Thanksgiving Snow Storm 1950

First of all, Happy Thanksgiving to all of the current and former Fallsites! There may be a few snow flakes outside but nothing compared to Thanksgiving in 1950. Imagine waking up to nearly 2 feet of snow and still coming down! Of course it wouldn’t be as paralyzing today, however, back in 1950 it was. Imagine battling the snow without the equipment we’re so lucky to have these days.

I’m going to share with you several photos that we have at the Cuyahoga Falls Historical Society that were taken (after the Thanksgiving snow storm) of the Front Street area along with an article that Mark Price wrote in 2010 on the same storm.

Written on the back of this photo: To Babette Robinson from Louise Moore. This is the clean up after the Thanksgiving snow storm of 1950 on Front Street in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. This is the block from Broad Blvd looking toward Portage Trail. L to R – Ideal Frocks, Sonny Kleins Sportshop, Siff Shoes, Singer, Isaly’s (Ice Cream and Milk @ 46c), Wilfert Rexall Drugs, Valenza Bake Shop, Farm Boy Market, Nobil Shoes. The Trash can advertises “Walts 2238 State Road G.E. Television WA7113.” The other sign with a picture of Santa says “Toys and Gifts at Hess and Gueutal. All buildings were long torn down in 1986. Most came down about 1969.

     

As Northeast Ohio families gathered at Thanksgiving tables in 1950 to feast on roast turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, an uninvited guest knocked loudly on the door.

It was Old Man Winter, and he demanded a place to stay.

The Thanksgiving blizzard of 1950 was one of the most infamous storms of the 20th century. Without a hint of calamity, the quiet holiday exploded intoan arctic nightmare, dumping 25 inches of snow, plunging temperatures to near zero, blowing icy winds of 40 mph and halting travel for hundreds of miles.

Sixty years later, people still recall what they were doing when the November storm hit.

Pounding rain turned into heavy snow as the mercury fell 30 degrees Nov. 23, Thanksgiving night. Ohioans went to sleep after dinner and woke up to chaos as the storm whipped up unbelievable drifts of 15 to 20 feet in some places.

”Holy moley, do I remember,” said Pat Marks, 79, of Akron. ”Hooo hoo. I was working at O’Neil’s in the office, and I can tell you a story on that one.”

She was living at Herberich and Reed avenues in Firestone Park when the snowflakes fell. For the first time in the city’s history, the Akron Transportation Co. canceled all public buses.

The day after Thanksgiving was the biggest shopping day of the year, though, and Marks just had to get to work.

”It was terrible!” she said. ”You had to tunnel your way everywhere.”

She remembers crunching and stumbling through snowdrifts as she and a co-worker walked toward the department store in downtown Akron.

”We got down there and — guess what? — they weren’t going to open the store,” she said. ”And we just looked at them. Oh, my God, you know? . . .

”I imagine they were a little nonplused that people would even try to come into work. But, hey, if you didn’t go to work, you didn’t get paid, honey.”

The bosses let in the few employees who made it to O’Neil’s. However, the store didn’t open that day — or the next two days. Christmas shopping would have to wait until Monday.

”I don’t know how we got back home,” Marks said.

Akron’s street-cleaning department couldn’t keep up with the snow. National Guard tanks rolled through the streets to pull stranded vehicles from drifts.

Shoveling futile

Burt Wilfong, 85, of Cuyahoga Falls, vividly remembers the storm. At the time, he was a buyer for Polsky’s store, and lived with his mother on Silvercrest Avenue in Kenmore.

”Everything came to an absolute standstill,” he said.

When Wilfong went to dig out his driveway, he realized the futility of the situation.

”The garage doors were the old-fashioned kind that opened out,” he said. ”There was about 5 feet of snow that drifted around in front of the garage, and the snow shovel was inside.”

Knowing that it was the most important retail day of the year, Wilfong made an urgent call to the store, but no one answered. Then he called his supervisor, Mike Morgenroth, merchandise manager for Polsky’s basement.

