Readers share tales of the Blizzard of ’62

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I was working as a cameraman at WABI-TV. I was a student at the University of Maine and the cameraman job was on weekends. We had done the evening news and had told the people that the storm that had started was probably going to be a big one, as I recall. It became apparent to us later in the evening that we were not going to be able to go home that night.

At that time, we did live commercials for the IGA and for Manichevitz wine. The IGA commercials were done live in a corner of the studio that was a kitchen and the products were set up on the counter with price tags. The wine commercials were done on the same corner with real bottles of wine and plastic grapes. Well, as the storm wore on for that two days, WABI continued telecasting and doing its commercials.

However, we were hungry and started eating the IGA steaks one at a time. Since there appeared to be plenty of wine, we also had a little wine with our steaks. By the end of the second day, the IGA commercial had one steak left, with its price placard, and there was one bottle of wine left for its commercial. We just piled more grapes around the bottle.

Richard Dickson

Hancock

…My husband, Bill, was in the service, stationed at Dow Air Force Base. He, our two children and I lived in Old Capehart on Moosehead Boulevard in the “newer” red brick four-plex housing, with three other families.

The morning after the storm, the three men went to the last unit to get the GI [who lived there] out to help shovel the parking lot and get the four cars out. No one had a snow blower then. Well, he and his family were from the south and he said he wouldn’t come out, so my husband and the other two men shoveled all day, and they put all of the snow behind his car. Needless to say, he always helped shovel snow after that…

Lois M. Farr

Dover-Foxcroft

During the Blizzard of December 1962, I was a freshman at Husson College. I was in Presque Isle, my hometown, visiting my grandparents. When I boarded the Bangor and Aroostook passenger bus that morning, it had already started to snow. The bus made it as far as about two miles north of the Broadway I-95 Exit and could go no further. … Upon my arrival at [my mother’s] apartment I soon learned that she was visiting my grandmother in Bucksport and that they were really snowed in.

The next morning I headed out for Bucksport to get them shoveled out and, high on the priority list, to borrow my mother’s car to get to Millinocket to pick up my girl friend to bring her back to Husson where she was also a freshmen. I walked to Brewer and caught a ride to Orrington. From Orrington to about 5 miles north of Bucksport, the road hadn’t been plowed. I walked on top of the snow (most of the time) the length of the unplowed road. Along the way people would come to their front doors and offered me coffee, soda, snacks and a chance to get warm but I was on a mission. I had to get to Bucksport to rescue my mother and grandmother.

… After a lot of shoveling and pushing stuck cars I finally freed my mother’s car and shoveled them out so they could be mobile if need be. … Off to Millinocket I headed to pick up my girl friend to get her back to her boarding home at Husson College. When I arrived at her house in Millinocket her mother told me she had left about an hour before with a friend and her parents to go back to Husson!!!!!

Wayne B. Hartford

Houlton

Forty years ago, I was nineteen years old and working as a toll collector on the Joshua Chamberlain toll bridge. I worked summers, vacations, and holidays while attending college. I worked the midnight to 8 a.m. shift when the snow came. It looked like the sky opened up and down it came.

I remember working a triple shift, as the other toll collectors couldn’t get to work. I worked many hours during this week as I lived only a block away on Union Street and could walk to work. We were able to get coffee, soups, sandwiches, etc. at Willetts’ luncheonette and store on Archer’s Square. Many parents and kids snowshoed and numerous sleds were drawn across the bridge. It was an exciting time, and I will always remember it.

Herbert Hopkins

Eddington

I was 8 years old in 1962. My Uncle Steve was 14. We always spent a lot of time together fishing, hunting and trapping. It so happened that when the big storm hit, we were at my grandparents’ camp ice

fishing and rabbit hunting. The camp is located on Grand Falls flowage in Woodland (Baileyville). … Back in those days, it was about 4 miles by road or 2 1/2 miles across the ice to hit a road.

When we woke up the morning after the storm, we were completely snowed in. It wasn’t a real problem for us, because we had lots of wood to keep warm, a radio to listen to tunes, and the young minds that thought nothing could harm us. The only little problem that we really had was that we had very little food with us. It was actually quite a joke as far as we were concerned.

