I
The Frontier A
North-Nebraska s Fastest-Growing Newspaper ^^Ses^tos
VOLUME 68—NUMBER 41 * O'NEILL, NEBRASKA, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17, l»4t. PRICE 7 CENTS
MAN’S BODY, DEAD
3 DAYS, FOUND
4i - ---
Heart Attack Blamed for
Sudden Death ot
Richard Jennings
Spends Life at O’Neill
The dead body of Richard
Jennings, 6 7, single O'Neill
man, was discovered about 2
p.m. Sunday in a hotel here.
Dr. W. F. Finley, Mr. Jen
nings’ physician, said he believ
ed death was caused by a heart
attack. It is believed death may
have struck about three days
before.
Doctor Finley said the man s
heart condition had been seri
ous for several years.
Funeral services were held at
10 a. m. Wednesday in St. Pat
rick’s Catholic church here with
Rt. Rev. J. G. McNamara,
church pastor, officiating. Inter
t* ment was in Calvary cemetety.
The late Mr. Jennings was
born in O’Neill on November 2,
1881, a son of Richard and Mary
Jennings, who had immigrated
here from the East. The family
lived nine miles northwest of
O’Neill where the late Mr. Jen
nings continued to farm until
several years ago, when his
health began to decline and he
retired.
Survivors include: Brothers
—George, of Rapid City, S.
D., and John, of Norfolk.
After the body was discover
ed, it was removed to Biglin
Brothers funeral home.
Pallbearers were: E. F. Flood,
P C. Donohoe, Edward Murray,
John Pribil, John Sullivan and
M. H. Horiskey.
Fuel Shortage
At Ewing Ends
EWING — Two days alter
i \ coal supplies were exhausted
^ here Ewing residents welcom
ed the belated arrival of two
rail carloads of coal. ,
During late January and
early February residents kept
an anxious eye on the dwindl
ing coal supplies and the fuel
was rationed.
Meanwhile, citizens are dig
ging out from under the
blanket of snow. Some of the
principal rural roads are pass
able and most activity now ip
6 centered round opening up
| haystacks.
Firemen Called
Twice During Week
■ ' ■'
I Twice this week firemen
have been summoned by fire
alarms.
L Sunday evening at 9 o’clock
| the volunteer firemen went to
■ the Howard Jeffries home where
an oil stove had exploded. No
damage was done.
At 1:45 p. m. Wednesday the
department was called to the
Lloyd Collins Implement store
where a torch was out of con
trol and threatened the build
ing. No damage, however, was
done.
MARRIAGE LICENSES
Michael J. Gallagher, 25, of
Inman, and Miss Joy Laureen
Moore, 23. of Inman, February
11. '
More Extra Copies
Printed This Week
•
Again this week live hun
dred extra copies ot The ‘fron
tier have been printed to meet
the heavy demand 101 memen
tos of the Recurring Blizzards
of 1948- 49.
Orders continue to pour in
for the February 3 issue
which was a sell-out in five
days. The February 10 issue
likewise has been a sell-out and
all requests for copies of The
Frontier with “blizzard stories”
henceforth will have to be fil
led with this issue February
17.
The Frontier is for sale for
seven cents per copy on news
stands and at the circulation
counter in the office. Copies
will be mailed anywhere in the
United States for 10 cents per
copy (cash with order).
Scores of newspaper clip
pings from all over the coum
try are finding their way
back to Holt ccounty. Mrs
Edna Coyne brought to The
Frontier office an article from
the Tokyo edition of Stars &
Stripes in which O’Neill was
j mentioned prominently as' e
disaster center. The clipping
came fron\ her daughter, Mrs
H M. Christenson, and son-in
law, Sergeant Christenseon.
From Bungany, Suffolk
England, came a letter to The
Frontier this week stating that
blizzard news on the BBC
(British Broadcasting Corpora
tion, audible throughout Eur^
ope), had carried an O’Neill
news dispatch.
13 JURY CASES ON
SPRING DOCKET
; District Judge Mounts to
‘Call Docket’ Friday
at 10 A. M.
Thirteen jury cases are or
the Holt county district courl
docket as March 7 approaches
That is the date the Spring
term is scheduled to open.
District J u d g e D. R.
Mounts said Wednesday that
he will "call the docket" on
Friday at 10 a. m.