”Boss, what are we going to do?” Wilfong asked.

”Just sit,” Morgenroth replied. ”You can’t do anything.”

Polsky’s advertised heavily in the Beacon Journal for Friday’s sales, but it was all for nothing.

”We can’t get the store open,” Wilfong said. ”We can’t even get to it! Nothing was moving.”

Recovery is slow

The city virtually shut down for four days. With no place to put excess snow, crews filled dump trucks and unloaded the white stuff into the Ohio & Erie Canal and Summit Lake.

Akron attorney Richard Cunningham, 80, recalls being home from University of Illinois law school during the storm. He stayed with his parents on 20th Street in Cuyahoga Falls.

”That was the biggest storm that we’ve ever had,” he said.

When he went to visit a friend four or five blocks away, Cunningham stepped into an eerie, desolate landscape with snow mounds 5 to 10 feet tall.

”I walked down State Road, which was completely deserted, and walked all the way over to Broad Boulevard, which is probably half a mile or something. . . . I can remember huge piles of snow and drifts.”

During a lull in the storm Saturday, Cunningham decided to drive back to Illinois with his aunt and uncle Ida and Frank Cunningham, who had visited for the holiday. They crept west on state Route 18, south on U.S. 42 and west on U.S. 40 across Indiana and into Illinois, where they arrived safely.

”I can remember all of the roads were still bad,” he said. ”I don’t know how many hours it took us to get to the Indiana border, but you figure that was probably 200 miles going 10 or 15 miles an hour.”

Perilous trip

Meanwhile, Wanda Quick and her husband, Guy, who lived on Frances Avenue in Cuyahoga Falls, drove the opposite direction on a white-knuckle journey.

”We were going to Pennsylvania deer-hunting,” recalled Wanda Quick, 85, of Akron. ”And we got up in the morning, and there was 15 to 16 inches of snow then, and we decided that maybe we’d better not go.”

But her younger brother, Homer O’Shell, somehow talked them into taking the trip.

”Oh, yeah, we can go,” he insisted. ”We can do that.”

Guy and Wanda got into their 1941 Pontiac with her brother’s pal Jim Rittenour while O’Shell rode with uncle Lynn Matthew and his friend Mac McCracken.

”We were young,” Quick said. ”There were six of us all together in two different cars. So we helped one another. . . . Everywhere we went, my uncle got stuck. My husband was the only one that had chains on.”

Passing deserted automobiles in drifts, the brave travelers followed snowplows east on state Route 59 toward the state line.

”When we were going through Sharon, Pa., we came to a standstill,” she said. ”Jim got out of the car and he went across the street to a place that sold peanuts in the shell. We all were eating peanuts.”

On Route 36 near Mahaffey, Pa., the Ohioans began to worry. The snow at the side of the road was twice as deep as the cars. Still, they plowed forward.

”There was no place to stop,” she said.

The four-hour trip turned into a 12-hour ordeal, but the group made it to Coalport, Pa., and shoveled out parking spaces.

”Yeah, I shot my deer that year,” recalled Guy Quick, 87.

The 1950 storm claimed nine lives in Summit County and nearly 100 others on the East Coast. Many victims died in car accidents or from heart attacks while shoveling snow.

Open for business

Most Akron businesses reopened Monday, Nov. 27, while schools resumed classes Nov. 28.

The Thanksgiving blizzard of 1950 remains the worst November storm in Akron-Canton history. Its record lows of 7 degrees on Nov. 24 and 8 degrees on Nov. 25-26 still stand.

”It was one heck of a snowstorm, I’ll tell you that,” Wilfong said.

”There was just snow, snow, snow,” Marks said. ”It was a beautiful sight, and the kids loved it, but, oh, my God.”

”When we talk about big storms, I say you should have been here in 1950 at Thanksgiving,” Cunningham said.

 

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Mark J. Price is a Beacon Journal copy editor. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or send e-mail to mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.