27, Franklin Street, in Whitman.
 Right behind the plow, flew a team of sled dogs going like Santa Claus. I had the kids and the husband run to the window because I KNEW we were never going to see that again. But by the time they rushed to look, the team was almost out of sight, they were going so fast.
  So, as much a people complain about the snow now, things could be worse; they could be seeing sled dogs.

Jan Marchionda, Brockton

 First of all, we thanked God that we never lost our heat or electricity. I don’t think anyone knew just how bad it was going to get.
  I worked at East Junior High in the cafeteria. Our manager knew that all the other schools were getting dismissed but didn’t tell us until all of the work was done. As a result I almost didn’t make it home.
  Upon reaching East Ashland Street hill, cars were skidding backwards so I took a right towards the old Bargaineer and still had a hard time making that incline. I finally made it home slipping and sliding all of the way. My husband worked in Boston at a supermarket, and I told him to go to my mother’s house to stay, but he insisted on coming home to Brockton.
  The car had a bad tire. I don’t know till this day how he made it back here. Yet a couple of days later he went back on the road to work and was stopped by the police. They told him he wasn’t supposed to be one the road.
  He had the keys to the store and said people will be needing milk and bread, so they let him continue on his way. We lived on a dead-end street, which hadn’t been plowed, so my husband made his way down the street and saw a large front-end loader and asked the man when our street would be done? He said, “They’re only doing the main roads, but I have some time now.” He cleaned it as clean as a whistle.
 We had a toboggan so my husband took the kids to the old Fernandes (market) on Oak Street, and asked the neighbors if they needed anything?
  I remember people being kind to one another even if you didn’t know who they were.
  The snow was so high that when you looked out your window, you couldn’t see the street. The kids loved this storm as they had no school for many days. Such are the fond and sometimes scary memories of the big one of 78.

Pat Santilli, Brockton

 My memories of the blizzard of ’78: What A BLAST!
 I love winter and snow and personally cannot get enough of either.
 I remember, best of all, not being able to go to work for three wonderful weeks!
  I remember walking to my friend’s house on Spring Street from my house on Newbury Street using the alleyway beside the old A&P (grocery store) and climbing the hill there, where there was no hill, only to discover that when my foot sank, I was walking on top of a car.
 I remember partying with my friends who lived in the Village.
 I remember worrying about my parents who lived in Bridgewater, and being happy that I could go a few weeks without that mandatory visit.
 I remember no traffic on the roads and everybody getting along.
 I remember my friend having to be lifted over what seemed a 50-foot snow bank by the fire department to get to the hospital to deliver her beautiful baby boy.
 I remember it taking at least two weeks for my street (Newbury/Highland) to be plowed out, by the National Guards no less, and them still having a hard time finding places to put the snow and my friends.
 I remember bringing them cups of hot chocolate and letting them into our homes to warm up.
 But mostly I remember what a giant-sized BLAST we all had. Oh, that it would only happen again.

A passer-by watches youths slide down on a snow pile in a Brockton parking lot.

Mark R. Duhamel, Brockton

 Boy, do I remember the Blizzard of ’78. I was working in Needham that day and at the end of every work day, we all headed back to the main office in Watertown.
  Well, by the time I got back, the snow was really coming down. I had to make my way back home to Brockton.
  I think it took me around three hours to go down Route 16 to Route 128 , where I made it to just after the East Street off ramp in Dedham. Traffic was at a dead stand.
 There I spent the night trying to sleep in my 1969 Volkswagen with no heat.
  The next morning at the sign of the first light, I forced opened my door to see flocks of people heading up the other side of the highway. I made my way through the snow across the median strip and followed the crowd to the Dedham Cinema, where I spent the next 24 hours.
  While there, we were fed by the Red Cross. Finally, on the third day, we were put on a National Guard truck and brought to our respective towns.
  It wasn’t until all the highways were cleared that we boarded a National Guard bus and drove up and down the highway looking for our vehicles.
  You see, Route 128 south was where all the cars were stranded. So once they cleared Route 128 north of snow, they pulled up the guard rail in the median strip and towed all the vehicles onto the northbound side. This I was told when I found my VW on the other side of the highway.
  And that is why I will never forget the Blizzard of ’78.

Mark Duhamel submitted these pictures taken on Thurber Avenue in Brockton after the storm.

