Together Apart (17 page)

Some teachers, perhaps not realizing the severity of the storm, promptly dismissed school and sent all the children home. Alone or in small family groups, many found their way by following fence lines or the stubbled rows of harvested corn stalks. Others, lost and weakened from hours of trudging through waist-deep drifts, survived through the night by burrowing into hay or straw stacks. Sadly, still others found no shelter of any kind. The Westphalen sisters, ages thirteen and seven, concerned about their widowed mother, convinced the teacher of their school near Rogers, Nebraska, to allow them to go out into the storm. When their bodies were discovered many days later, the younger girl was found wrapped in the older sister's coat.

No one living on the plains at that time was spared from the horror of the storm, be they in safe shelter or not. And no one forgot. In 1914, the last words of O. W. Coursey's dying mother were these—"Son, you will never know the burden that was lifted from my heart the next morning after the Big Blizzard, when I looked out and saw you four older children scampering home over the snowdrifts when I was positively sure you had all perished in the storm."

On January 12, 1940, fifty-two years after the storm, a group of Nebraskan survivors formed the "January 12, 1888, Nebraska Blizzard Club." Over the next several years, the club gathered personal recollections from hundreds of survivors and compiled their stories into a book titled
In All Its Fury: The Great Blizzard of 1888.
Their vision for the book was this: "The January 12, 1888, Blizzard Club wishes to preserve the records of the past because they will help us better to understand the present and the future. Yesterday has lessons for all of us, but tomorrow throws not one ray of light upon the problems of today."

In All Its Fury
was reprinted in 1988 by J & L Lee Books, Lincoln, Nebraska. I found it to be an invaluable resource and recommend it to those who wish to learn more about this tragic storm.

On March 11—14, 1888, another horrific blizzard, the "Great White Hurricane," as it was called, paralyzed the East Coast of the United States, from the Chesapeake Bay to Maine. More than four hundred lives were reported lost.

As my character Hannah might say, "Wild Wind had a wickedly busy year."