Looking Back on the 20th Anniversary of the Blizzard of '78
January 18, 1998, article two

PIX#1 - Got a problem with your roof? Well, the Blizzard of '78 sure was the time to check it out since you didn't need a ladder. Just walk right up a snowdrift In some places in Ohio, 15 ft. drifts were reported. The National Weather Service in Toledo reported that the Blizzard was the worst winter storm since records have been kept. Snowdrifts, of course, are the result of the wind blowing the snow. Toledo Express Airport recorded gusts of 55 mph and wind speeds of 100 mph were clocked on the lakefront near Cleveland.

PIX#2 - This fellow is standing atop a snow drift at Hamlin's Corner near Arcadia during the Blizzard of '78. Notice how close he is to the transformer on the utility pole. A little-recalled aspect of the Blizzard is the amount of agricultural damage it caused - $60 million in Ohio. Livestock deaths and the dumping of milk and other dairy products due to snow-choked roads dealt a severe blow to our state's leading industry. Even five days after the Blizzard, only 40 percent of the roads in Seneca County were passable.

An eight foot snowdrift covered US 23 North. Hospital employees went to work via snowmobile. Travel by automobile was banned. Shotgun toting police patrolled Main St. on foot.

It was "The Blizzard," the winter storm that clobbered Fostoria and much of the Midwest 20 years ago in the early morning hours of Thursday, January 26, 1978. The winter of 1977-78 was already a harsh one and the blizzard let loose another 14 inches of the white stuff.

The blizzard laid a heavy burden on city services. Safety Service Director Ron Reinhard was on the Fostoria Police Department. He lived in the south end then and tried to get to work.

"I remember I woke up that morning and I didn't know it had snowed," recalled Ron. "I tried to walk to the City Building and I got stuck in a snow drift. I clawed my way out. Finally, I met a snow plow at Lytle and South Main Streets and got a ride downtown."

It was the last Ron saw of his home for three days. He spent his nights sleeping on the floor of the Police Department.

Anyone who experienced the blizzard recalls that for two or three days, automobiles were rendered useless. In fact, Mayor Peeler banned non-emergency traffic throughout the city. Ron said that several residents who owned snowmobiles volunteered their services and vehicles to the Police.

"A lady called from Arcadia. She needed an insulin prescription real bad," said Ron. "She usually got it filled at Edison's Drug Store (WFOB today). She wanted to know if anyone would volunteer to pick up her insulin and deliver it.

"I was working with Dave Spangler and I had driven snowmobiles before. Everyone was banned from driving and 12 is a straight road. I cranked that baby up to about 80 mph with Dave on the back. Dave had never been on a snowmobile before. He leaned over and said, 'Ron, do you think you can slow this thing down?"

Eight or nine downtown businesses were looted early in the blizzard and officers were assigned to patrol downtown on foot carrying shotguns.

"I remember walking downtown and being so darned cold," said Ron, "but you couldn't get around any other way."

Some folks (like Ron) might still have a copy of the Review-Times Winter 1977-78 Special Edition of Feb. 11, 1978. On the front page is a photo of Ron and fellow officer Dick Smith on a deserted Main St. just south of the Flower and Gift Shop with drifts up to the tops of the parking meters.

Sometime later Ron heard from an Atlas/Cummins sales representative who had seen that photo in a newspaper in Argentina! That photo ran in newspapers in 17 or 18 countries. You could say the blizzard precipitated a lot of publicity for Ron and Dick.

"It was sure different not to see cars on Countyline St.," recollected Linda Feasel. She and her husband, Paul, now owners of Image Photo, had walked over to Paul's parents and then headed to the Great Scot store on Countyline to lay in some supplies.

With automobile travel forbidden, walking was the primary means of transportation. Normally, several thousand cars and trucks use Countyline daily. It must have been an eerie and silent sight indeed to see them replaced by pedestrians.

Following the blizzard, 8 year old Angie (Miller) Gillett was given a school assignment to draw a picture of her experience during the storm.

According to her father, Don Miller, "So she drew a picture of two heads sticking out of a blanket by a big fireplace with the fire going. The teacher asked her who that was. Angie said, 'This is me and this is my dad.' The teacher said, "Well, where's your mother?' She said 'Oh, she's out getting the wood."

Kaubisch Memorial Public Library Director Doris Ann Norris awoke to a "real strange noise."

"I couldn't believe it," she said. "It was a car trying to go around the corner and got hung up on the curb in the snow. I called Dan (McGinnis, then library director) and said, 'We're not going to open are we?'and he just laughed."

The library was closed until the following Wednesday.

Several days before that, Doris Ann went to the library on foot to check on the building itself. While she was there she watched two junior high school girls struggle to get a box over the five foot pile of snow in the middle of Perry St.

They came to the library door and gave Doris the box which was full of overdue library books, books that were due in August. Doris Ann figures that their parents made them clean their rooms to relieve blizzard boredom and the books were perhaps unearthed then.

Alberta Hyte lived in the Whitegate condominiums on West Ridge Drive. Power and heat were out and a neighbor went around and suggested that they all cluster in one of the larger condos for warmth.

So everyone cleaned their refrigerators and enjoyed a very large chef salad dinner by candlelight. The next day's lunch consisted of vegetable soup cooked on a Coleman heater. Alberta and her neighbors set up card tables and waited out the blizzard playing bridge and poker.

After two days without electricity and with provisions running low, the Whitegaters gave a hearty cheer when Dr. Anvari pulled up on a snowmobile and volunteered to make a run to Kroger's for groceries.

"Everyone helped out and it was great," recalled Alberta. "When you look back, it was fun, but I wouldn't want to go through it again."

Fay Sweeney, director of the Fostoria Red Cross, recalled that the snow drifts around her house were so high and packed so hard, you could walk right up to the roof.

She also remembers, "The wind - I could hear this roar. It started at five o'clock Thursday morning and lasted until eight on Friday night. For a long time, whenever I heard a train in the winter I would think, 'Oh no, the blizzard is back."

The director of the Red Cross in 1978 was Ernie Duffield. The Red Cross operated out of its Tiffin St. location. Hundreds of people without utilities were given shelter in private homes. Volunteers in snowmobiles and four wheel drive vehicles took heart attack victims, pregnant women and others in need of medical attention to the hospital.

Speaking of Don Miller, he was living on West Ridge then and one of his neighbors had recently had open heart surgery. The man's wife called to say that her husband was experiencing chest pains. Don and five or six other fellows removed a closet door and transported the mane on it through four foot snow to Van Buren St. where an emergency vehicle was waiting to take him to the hospital.

Helen Kauffman worked in the cafeteria at the Carbon. Since the storm hit during the night, many night shift workers were stranded in factories around town. Helen was needed to help feed those for whom Carbon was going to be home for a few days.

Though she lived only a few short blocks away, "They had to pick me up in a front end loader and take me to work," said Helen.

Though everyone has their own recollections of the great Blizzard of '78, there is a common thread that winds its way through most all of them.

"I remember going to mass that Sunday," said Doris Ann. "St. Wendelin was the only place that had church. So there were a lot of people there, a lot of non-Catholics, too. I probably had a greater feeling of community right after the blizzard than I ever had in Fostoria. You'd walk to the grocery store to pick up something for some of your neighbors. Everybody was really friendly. We survived."