OMAHA WORLD HERALD’S ....
Paul N. Williams
. . . REPORTS RELIEF OPERATIONS
(Editor’s note; Paul N. Williams, 27, Omaha World-Herald
photographer-reporter, came to O’Neill Wednesday, January 26,
to "make a few pictures of snowdrifts and be done with it.” He
stayed on, however, for nine days and provided the World-Her
ald with a steady flow of pictures and news that graphically re
ported the January 27-28 seige, during which morale in this bliz
zard-stricken area hit a new low; the desperate means that were
taken to attract outside help; the coming of the American Red
Cross and the Fifth Army. He was the first reporter to reach is
olated rural families. Last week’s issue of The Frontier carried
reprints of Mr. Williams' first six articles. This issue contains
three subsequent articles that first appeared in the World-Herald.
During his stay here, Mr. Williams worked out of The Frontier
office, made himself a welcomed visitor everywhere, sat in on im- ;
portant conferences. He belonged.)
* •
Typical of such men is Mor
ris Harmon, a farmer who lives
a mile north of O’Neill. There
are others like him, but he is
typical.
He has a 40-horsepower cat
erpillar tractor. Since the first
storm struck, November 18, Mr.
Harmon has failed on only five
days to do some kind of work
toward easing the blizzard prob
lem.
He has done the bulk of the
work without pay. Since the
Red Cross came to town about
10 days ago and since many
outlying farmers began asking
for grocery delivering. Mr.
Harmon has been getting reg
ular pay for the extra work
he does.
But he will estimate, if you
ask him, that: “I’ve donated
maybe a thousand dollars worth
of work since November.”
Takes Weasel Ride
to See Snowland
Friday, February 4
O’NEILL, NEBR. — Want to
know how it is out there—out
where weeks of snow and wind
have made a trackless alabaster
desert of Holt county farmland?
Take a ride in a weasel on a
mercy mission.
Two of the little, widetracked
Army vehicles from Camp Car
son, Colo., made a typical run
east if O’Neill Wednesday af
ternoon, February 2.
The crews found only cold
and downhearted people, and
starving and dead cattle. They
came back from the trip—their
first—a shaken group.
At the Carl Belzer farm, a
little over eight miles from
O'Neill, they found the fam
ily burning brushwood in the
cook stove to stretch the less
than one hundred pounds of
coal a light airplane had left
three days before.
' ting along,” Mr. Belzer told the
’soldiers. “Sometimes we sit out
here and listen to the wind, and
watch the cattle bunch up close
to the barn, and we wonder if
we’re going to make it. We
know there’s probably a lot of
people as bad off as we are,
though, and we know the folks
in town are doing their best to
help.”
Mr. Belzer now has 20 head
of cattle. Five died Monday and
Tuesday—including two new
calves. He said his haystacks
are almost a mile away, cut off
from the farmyard by impass
able drifts.
A. Neil Dawes, Holt county
agent, was a passenger in the
airplane that brought the Bel
zers their first emergency sup
plies.
“They were literally out of
food when we arrived. We have
them the Red Cross package,
and while they were going
through it, Mary came across a
10-pound bag of sugar.
“ ‘Here,” she said, “we’ve al
ready got five or 10 pounds of
sugar. You’d better take this to
some other family’.”
Only 1 Va miles from O’Neill,
the weasel crews found Mrs. !
Troy Howard and her five young
sons working to keep the five
milk cows—their main source of
income—in condition to with
stand the chilling winds that
sweep across the fields.
At first his work consisted of
helping his immediate neigh
bors break trails to their stock;
pulling wagons into town so the
neighbors could stock up on
fuel and other supplies; drag
ging haystacks and such.
“Of course, I couldn’t charge
my neighbors,” he explains.
Another free service was pul
ling cars out of ditches and
snowbanks. He remembers one
busy day when he started to
town towing a truck that would
n’t start. Then he came to a
crippled pickup truck. He
hitched that behind the big
truck. Then he came to a foun
dered auto.
When he chugged into town,
Mr. Harmon was towing all three
vehicles.
His heaviest work has been
since mid-January, when he be
gan towing sleds to outlying
farm families. With his son,
Wayne, or with A1 Sipes or
Dick Tomlinson, local men, as
helpers, he will haul a two-ton
load of groceries, fuel or hay as
far as 30 miles from O’Neill.