Beverly Baron, Brockton

 The snow was piling up, the hour getting later, and, of course, no phone call to ease my worried brain.
  My husband was working in Boston and had to drive home to Brockton. Along the way, he, like hundreds of others, became stuck in a snowbank and was stranded on the Southeast Expressway.
 After discovering he would never get out of that white mess, he trekked off to a somewhat nearby gas station, where, timing being everything, a gentleman in a pickup truck was just pulling in for gas and offered to give Jack a ride home. He was from Abington or Rockland; anyhow, he very kindly drove him directly to our front door (it was now about 11:30 p.m.) and continued on to his home.
  The next days the roads were still closed, so Jack put the two kids (ages 8 and 4) on the sled and slid down the hill 1 1/2 miles to Purity Supreme market to get milk and bread. The milkman was not able to get through yet. No heat, no electricity, no phones.
 We lit a fire in the basement fireplace, took out the most perishable foods from the freezer, yelled over to our neighbors who brought over their foods, and we cooked hot dogs, burgers, chicken, steaks, spaghetti, etc. on the fire; played pool and ping pong and darts, sang songs, told lots of stories (real and imagined) and made a great few days out of a really tough situation.
  After a week, when Jack went back with our mechanic to get our car, they could not find it (a white Malibu buried deeply in white), so we had to wait until the snow melted more.
 Thank goodness, we eventually found the car; heat and electricity returned, phones finally became useable, and life returned to normal.
 And we all were left with the most beautiful and fun memories of a most challenging event.

A lone truck drives on Route 24 in this view from the Pleasant Street overpass in Brockton after the storm.

Jean Crowley, East Bridgewater

 I remember the stillness — so profound and unbelievable. I don’t recall anything like it. It was almost eerie!
 In ’78, I was living in Randolph and I was a nurse at Milton Hospital. My husband had a gas station/towing/plowing business in town, so on Feb. 6 he drove another nurse and me to the Holiday Inn where a van that was dropping off some night nurses would pick us up and bring us to work.
  We waited, but no van arrived. So, we walked up around the bend and that is when we noticed the stillness. The on/off ramps had not been plowed and only a few plows could be heard on the highway.
 As we stood there deciding what we should do, a Boston police car appeared and asked what we were doing and offered to take us up to Milton Hospital as they were on their way to a Boston Hospital with a young boy who was going for dialysis.
 No cars were allowed in Randolph, only emergency vehicles. We needed passes to get back into town. People dragged sleds to stores for supplies.
 It was some storm!!

A snow plow clears Belcher Avenue in Brockton.

Justin Perrotta, Brockton

 (A calendar kept by J. Anthony Perrotta, school custodian, 3-11 p.m. shift, at Howard School, shows how the blizzard unfolded.)
 2/5 Sunday: Weather prediction - snow flurries
 2/6 Monday: storm
 2/7 Tuesday: 27 inches of snow, on top of Jan 20-21 snow, total 48 inches of snow
 2/8 Ash Wednesday: State of emergency (declared by Gov. Dukakis)
 2/9 Thursday: Emergency
 2/10 Friday: Emergency
 2/11 Saturday: Emergency
 2/12 Sunday: Emergency (ABE Lincoln)
 2/15 Wednesday: No School
 Other notes:
 School Entrance: 8-foot drift of snow covered.
 Leaving school 11 p.m. to go home: I carried a heavy comb broom for (sweeping), it’s in the dump now.
 Corner of Oak and North Main: no cars in sight and no plowing done, difficult to cross the street.
 On Saturday morning with a ’64 Volkswagen, tried to go to work to Foxboro post office (my second job, on weekend).
 I reached North Easton Nursing Home on Lincoln Street and had to turn back to Brockton. I was in second gear going and coming.
  Snow got under my floor boards (and) came into the car so heavy (that) my foot pedal became clogged.
 I got the drift of it and decided to stay home.

Emily Gough
Hometown: Bridgewater

 My remembrance is of having the Army Corps pick me and my four children (one an infant) up in a large Army truck.
 At the time I lived on Alden Square up near the (Bridgewater) prison where my husband was a guard and stuck there; a transformer went out and I had no heat.
 I had to help him find the street to get out of the area because I knew approximately where the road was as it was lost under the snow. We were taken to the middle school where I spent the next four days with people they took out of cars off of Route 24, and the National Guard.
  It really was quite an experience. When you looked outside you could see people skiing down the street, snowmobiles delivering food and medicines to people that needed it.
  You really saw the good in people in that period. I still have The Enterprise from that period. My husband wanted to keep it for a remembrance. We have shown it to people here to show them that we were there and how really bad it was. It is something you don’t forget.

Brockton Fire Capt. Kenneth Galligan uses snowmobile with a ski cart in tow as he answers an emergency call when ambulances were unable to travel on the snow-covered roads.