As we found out later, our parents didn’t find any of our adventure exciting or funny. In those days there were very few snowmobiles about. They had no way of knowing if we were OK or not. They were very worried that we would try to walk out. They had radio messages sent over the a.m. radio stations out of Calais and Fredericton, New Brunswick, which were the stations that most people around here listened to in those days, warning us to stay put and they would get to us ASAP. We were listening to a radio station out of New York, because that’s where the tunes were.

I believe it was three days before we were “rescued.” Clarence Murphy, from Woodland, had the first snowmobile in town. Our parents got him to come up and get us. Good thing he came when he did. The last day we were out of food. The day before we had expended our box of Cheez-Its that we had been rationing. I haven’t liked them since.

Wayne Croman

Princeton

I remember the blizzard of ’62 very well. I was driving a bus for the B&A Railroad at the time and happened to be off that day. I lived in a camp at Hermon Pond while finishing off a house on Route 2 in Hermon…

We were stranded for three days and were running low on oil and milk. I had my wife, four children, my mother, a horse and a dog at the camp. We had the only phone that you could call out on in the area. Someone said to call the air rescue service, so I did.

The guy that answered said he could fly us out, but I told him that if we had milk and oil, we would be okay for a week. He said he’d work the rackets and call back, which he did. He wanted our exact location and said he’d be there in an hour. A chopper flew over and dropped five cans of oil and five gallons of milk. There was a photographer from Life magazine on board who took a picture of my two oldest sons, myself and our dog.

I skied out to the market to get milk and could reach up and touch the telephone wires. There was no milk or much of anything left in the store and there were people sleeping on the floor and shelves…

Chester Bailey

Houlton

…I was, and had been, a retail truck driver for Footman’s Dairy since 1945. I had seen many snow storms before. That one started with the determination of not wanting to stop…

The driving was like being in a large bag of cotton batting. It was a very tiring day. Anyone can well believe we found very few paths or door steps cleaned off… We never did get any complaints, they were just thankful that we made the rounds. The chains on my truck lasted until about early afternoon when I had to call in to the garage for another pair…

I did make it back and unloaded the truck. Several of the trucks never did make it back. I had only one choice to get home, so I walked down to the old iron bridge when another driver coming in insisted he drive me as near Vine Street as we could get. He did, and then I had to crawl most of the length of the street as the drifts were so deep.

Three days later, only a couple of inches of aerial was showing of our three cars. I continued working till the early ’80s and we have had many snows after, never to compete with that one.

Errol A. Marden

Bangor

During the big blizzard of ’62 I was employed by the Bangor Daily News as a night copy boy and switchboard operator. My employment at the BDN helped finance my education as a full time student at the University of Maine.

I remember the blizzard well. I was working at the Bangor Daily News Saturday evening. Large, fluffy snowflakes started lazily drifting down from the heavens, the temperature was 32 degrees. By mid evening we had several inches of snow and the switchboard was lit up with calls from anxious weather watchers. I phoned the AP weather bureau in Portland for a weather update and was assured the storm was not likely to get any worse and any accumulation would be light.

My wife, son and I were staying at her parents in Castine during our Christmas break from the university. By 9 a.m. Sunday when my shift ended, we had more than a foot of snow and the roads were nearly impassable. The mail crew loaded the back of my VW Beetle with old newspapers for ballast and I headed for Castine. I never got the VW out of third gear and what was normally an hour’s drive became three.

…In order to return to UMaine, a neighbor and I picked up the front of my VW Beetle, swung it around and we proceeded to drive through a narrow, one-way trail to Old Town where our first floor apartment was completely dark inside because snow was above the windows. On New Year’s Day, BDN photographer Carroll Hall took a picture of me sitting on a 4-foot snow bank in downtown Bangor peering through a store window watching a football game.

