RECALLING AN ILLINOIS BLIZZARD.

In 1967, Northern IL had one of the worst blizzards on record…Good friends of ours, Kathie and Jim Potter of Sheridan, IL., recall their ordeal the day of the “Blizzard of ‘67”…as recounted by the local news.. Jim graduated HS with Dennis…This is how local family and farmers pulled together to get Kathie to the hospital that day!! I thought I would share it with you…

“The worst blizzard to hit the La Salle County area occurred Jan. 26 and 27, 1967, when the region was blanketed with a record-setting 23 inches of snow.
Rural Sheridan resident Kathie Potter has a different reason for remembering that snowstorm — she gave birth in the middle of it.
"It was quite exciting. We always laugh over it," Potter recalled Tuesday as another blizzard whipped the Midwest.
At the time of the 1967 snowstorm, Potter and her husband, Jim, were living on a farm, with the nearest hospital in Sandwich. The blizzard was apparently too much for the township plow, which broke down, leaving five miles of snow-choked road between the farm and the hospital when the expectant mother went into labor early Friday, Jan. 27.
To get to the delivery room, a convoy was formed, with Kathie's brother-in-law Norm Potter in one tractor, Wayne Knight in another and Albert Stallings in a third, followed by Kathie and her husband in their car. The five-mile journey took five hours.
"It was strange too. It was in the 60s the day before, and beautiful," Kathie remembered. Records show the temperature reached 67 degrees two days before the blizzard.
During the trek to the hospital, Kathie said she and her husband kept wondering, "We don't want to deliver in the car. Should we stop at this house or keep going?"
They continued going, eventually pulling into the hospital's parking lot. However, there was no doctor present, so Norm Potter took his tractor to fetch Dr. William Kenshol. But nature did not wait and within five minutes a 7-pound, 7-ounce girl was born. The Potters named her Dawn. Nurse Irene Wasson handled the birth in lieu of the doctor. Dawn is now Dawn Lambert and lives next door to her parents.
Kathie recalled with a chuckle that if the baby had been a boy, the name would have been far different in honor of the men who helped get her to the hospital: Norman Wayne Albert.”

That’s how the rural communities did it back in the day…

We will be out of communication while traveling tomorrow to Goose Island State Park….Talk to y’all sometime Tuesday..Pray for us..Carlton the GPS is taking us through Corpus Christi….just great.

THE STICKS AND BRICKS OF THE CAVES….

“A house is made of walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams.”