Cases include:
Mariane Hansen vs. Charles
Lawrence; Pearlie Andrews vs
C. K. Sexton; Durven Kipplt
vs. Iowa Precinct; Anna Clarl
vs. Roy Serry, et al; Fran!
i Kazda vs. Carl Holz; Sadit
Pickerson vs. Charles F. Prior
Clear Ridge Aviation vs. Gayl<
Williams; Matter of Estate o
Joseph McDonald; Matter o
Estate of Joseph Mann; Melvir
; Hansen vs. Transit, Inc.; Wes
tern Mutual Fire Insurance Co
vs. Transit, Inc.; Thomas G
Slattery vs. Standard Oil Co.
Thomas G. Slattery vs. Stand
ard Oil Co.
The Slattery-Standard Oh
cases are in the process of be
ing removed to federal court
District Court Clerk Ira H
Moss said.
O'Neill Firemen
Guests at Atkinson —
Members of the O’Neill vol
unteer fire department Wednes
day evening were guests of the
Atkinson fire department at
Atkinson. Card playing furnish
ed the entertainment.
Need printing? See The Fron
tier printing department, adv
The Gibson school . . . located 24 miles
northeast of O’Neill . . . transformed during
disaster into American Red Cross supply cen
ter, billet for fatigued 'dozer and weasel crew
men, a message and refuge center.
Inside the school students' desks were
pushed aside to make room for GI cots, blocked
salt and fuel oil. The teacher and her seven
little pupils couldn't recognize the school to
day. In the photo (left-to-right) are: M. L.
Parks, of O'Neill; Robert Tomlinson, of Star,
and Francis Moore, of Atkinson. Bob Tom
linson is dispatcher at Gibson school; Parks and
Moore are civilian "cal skinners" (or dozer op
erators).
_________—
Weekend in a Weasel
By CAL STEWART
Editor, The Frontier
I took a two-day whirl
through snowland by weasel
and airplane to find out how
a dozen snow-locked Nebraska
families in one of the hardest
hit disaster areas were endur
ing the worst Winter in the
history of the West.
I got an idea of how the
Fifth army and American Red
Cross came with men and
machines to relieve human
suffering and livestock starva
tion, and how, together with a
strong-willed people, man, as
usual, was winning the strug
gle with nature.
Our story begins on Novem
ber 18. This portion of North
Central Nebraska—northeastern
. Holt county in particular—was
visited by an unprecedented
late Fall blizzard that raged
for two day®. Since then about
67 inches' of snow has fallen
in blizzard-after-blizzard. For j
weeks the story has been th^ I
i same: wind and snow, snow
and wind. Men who’ve spent
their life here have lost count
fof the storms. Men who have
been idolized for years for .
their survival of the great bliz- ;
zard of 1888 and whose mem- j
ories of that storm have made
lowed slightly during the in
tervening years, now witness i
that the Recurring Blizzards of
1948-’49 have brought about
the hardest and costliest Win
ter on record.
Layers of snow and ice meas
ured 35 inches in depth on the
level.
The Fifth Army moved in
during the first week of Febru
ary with appreciable strength,
and Operation Snowbound was
3 begun. Until then, Holt and 21
11 other Nebraska counties had
i been in a state of emergency
ik for a week—officially proclaim
I ed by the governor. Thousan is
PP> of families had not been heard
from for weeks. Food and fuel
rW v?jtgj,supplies had long since been
depleted and. in numerous in
100 PERCENT
During his Weekend in a
Weasel, The Frontier edi
tor contacted 15 farm fam
ilies. He discovered: In EV
ERY home the regularly
scheduled "Voice of The
F ontier" programs were
heard religiously in t w o -
thirds of the homes he found
this newspaper a regular
visitor (until the storms
came). School classes are
held at the Ben Miller farm
home, instead of the snow
bound school. Classes us
ually begin for Teacher Lola
Ickes and her three pupils |
at “5:30 a. m., except on Mon
days and Wednesdays, when
studies start at 9:45—fol
lowing the "Voice of The
Frontier" program. One fam
ily charged the radio bat- j
tery regularly in an auto
mobile in order thal they
could hear the "Voice"
stances, exhausted. Livestock on
short rations for many weeks
were weakening and dying.
Many families used fence posts,
furniture and an occasional
brooder house for fuel.
Meanwhile, hundreds of cat
erpillar tractors with bulldoz
er attachments were rushed out
of army engineer storage depots
and off government reclamation
projects to join the battle. ;
Troops, mostly ’dozer operators ,
and maintenance men, were
speeded to the disaster area to
man and machines. Weasles
_a species of vehicle that is a
weird cross between an over
sized jeep and a light tank
were flown in from Camp Car
son. Colo., where the Army
trains mountain and ski troops.