Rev. Ron Hutchins

Penobscot

…I was home on vacation from my senior year in college. Sunday, my mother (Mildred Flanigan) and I walked a narrow footpath down Third and Cedar streets to get to St. Mary’s Church for Mass. There were very few there that Sunday. The stores in downtown Bangor were closed Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday – unheard of!

It was such a wonderful snow storm (for those of us who did not have to travel or go to work) that I spent the days walking around the city seeing the narrow, impassable side streets, listening to the city silence caused by little traffic and the sound-muffling snow. Today, we would probably be in our houses watching cable, surfing the Internet, playing video games and not even notice the storm.

When I used to teach, I enjoyed making reference to that December storm when reading John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem “Snowbound.”

“And, when the second morning shone,

We looked upon a world unknown,

On nothing we could call our own.

Around the glistening wonder bent,

The blue walls of the firmament,

No cloud above, no earth below

A universe of sky and snow!”

Thomas Flanigan

Van Buren

I could hear my darling, 23-month-old daughter’s cries over the telephone, since her crib was near the nurses’ station. She was 20 miles away in the Castine Hospital, ill with an acute infection, and the other five of us were barricaded in our home. All around us was the snow, snow and more snow. We could not travel on the closed road the eight miles to the nearest store for supplies, let alone drive those 20 miles to see our very sick little girl. It was heartbreaking.

My husband had waded through the chest-high drifts, flashlight in hand, the night of the storm to borrow kerosene from a neighbor while we were so frightened him. When he returned safely, we used the kerosene to ignite a seldom used oil range since our furnace was not working due to a power outage. Therefore, we were relatively comfortable. Our 8-month-old son was kept happy with his canned milk, provided by the same caring neighbor.

After several days of isolation, we were all jubilant when we saw those town vehicles making their way slowly towards our home. There was a backhoe and truck to clear our road. Promptly, we left for Castine.

Our blonde-haired angel was released in good health a few days later and happily reunited with her two older siblings and baby brother. Though it was difficult to hear her cries at the hospital from afar, we knew she was being well taken care of and so were we thanks to some wonderful neighbors.

Irene Atwood

Bucksport

Dec. 31 was the date for our wedding. We lived in Monticello and the storm began there the eve of December 29 and during the night increased in intensity. The next morning only about 3 or 4 inches of our cars was visible in the snow. Since my future bride lived out in the country, the road was not opened to traffic until noon of Dec. 31.

That morning we were quite depressed as we called our minister and he informed us there were 12-foot drifts of snow between the entrance of the church and the street and he was unable to get anyone to clear the snow away. Momentarily the wedding was called off, but the minister came up with a scheme. If we could get the road to my future wife’s home opened he would come to the house and perform the ceremony.

Things began looking up until we received a telephone call from my future wife’s sisters that they would be unable to make it to the wedding, as they were stormbound in Pittsfield. They were traveling from Portland to Monticello by bus and due to road conditions could only make it to Pittsfield where the passengers were put up in a hotel. One of the sisters was to be matron of honor.

To make a long story short, the town plow crew got the road passable for traffic late on the afternoon of Dec. 31. Our best friends were best man and matron of honor, and there were 70 friends to the wedding. Following the reception held at the house, all the friends followed the plow out the secondary road to the main highway.

We were going to Presque Isle for our honeymoon but were unable to get out to the road as the wind had already begun to drift the snow. That honeymoon was spent in my in-laws home and our future had to get better following the Blizzard of ’62.

On Jan. 3, I began the journey back to Fort Dix, N.J. The highway was open only to single lane traffic. From Bangor to Carmel was single lane traffic and cars meeting had to find an open driveway. You might say traffic moved very slowly. This is my memory of the “Blizzard of December 30-31, 1962” and the beginning of a wonderful 40-year marriage.

Dana Jewell

Hermon

Our family had recently moved to Orono from the Midwest. I was 6 years old. My folks were accustomed to winters in Chicago, and assumed they had seen it all. When the snow drifted as high as the roof, and covered the windows, they realized that Maine weather could prove harsher than anything they’d seen in Illinois.

When the storm finally ended, I went outside to try to find our shovel. I didn’t tell my parents, thinking I’d be right back. There was a crust of thin ice just below the surface of the snow that allowed me to ascend the giant drift in our driveway with ease. This would be fun.