Arnold E. Amirault (SFC U.S. Army — retired)

 I was working in Newton and lived in West Roxbury.
 As a member of the Army National Guard, we were activated. Most of us guys had recently left active duty in different military components.
 We had to use mine detectors to locate fire hydrants in the area surrounding Fenway Park as there was no plot map to locate hydrants.
 The two main plasma blood delivery points for hospital surgeries were from helipads at the old Nashua Registry of Motor Vehicles building and at the Red Cross Building across from Fenway Park.
 We had to wait for the chopper to deliver the cash payroll in the Fens at about 2 a.m. in back of the Museum of Fine Arts to have the troops paid. It was an unsafe area, and we were unarmed.
 Glad we were not mugged.

Ira Gilman
Hometown: Brockton

 I remember living in an apartment on Forest Avenue when the snowstorm hit and I was working at a gas station pumping gas on Montello Street (Al’s) near the Avon line.
 I just got off shift and could not make it home because the snow was so deep. When I called my mom and told her I couldn’t make it home, she told me to come to her house on Kathleen Road.
 I parked out in front of the house and could not make it to the driveway so I drove on the front lawn though the hedges and the snow plows did not see my car. I had a Firebird at the time. They came by and buried it and we could not dig it out for two weeks. It had 20 feet of snow on it; they were using front-end loaders at the time.

A front-end loader from clears Ward Street in Brockton.

Hadrian D. Daniels

 I was 8 years old in ’78. I remember my mom was a nurse at the VA Hospital in West Roxbury.
  The snow kept coming down; there was no way for her to get to work.
  I remember seeing military vehicles coming down my street.
  The National Guard was sent to pick my mother up to take her to work.
 They needed all emergency personnel at work.

Arlene Urban

 My husband had to drive home from Bridgewater where he worked — only arrived with help from police department and snowplow.
 I managed to get to a store on South Main Street for groceries before roads closed off and had to push the car into the driveway
 The streets weren’t cleared off for a week or so and we got rides to an A&P on Main Street with National Guardsmen.
 Your historic front pages on Thursday, Nov. 11, 1999, gave a good story of the storm. Was it a record snowfall from 1900 to 1978? Worst of the century I believe.

Two days after the blizzard, Brockton residents walked on Forest Avenue in Brockton, near the entrance to Brockton High School.

Deborah Jefferson, Abington

 As a lifelong South Shore resident, the Blizzard of ’78 is often recalled by many. I have heard countless stories of peoples’ adventures, so much so, that I feel as if I missed out on such a memorable event. You see, I delivered my third baby at noon on Feb. 6, 1978 at the Brockton Hospital. Later that afternoon as I was in my bed overlooking the parking lot, I could heard the sound of the wind and the screams of the people who were trying to walk either in or out of the hospital.
 My son is turning 30, so the mention of his birth being the “day of the blizzard of ’78” has less and less significance after so many years, particularly because there’s a new generation that has no frame of reference.
 I would say the most often asked questions regarding this event was: “How did you get to the hospital?” and “Did you go to the hospital when the blizzard was forecast?” In this day and age it seems incredulous that we could leave Duxbury at 6:30 a.m. unaware of the impending storm!
 My healthy baby boy was such a precious gift, indeed. And I could never have known I would be cooped up in my hospital room with no visitors, no gifts, no flowers, and the only thing to watch on television was Gov. Dukakis wearing his sweaters. Whenever I talked with anybody on the phone all they could talk about was the storm and, of course, I could not imagine how huge an event I was missing. I was feeling a bit of the “baby blues” because there could be no visitors to exclaim over my beautiful baby boy! Within a short time, the only food for the patients was what was in the hospital’s pantry. They started to reuse the babies’ blankets by turning them over because there was no laundry delivery. Doctors and nurses that were there on Monday, the 6th, stayed through; people who had 4-wheel drive vehicles were stopping to pick up people to transport them to and from the hospital. There were people being relayed from Route 128 to a Howard Johnson on the expressway then to the hospital or other drop-off places. There was certainly a sense of camaraderie which speaks volumes of how far down human nature has come in the past 30 years.
 By Feb. 8, the sun was shining so brightly, the reflection off the snow actually hurt your eyes. My bed was next to a window overlooking the parking lot and I noticed a large dark shadow “hovering” outside. I hopped out of bed and saw a helicopter with a red cross, landing in the parking lot, people were rushing from the helicopter under the propellers with boxes also marked with red crosses (blood), to the ER. It looked just like the opening of the TV show MASH.
 Most people have a positive story of old-fashioned neighborliness. People helping people and practicing pioneer skills to keep themselves fed and their homes warm and accessible. At least I don’t have a story of an unattended pioneer-home birth in an unheated, dark house. But heck, we would have had plenty of melted snow to boil!

Gov. Michael Dukakis meets with town officials in Marshfield to assess the damage following the blizzard.