That’s when Operation Snow
bound got underway.
I contend that Major Gen
eral A. Pick's label for this
great peacetime mechanized
operation is a misnomer. It
should read: Combined Op
eration Snowbound. I say
combined because this arctic
battle could not have been
fought so successfully thus
far without full cooperation
between the populace, the
Army and the American Red
Cross. Before forces were join
ed for the all-out assault,
these dogged, weary people
were taking everything the
Weather Man could dish out.
I’ll admit, though, there was
a time before the Army arrived
that the spirit of these people
had hit a new low. There was a
time when even the hardiest
wondered how long they could
hold out.
But let s get on wim me
trip.
Our weasel departure was
scheduled from the American
Red Cross distress headquarters
in O’Neill, capital of Holt coun
ty’s 2,400 square miles, at 2 p.
m. on Saturday. The mission
was to transport fuel oil and
medicine to distressed persons,
to take grease to a waiting bull
dozer along the way, to drop off
at his home a farmer who had
been marooned in town for sev
eral days, and to deliver to an
Army supply point two “re
freshed” ’dozer operators — cat
skinners, they call them. This
motley crew consisted of: T/Sgt.
Walter Fairfield, of 355 East
Broadway, Muskeegon, Mich.,
and T/Sgt. Grady Boutwell, of
14 *4 West McKellar St., Mem
phis, Term.; Earl Kifer, 56. O’
Neill farmer; William S. Buck,
jr., of O’Neill, and Francis
Moore, of Atkinson, civilian
bulldozer operators, and this re
porter.
Destination was the Gibson
school—a country classroom
transformed into an Army-Red
Cross supply center, a billet for
fatigued ’dozer and weasel crew
men, a message and refuge cen
ter for storm-stranded residents.
Gibson school is 24 miles north
(Continued on page 4)
A1 Sipes, 35, O'Neill handyman-turned-weasel-driver . . •
when he delivered American Red Cross coal to a home that had
been cold, the man of the house put his arms around Sipes and
wept.—The Frontier Photos by John H. McCarville.
(Story at left)
Burlington Disaster Crews Hit New Low
in Snow-Removal Progress Near McLear
By EUGENE M. LIEWER
Editor, Osmond Republican
'The 1949 rail traffic tieun be
tween Sioux C ty and CTNeill.
is the worst in that line s 58
vear historv. That is the official
word of W. P Wilson, general
’.superintendent of the Umana
Lincoln and Wymore C B & '
divisions, who was in Osmond
halfway point this week.
The general superintenden
travels by automobile on thi
(Continued on page S')
Morale Climbs
with Mercury
Operation Snowbound Moves into Home
Stretch as ‘Liberation’ Nears End
By a Staff Writer
Under brilliant Spring-like skies Wednesday, the Fifth Army’s
Operation Snowbounl was grinding to a finish in Holt county.
In four other counties—Boyd, Rock, Brown and Keya Paha—
the emergency formally terminated at midnight Tuesday night.
When the emergency will end in Holt county had not been de
terminated Wednesday night. The day before, however, May Gen.
Lewis A. Pick, who is directing Operation Snowbound, emphasiz
ed that work will continue in Holt, Garfieid, Wheeler, Greeley and
Banner counties, the south one-third of Cherry county and the
north one-half of Morrill county, as well as in all other Nebraska
counties that haven't been officially removed from the disaster
area.
"We have no intention of pulling out . . . until the job is fin
ished," General Pick told a Boone county delegation.
Meanwhile Maj. James H. Harper, O'Neil] sub-area com
mander, told The Frontier Wednesday that work was rapidly
"letting up" and he felt the "crisis is definitely over." Major
Harper said it appeared that from now on out most persons will
be able to solve their own problems. The Army, he said, con
siders that the snow and ice on the level has settled one-third
—or fjrom three feet to two feet—during the past seven days.
Tuesday and Wednesday the O’Neill headquarters was busy
processing contractors pulling out of sub-area counties except
Holt. At Ainsworth and Bassett numerous bulldozers have con
verged at railroad yards awaiting shipment. Several weasels
and GI crews, used extensively in Holt county 'fluring the past
fortnight, Wednesday afternoon were transported to Ainsworth
from where they were to be flown to North Dakota for snow dis
aster duty there.
