Snow started falling just after breakfast on Monday, Feb. 6. By 11 p.m. Tuesday it was over. In the first 24 hours, more than 2 feet fell on Providence, more than 4 feet on Woonsocket.
Driven by wind, the snow came so fast and so furiously that it turned Routes 95 and 195 through Providence into a frozen parking lot. The interlocking interstate expressways were jammed with about 2,000 vehicles. Providence city streets held another 3,000 trucks, cars and buses.
Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts closed down. No event of the 1970s stirs the memories of the region like the Blizzard of 1978, the worst snowstorm of the 20th century.
In the golden haze of memory, the storm was a time when people did their best in the worst of conditions, when the greed and self-centeredness of daily life gave way to the instinct of generosity and the notion that we truly are all in this together.
Most people's lives and routines were interrupted, but they were not shattered or seriously harmed by the record snowfall.
Storm refugees found strangers willing to help. Stores, churches, factories, taverns, restaurants, offices and schools opened their doors to the snowbound.
Romances blossomed among those trapped together. New friendships were made. Pregnant women made it to the hospital via snowmobile.
More than 300 people bedded down at the Outlet Company's downtown Providence store, another 100 or more called the old Speidel factory in the city's Jewelry District their home for the first night and hundreds of others snoozed at the Providence Civic Center and at the Midland Mall, in Warwick.
The Providence Chapter of the American Red Cross provided thousands of meals for people trapped in 14 shelters in the city.
The blizzard shaped the mindset of those who survived it in the same way that the hurricanes of 1938 and 1954 informed other generations of New Englanders.
"It reminded me of my childhood," recalls Rosetta Samuelian, of Warwick. "Neighbors helping one another during hard times. Neighbors being friendly, smiling and saying 'hello.' "
Donna Barchi, of North Providence, recalls being five months pregnant and trapped in downtown Providence. After receiving help from a Roman Catholic priest, the Rev. Barry Connerton, she was taken to stay at the Cathedral Square residence of then-Bishop Louis E. Gelineau.
"We sat comfortably with the bishop that night and were led to a lovely suite overlooking snowbound Route 95," Barchi recalls. "Meals were at a long, elegant table with other nuns and priests."
Estelle A. Cipolla, of Coventry, recalls being stuck in less rarefied surroundings; she spent the first night on the floor of Zales jewelry store at Midland Mall.
The manager of the Zales store made coffee for the stranded and let them call their families. The next day, Cipolla got a lift home from an oil-burner service driver who volunteered to drive people to their homes.
For some, the storm served as an invitation to a week-long party.
Betty Simpson Boyer, of Pawtucket, remembers the storm as a "continuing adventure. The best fun we had was the day after the blizzard."
"Mrs. Martin, who lived across the street, found herself canceling her only daughter's bridal shower. Instead, that morning she and my mom decided to dig out the hydrant on our property which was buried under 6 feet of snow. Exhausted after this effort, they grabbed 2 of the 50 folding chairs in the garage that Mrs. Martin had rented and sat directly in the middle of Pequot Road."
"Soon, neighbors came out of their homes," Boyer recalls. "They began to drag folding chairs out of the garage. Neighbors walking by were hailed and they, too, stopped and stayed. As evening approached, more wine and beer appeared and the adults decided to cook. Firewood was produced and then kids were sent into homes to procure different cuts of meat. Hot dogs were cooked on sticks and filets on metal tongs. I'm pretty sure that most of the adults were well into their cups. The kids weren't drinking but we had a fine time, too."
As is usually the case, the heartiest partiers were on the region's college campuses, where normal undergraduate hijinks were heightened by the snow.
"The place to be during the blizzard and the following days was on a college campus," recalls David Zapatka, who was a Rhode Island College student.
"Here we were, 18- to 21-year-olds, given the opportunity of a lifetime. A ton of snow with no place to go. The drinking age was 18. Party on," Zapatka recalls.
By 10:30 a.m. on the storm's first day, RIC had canceled classes. "I lived on campus, so after we'd gotten 6 inches of snow by lunch, we decided a bit of entrepreneurship was in order," Zapatka wrote.
"We started calling each dorm suite on campus, taking beer and wine orders," Zapatka recalled. "We jumped into my Firebird and drove to the liquor store about a mile from campus. We loaded up the trunk . . . then started back toward campus. Cars were stuck all over Fruit Hill Avenue, but the Firebird, ladened down with all that beer and wine, plowed straight up College Hill."
Zapatka recalls "an incredible drunken snowball fight" inside Willard Hall, a dormitory, and -- in an incident that seems downright quaint in these days of coed dorms -- the residents of an all-women's dorm losing heat and bunking in the men's dorm for an evening.
At RIC, the party started the first day of the storm and, for some, "it lasted a week."
At the University of Rhode Island, there were football games in the wet snow and parties galore. "Nobody's really mad about it," one student told a Journal reporter at the time.
Boredom, the lack of electricity and cabin fever drove families to walk and explore new places together.
"My father, brother and I decided to go out and explore," recalls Tom Farnsworth, of Seekonk, who lived in Warwick in 1978. "We somehow ended up at one of the few open places, the Central Bar in Apponaug. That day we sat together throughout the afternoon drinking 15-cent Narragansett beers and [eating] free vinegar and salt potato chips."
"I was 24 in 1978 and my father and I disagreed about practically everything, often fiercely," Farnsworth recalls. "This was a rare interlude, one of the finest, friendliest, easiest times we ever spent together."
It wasn't fun for everyone, but even those who had to work remember the hardships with a vividness and pride reserved for war veterans.