The little “cat” will average
about three miles an hour on
trips like these. And the wind
that blows almost constantly
from the north makes Mr. Har
mon’s job and those of his help
ers icy ones.
"It's not too bad," Mr. Har
mon explained, "I wear long
handled underwear, my regu
lar work clothes, a flying suit,
a jacket, a full-length sheep
skin parka and wolf-hide
mittens."
Mr. Harmon is proud of the
fact that he’s never failed, soon
er or later, to complete every
trip, despite frequent blizzard
conditions. This has called for
some heavy snow-scooping in ,
soft drifts.
One night, Mr. Harmon was
putting along over a desolate
stretch when he suddenly lost
traction. He figured he was
“high-centered”—hung up on a
ridge of ice. But when he and
his assistant shoveled their way
to the bottom of things, they
found another answer:
The tractor was almost exact
ly balanced on the top of a
fuur-foot fence post.
He's a Man
They Lean On
Sunday, February G
O’NEILL. NEBR.—Times such
as the past few weeks have
turned up many a man in a
small Nebraska town who has
turned into a leader the com
munity can lean on.
As an example, take Glea
Wade, a level-headed young
man of this community. With
out an official title, without pay,
without a formal directive, he
has carried much of the burden
of storm relief work in the area
served by O’Neill.
Wade (that’s the name he
prefers) was already well-liked
here before the snows began.
He was in the Army more than
three years, served most of his
time in the Pacific, won four
Purple Hearts and a Bronze
Star.
Eight miles doesn’t sound
like a long distance when you
think of riding it in a heated car
along the concrete highway.
But it seems like a ’’trip to
the moon,” Carl Belzer said,
when you walk it through snow
almost hip deep most of the
way. Mr. Belzer made the jour
ney by foot three weeks ago
when groceries began running
low.
He was able to carry only a
small bundle of staples for him
self, his wife and their daugh
ter, Mary, 12, on the return trip.
“We’ve just barely been get
get the road open,” Mr. Belzer
said. “There hasn’t been a car
on this road since November
17.”
But the road—a country route
wasn’t opened. All available
equipment has been able only to
keep the main state highways
open about three days out of
four in the past month.
The Belzers soon ran out of
fuel. They brought in what
brushwood they could find in
the snow, then started using
furniture.
Mrs. Howard's husband died
last Summer. Since then the
boys—Marcells. 18; Bernard,
15; Joseph, 10; Ambrose, 8;
Bobby, 5—have shared the
work of keeping the 160-acre
farm going.
The recurring storms have
made it impossible for the How
ards to take their merchandise—
dairy products—to town for
marketing. This has cut into
an already meager income.
The weasels, commanded by
Capt. William Tanski, Wilkes
Barre, Pa., proved themelves in
their first test in Holt county
snows. The start in the trip was
delayed by difficulties in rou
tine maintenance and in obtain
ing supplies. The actual round
trip—about 17 miles—took only
about three, hours, including un
loading time.
One of the weasels towed a
small sled. Between them, the
two vehicles carried: 1, about
800 pounds of feed; 2, about 100
pounds of food; 3, about 800
pounds of coal; 4, four regular
crewmen, plus this reporter and
two army photographers.
Morris Harmon
An Unsung Hero
Saturday, February 5
O’NEILL, NEB.—Among peo
ple who will be remembered as [
heroes of the 1948-’49 blizzards
are men with snow-fighting
equipment who turned their ef- |
forts to helping their communi
ties.
except ior me Deas ana me
kitchen furniture they were al
most without fuel last week,
when they learned from a leaf
let dropped from an airplane
that they should make distress
signals in the snow. They tore
up a wooden bench to make a
big “F”—signifying a need for
food—and before long a plane
came in with Red Cross bundles.
The day the plane arrived
the Belzers had used almost all
the prepared and packaged
foods in the house. They still
had some eggs and milk, and
that was about all. The Red
Cross supplies were almost
gone when the weasel crews
arrived late Wednesday after
noon with more.
“We’ve just barely been get
^UCTW SMOOTH AND M£Uoiv
Preferred...