Example of the fair weather progress made since Sunday is
the case of four D-8 ’dozers, among the largest built, owned and
operated by private contractors working for the Army in the
Dorsey communities. They plowed open 32 lineal miles of road
during Monday night. ,
Evidence of the success in the field was shown on the streets
of O’Neill, as well as other towns in the county, with “liberated"
rural people coming to town—most of them for the first time in
many weeks. Their stays usually were shortlived, however, re
fusing to gamble with the wind, and after a quick errand round
up they’d scurry back home.
But normalcy rapidly was being restored this week in O’Neill.
Things won’t be fully normal, however, until the Burlington’s
famed derailment problem has been solved. Burlington expects
to clear the Sioux City-O’Neill line by Saturday. (For details see
Burlington story elsewhere on this page and Radio Diary in sec
tion 2.)
(People who know Ihe Elkhorn river valley are no sooner
emerging from their flow highways than they begin to take
precautions against Spring floods. Officially, the snow depth
measurement in Holt county is 36 inches—greatest in the Elk
horn water shed.
Glen D. Custer, American Red Cross field representative who
has been directing ARC relief work in Holt and other storm-strick
en counties since January 26, left O’Neill Monday for Western
Nebraska and returned to O’Neill Wednesday night. Red Cross
activity is declining rapidly and operations may be closed down
this weekend.
J Temperatures during the past week varied. Friday was the
first Sprnig-like day of the year and morale of snow-sickened
Nebraskans rose with the temperature, which hit 42 degrees.
Little more than 24 hours later, however, the mercury was down
to six dgrees below zero and a new storm had moved in, bearing
fresh snow.
A stern, storm-warning had been issued the day before and
with a vast, powerful army of machinery in the neighborhood
that latest storm wasn’t as hard on the morale as earlier ones. A
cold wave followed, but early Sunday large-scale snow-bucking
operations were resumed after the storm had passed over. Since
then, hundreds of lineal miles of roads and passages have been
I opened, haystacks have been “uncoverd”, important roads have
been widened, and life rapidly is getting back to routine.
Barring a terrible new storm. Operation Snowbound thia
week is expected to be wrapped up. The Army makes the res
ervation. of course, because of Nebraska's unpredictable weatta
Late Wednesday night Army oficials said there still remain
ed some “mopping up” to do, particularly in the Scottville and
Dorsey communities and near the Gibson school.
This is the first seven-day period since November during
which the federal roads have been continuously open. Several
lesser-travelled state roads were filled-in temporarily during the
Saturday blow.
The Saturday storm also interrupted normal traffic on the
mainline of the Northwestern but Wednesday’s trains were run
ning almost on schedule.
SKUDLER RITES
PLANNED TODAY
Atkinson Woman, 78, Dies
in Lincoln Result
of a Stroke
ATKINSON — Funeral ser
| vices will be held at 3 p. mi
j today (Thursday) at the Seger
funeral home for Mrs. Joseph
(Emma) Skudler, 78, who died
at 4 p. m Monday in Lincoln
She had suffered a stroke
last Fall at Atkinson, spent
some time in the Stuart hos
pital, and later was taken to
Lincoln to be near her daugh
ter, Rose.
M~. Skudler, who died
more than a year ago, op
erated an electric light plant
at Atkinson for many years.
Rev. Orin C. Graf will of
j ficiate and burial will be in
Wood Lawn cemetery.
Survivors include: Sons —
t Edward and Fraink, both of
» Atkinson Daughters' — Mrs.
Emma Winkle, of Topeka
Kansas, and Rose, of Lincoln
$157,000 Loan
to REA Network
The Rural Electrification Ad
ministration has approved an
additional loan of 157 thousand
dollars for the Niobrara Valley
Electric' Membership Corp , ac
cording to William Blakkolb,
president. These funds will be
used for completion of pre
viously planned and approved
line construction.
Actual building of lines has
been held up because of bad
weather and impassable roads,
1 according to Manager Ed Wil
son, but construction work is to
resume as soon as weather con
ditions permit.
An application for another
loan is being forwarded to REA
by the Niobrara Valley organi
zation. Funds from this loan
will be used for additional con
struction after the first section
| has been completed.
QUALIFIES FOR HONOR
PAGE — Beverly Wanser. of
Page was among the juniors of
Wayne state college to qualify
for recognition on the honor
roll for the past semester. His
average was 2.5: the highest av
erage possible being 3.0.
*