Scott Fraser, who now lives in North Scituate and handles media relations for Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island, recalls that the first day of the storm was his first day of full-time work as a radio news reporter at station WKRI in West Warwick.
"On the morning of the 6th, I arrived shortly before 5 a.m.," Fraser recalls. "I signed the station onto the air for the day and didn't leave work until 2 p.m. the following Sunday."
"I remember how all the members of our small staff pitched in and did what was necessary to keep the station running no matter how many hours we had been operating without sleep," Fraser wrote. "I remember how grateful the listeners were that we stayed on the air all night and kept them company while they were snowed in."
Radio personality Charlie Jefferds, who now lives in Barrington, was working at WJAR radio during the storm. "The hours on the air were long, but we were glad to be part of a business that provided the valuable, helpful and much needed information during a critical period."
Robin Dufresne-Barsoum was working second shift as a unit manager at Rhode Island Hospital. She reported for work at about noon on Monday and didn't leave for five days.
"I knew we were in trouble when I looked out and saw a man on skis going north on Route 95," recalls Dufresne-Barsoum.
Hospital workers grabbed fitful sleep wherever they could plop their tired bodies. "Those of us working took turns sleeping when we could, packed four to a room in Gerry House," the resident physicians' quarters.
"One afternoon, a friend told me about a spot in the electrical closet on the third floor of the APC where I could nap in peace. I learned to navigate every inch of the tunnels of the hospital complex that week."
"The National Guard brought in McDonald's hamburgers and fries from a truck," Dufresne-Barsoum recalls.
At the hospital, one distinctive sound, Dufresne-Barsoum wrote, was the thrum of helicopters flying in patients who needed emergency care and kidney dialysis.
"It sounded like a MASH episode," says Dufresne-Barsoum. "To this day, when I hear a helicopter go by, I think of that."
After five days, Dufresne-Barsoum was relieved to go home. "By week's end we were starting to get on each other's nerves."
Police officers, National Guard troops and rescue workers had the most stressful jobs. On the first night of the storm, Providence police were dispatched to find out if people were trapped inside their cars.
"Some of the cars were buried in drifts," recalls retired police Maj. John Power. "We would brush the snow off and check inside with a flashlight. The snowdrifts were so high on Empire Street that you could walk right over the autos."
At Providence restaurants, proprietors stayed open all night and ran makeshift shelters after they ran out of food and drink. People who stopped in for a quick drink after work ended up spending the night, or two.
"It has been weird in here, believe me," Greg Karambelas, who at the time owned Murphy's Deli on Union Street, told a Journal reporter the day after the snow stopped. "At one point somebody looked out the window and spotted this guy who'd fallen down in a snowdrift. We went out and picked him up and brought him in and gave him three coffees.
"He drank them, put a buck on the bar, went back outside and fell down into the same snowdrift," said Karambelas, who is now retired and living in Florida.
The stranded slept anywhere they could find space in Murphy's -- slumped over tables, on barstools, spread-eagle on the floor. Bartenders all over the state winked at the state's legal closing hour of 1 a.m. Many simply served until they ran out.
The storm was a great leveler, mixing Rhode Islanders from all of life's social and economic stations. A group of Providence College students pushed a National Guard truck transporting then-Governor J. Joseph Garrahy out of a snowbank near the campus in the city's Mount Pleasant neighborhood.
Garrahy is much remembered for his calming demeanor on television and the red-and-green plaid shirt he wore during the storm and its aftermath.
"In my eight years as governor, the blizzard remains one of the most significant events of my term," Garrahy recalls. "The red plaid shirt which I wore remains as a reminder to many Rhode Islanders of the blizzard. Most days when I meet Rhode Islanders, they mention the plaid shirt."
By Saturday, Feb. 11, Providence city workers were able to clear off one Rhode Island Public Transit Authority bus and send it to T.F. Green Airport, escorted by four-wheel-drive emergency vehicles. The bus got to the airport just as the first non-emergency airplane was permitted to land. The plane carried the University of North Carolina basketball team, ranked seventh in the nation at the time.
North Carolina was ferried into a still-closed Providence to play the Providence College Friars on Sunday afternoon, in a nationally televised game at the Civic Center.
Because the city streets were closed, all of the 6,863 fans who made the game walked. They came from as close as the old downtown train station, where fans from Westerly and Mystic, Conn., had been delivered by Amtrak, to as far as Cranston, Johnston and Warwick.
It was a game that has lived in PC basketball history. The Friars defeated North Carolina, 71-69, on a base-line jump shot by Billy Eason with 21 seconds left.
Officials thought of canceling the game, but Garrahy and then-Providence Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. thought it would be good to play.
"An event like this will give everybody a boost," Cianci said. "It will also show the nation the fiber and strength of Rhode Islanders in the face of a great natural disaster."
It wasn't a great adventure for everyone. People having heart attacks could not get to hospitals; at least four died within the first 48 hours after the storm closed the state. Twenty-one Rhode Island deaths were attributed to the storm.
Police cars couldn't move, and there were scattered reports of looting. The storm caused more than 150,000 workers to suffer lost wages and pinched area payrolls by $30 million.
And the more than 1,000 people who spent the first night in their cars in downtown Providence probably do not have such fond memories of the disaster.
"In spite of everything that happened during that blizzard I enjoyed myself every step of the way by finding the humor in it all," recalls Cynthia Daly Pinson, another blizzard survivor who spent the first night at Midland Mall and now lives in Houston, Texas. "That blizzard will always be one of the richest experiences of my life. There's no place like Rhode Island."
Can't get enough of the Blizzard of '78? Find memories from five years ago, more original coverage from The Providence Journal and a place to upload your own photos, at:
http://projo.com/specials/blizzard/