/or
mellow moments
OOTH AND MStlO'W
. tM'J r .
He served two years as the
commander of the local Am
erican Legion Post. He is cred
ited with the construction and
paying off of a 30-thousand
dollar Legion Hall.
When Glen D. Custer, Red
Cross field man from Crawford,
came to O’Neill, he called a
meeting of persons interested in
the relief job. Wade was one.
Since then, Wade has spent
from 10 to 20 hours a day at the
distress center, in the basement
of the Holt county courthouse.
While Mr. Custer handled pol
icy matters and co-ordinated
his activities with those of other
Red Cross, Army and state rep
resentatives in the disaster area,
Wade was ordering, packing and
dispatching food and fuel or
ders at the rate of 20 or 30 a day,
plotting “targets” and routes for
tractor-sled missions to outly
ing points, loading bags of coal
and bales of hay in Army weas
les, arranging housing and feed
ing for incoming rescue person
nel. helping the shifts of women
who answer the three tele
phones at the distress center,
and doing a myriad of other jobs
that seemed to fall in nobody
else’s job classification.
The top choice of
millions is now avail
able locally at fine
hotels, restaurants
and bars. It’s smooth
and mellow -Hamm’s
Preferred Stock
Beer. Cans or bottles.
TMtO. HAMM BftCWiNa 0O.#
•T. PAUL !« MINN.
Distributed by:
O'NEILL
Beverage Co.
Phone 422 '
O'NEILL, NEBR.
PAGE LOCALS
Mr. and Mrs. Homer Ruther
ford and family called on his
mother Sunday, January 30.
Mrs. Harvey Cullen returned
home from O’Neill Saturday,
January 29, where she had spent
a week to be near her husband
who is in the O’Neill hospital.
o&j K
NEBF |SRA
by VANES C. OLSON, Su^nntendent
•TATE BISTOAICAL SOCIITT
One of the best known and
most universally respected men
in Nebraska territory was Rev.
William Hamilton, the Pres
byterian missionary at Bell
evue.
Father Hamilton, as he gen
erally was called, was born in
Pennsylvania in 1811 and ar
rived at Bellevue on June 6,
1853, having been sent there
by the Presbyterian Board of
Foreign Missions to take
charge of the Otoe and Omaha
missions.
The new missionary at Bell
evue was no novice when he
arrived. For 15 years he had
served in the capacity of
preacher and teacher among
the Iona and Sac Indians, and
was well acquainted with both
the Indians and the Indian
country.
The mission, in turn, was es
tablished when Father Hamil
ton arrived. It had been set
up by the Presbyterians in
1846, under the direction of
Rev. and Mrs. Edward McKin
ney, who had constructed a
building and started a school.
When Rev. Hamilton took
charge of the mission, 42 In
dian children were enrolled in
the school.
At the time Nebraska ter
ritory was created in 1854, the
Presbyterian mission was the
only dwelling of any size in
Bellevue, the territory’s prin
cipal settlement. Consequently,
Rev. and Mrs. Hamilton enter
tained a wide variety of guests
under their hospitable roof.
Most notable of these
guests was Francis Burt of
South Carolina, who had
been appointed the first gov
ernor of Nebraska territory
by President Franklin Pierce.
His visit was not a happy
one, however. The long jour
ney to Nebraska had so ex
hausted the Governor that
he went to bed at the miss
ion as soon as he arrived—
a bed from which he never
arose.
In 1857, ill health caused
Rev. Hamilton to retire from
the work of the mission. A de
cade later, though, he returned
to the mission and spent the
rest of his life (until 1891)
among his Indian friends. He
was highly respected by the
Indians and exercised a great
deal of influence among them.
As an old man, he told a
story which in many respects
summed up his work When
he arrived, he related, he saw
a man riding horseback, with
his wife walking and carrying
a load. Fifty years" later, he
saw the wife on the horse and
the man walking.
Phoenix 'l MCA
Holds Banquet
By A. STROLLER
PHOENIX, ARIZ., Feb. I —
The Phoenix Y M C A held its
annual dinner-meeting Monday
evening, January 24, and the
writer attended as one of its
guests. The cost per plate was
one dollar, but the writer, hav
ing been more or less active in
the association for a number of
years, was one of those who were
admitted free.