I got near the top and the ice floor suddenly gave way. I dropped straight down into the enormous drift. My efforts to stop the fall brought enough snow down to cover the hole. I remember not knowing which way was out. It was quite dark. I started to panic, then, I heard voices calling to me and the sound of digging. Within a minute or so (it seemed like an eternity), my dad had made his way to me and pulled me out.

My mom had been looking out the only window that was not completely snowed over, long enough to see my hat suddenly disappear into the giant drift and call for help. [It was] a brief but profound childhood experience, and my introduction to our powerful, unpredictable Maine winters!

Steve Bost

Brewer City Manager

My sisters and I were enjoying our holiday break from school at the time of the storm, and Grammie Marley was visiting with us during our vacation. … The day after the storm ended, we were able to tunnel our way out of our house, and my mother walked to her work in the dietary office at Eastern Maine Hospital. Her car was buried in our driveway for almost four days.

My big blizzard adventure took place on the second day after the storm. Everyone was still locked inside by the snow, but I was allowed to take my sled and journey to the First National grocery store for ingredients to bake cookies. The store sat at the top of State Street hill. … My memories of the walk from home to the grocery store are still vivid. The sidewalks were as yet unplowed, and everyone who was out was walking down the middle of what was usually a busy thoroughfare.

There were no cars at all, and it was very silent. I remember walking past Miller Drug and not being able to see the building because the snow was so high above my head. When I arrived at the grocery store, I was amazed that many of the shelves were almost bare. Fortunately for my sisters and me there were cookie ingredients still to be had!

The trek back home, towing my sled with the groceries, was just as exciting as the journey to the store had been. It was impossible not to be struck by the silent beauty of the storm’s aftermath. I felt like an adventurer in the Arctic – alone with my sled! Grammie’s cookies were better than ever before; their taste was improved by the adventure that had preceded them.

Karen Marley

Bangor

I had just completed Naval Boot Camp and was awaiting school. I could not get home for Christmas so I was coming home for the New Year. I took a train from Great Lakes to Boston and from Boston to Bangor I took the bus. I decided to hitchhike home to Sherman from Bangor because there was no transportation till the next day, Dec. 31, 1962. It was dark when I left Bangor and I was unaware of the big storm coming. Being in my Navy uniform I caught a ride with a truck to Macwahoc.

There was no traffic and it was really snowing and blowing. At the garage on Route 2 and Route 2A they had a pay phone. I called my grandfather Vance Stubbs to see if he could come and get me. He said he would be there in an hour. I waited what seemed like forever in that telephone booth, somewhat protected from the wind, cold and snow.

Thanks are to God and the Navy for woolen clothes. But bell-bottom trousers and dress shoes were not meant for winter storms in Maine. Finally I saw a set of headlights coming down Route 2. Sure enough it was my grandfather and grandmother to my rescue, boy we were very happy to see each other. On our trip home, up the Nine-Mile Woods road there was not another set of car tracks other than the ones gramp had previously made. The snow was so high that it came over the hood in gusts as we plowed the drifts. Around Silver Ridge all tracks and signs of a road disappeared. We couldn’t see a thing. The car was heating up so we had to stop and clean the grill out.

… If it was not for my grandfather coming and getting me that night I might have frozen to death in that little telephone booth at Macwahoc.

John Cannon

Sherman Station

I was 15 years old and a freshman at Bangor High School [which was] then on double sessions, so we went from noon to 5 p.m. each day at the downtown school. At the time of the big storm, we were on vacation for the Christmas-New Year break. Our neighbor and good friend worked for the Bangor Public Works Dept. and was called in to plow the evening of Dec. 30.

He never came home until New Years day night. He called us from the Bangor City Hospital on Main Street. He had abandoned his plow because of the heavy snow and walked through snow, chest high, to the city hospital. He stayed there that night. The next day they got his plow out and he resumed trying to plow and get the city back to normal. That would not happen for quite a few days.

Joan (Laliberte) Staffiere