The annual dinner-meeting
is one of the events of the year
and it is always largely attend
ed. The “Y” stenographers, sev
eral attractive girls, had been
busy sending out invitations for
days and the attendance this
year was a record-breaker. It
was the 42nd meeting.
The event was held in the big
gymnasium and it was appropri
ately decorated for the occasion.
Obviously, the purpose of the
dinner-meeting is to report the
progress which has been made
during the past year and a great
many interesting facts were con
tained in the elaborate, eight
page program. Statistics were
given in regard to all the various
clubs, classes, teams and exten
sive activities of the association
and they were classified under
such heads as Membership, Phy
sical Growth, Y'>uth Program,
Friendship and Service, Public
Welfare, Health, etc. It gave one
a compresentative view of the
extensive work the Y M C A
is doing in Pin nix.
A financial statement was
also contained in the program.
The dinner was an elabor
ate one and was served cafe
teria style and the several
long tables which filled the
room were very tastefully ar
ranged, being lighted by cand
les.
The program was entertain
ing and interesting. Music was
furnished by a string quartet
from Phoenix College, the invo
cation was offered by the pas
tor of the Fir t Baptist church,
there were the usual introduc
tions. president’s message and
awards, a report on the new
building was given and the gen
eral secretary -poke briefly.
Howard PyU\ Kl’AR radio
announcer, acted as master of
ceremonies and the speaker of
the evening was J. Roger Deas,
executive secretary of the Con
ference of Christians and Jews
of California His subject was
i“Men To March Our Moun
| tains."
The dinner v. served by the
Y M C A cafeteria.
(Next week: Letter Writing.)
Try Frontier Want Advs.
Holt Steer Gains
2 Pounds a Day
Twd pounds a day gain per
steer was accomplished by
Marie Wollenhaupt lor the
first 84 days of the feeding
period for the Schleswig, la.,
conservation and calf show' to
be held September 8-9-10 with
Schleswig’s golden jubilee.
In a spot check of the 38
pens of five calves each, being
fed )ay youngsters of the Sch
leswig community in a new
and unique calf feeding pro-'
ject, George Else, chairman of
the calf committee was well
pleased with the results.
Marie’s calves totaled 1,380
when they arrived in Schle
swig from the Dewey Shaeffer
and Son ranch, of O'Neill, and
after 84 days of feeding
weighed 2,230 pounds. Total
gain for the feeding period
was 850 pounds.
AGAIN-REPRICED!-REGROUPED!
Our Final
Regardless of former cost, these items must be cleared to
make room for new Spring Merchandise. We still have
many, many weeks of unseasonable weather ahead, which
makes these reductions outstanding.
ALL
Fall Dresses
(Our entire stock)
★ Nationally Advertised
★ Regular Stock
By—F}aul Sacks . . . Nelly Don . . .
Carole King . . . Levine and otFiers
in . . .
Wool - Crepes - Gabardines - Prints
SIZES 9 10 ll)12|13il4:15 16 18 20 18>2 20‘2 22‘2 24‘2
QUANTITY 5 4 9 16 11 19 9 14 7 12 5 | 6 | 7 | 3
10.95 now 5.47 16.95 now 8.47 22.95 now 11.47
12.95 now 6.47 17.95 now 8.97 24.95 now 12.47
14.95 now 7.47 19.95 now 9.97 29.95 now 14.97
ALL FALL HATS, Now. $2.110
JUST 8 COATS (NEW).. ^ ^££
ONE RACK COATS (Only 8).© O C5
(Values to 59.95) ^ f J
ALL FALL SUITS (NEW) of!
ONE RACK DRESSES.C ^ |f| | |
(Slightly Soiled) O ^ r
ALL BLOUSES IN STOCK. y^ off
ONE TABLE PAJAMAS - GOWNS. ^ ^££
Or the 190 head of Hereford
calves all from the Shaeffer
ranch only one was lost due
to death or other causes.
CELIA NEWS
Lex and Paul Forstythe help
ed Duane Beck celebrate Ida
birthday anniversary on Friday,
January 21. The Forsythes walk
ed to Becks.
~ *■ ■ ■■■ ——»
WJAG . . . 780 on your dial!