The Blizzard of February 10, 1969...

​Although the winter of 1996 was brutal, the Northeast suffered one of the most treacherous blizzards 27 years earlier. Although I was only seven years old, I remember the infamous Blizzard of February 10, 1969 very well. I was traveling with my mother aboard a flight from Austin, Texas back home to Northern New Jersey after a two-week visit with relatives. The storm would later be nicknamed “The Lindsay Storm” after former New York City mayor John Lindsay was ultimately held responsible for the lack of timely and appropriate snow-removal efforts following a completely inaccurate weather forecast. The storm paralyzed the entire New York/New Jersey Metropolitan Area, leaving 42 people dead and 288 injured. Although Newark International Airport managed to shut down in time, six thousand passengers and airport employees were trapped at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Emergency conditions resulted in the urgent need for food and water to be air-dropped as stranded passengers begged airport vendors and one another for cigarettes and gum. The front pages of all the New York Metro newspapers graphically reported the events as they unfolded, including the story of three people who had frozen to death in their car. My mother and I were now caught in the middle of one of the deadliest storms of the twentieth century.


Although our Braniff Airlines flight was scheduled to land in Newark, that was not to be. Mother Nature had other plans. The entire northeast corridor had all but completely shut down forcing our flight to be diverted to Washington DC’s Dulles Airport. Our only option was to seek available ground transportation. The weather conditions made it quite the journey via Amtrak train from Washington DC to New York City’s Penn Station. Upon arrival, we had to endure the seemingly impossible and bitterly cold nine city block walk to Manhattan’s Port Authority Bus Terminal in two feet of snow.


When we arrived at the 42nd Street bus station, my mother locked our luggage in a storage locker available for rent in those days. With little cash left, she quickly bought something for her little daughter to eat. It was early 1969, several months before my mother was to join the workforce outside the home. She had no credit card. My mother knew she had to keep every penny she could since we were not yet in the comfort and safety of my father’s presence. As we walked upstairs to the bus lines, I started to feel good about getting on a warm bus home. My mother’s face, however, suddenly looked even paler than it already had been when the ticket agent informed her that the 167 bus had already stopped running for the night. We had no choice but to board an alternate bus which could only drop us off one town away from where we actually lived. It is curious, though, what a seven-year-old remembers. I was in first grade at the time and could easily read numbers and basic sight words. I also knew that Dumont was not Teaneck nor was it Queen Anne Road. Both of those routes would have taken us almost to our door. The bus driver did tell my mother, however, that he would try to go out of his way as much as he legally could since he knew we needed route 167, not 166.


After a very slow journey out of Manhattan, the bus driver stopped the bus and opened the door. He hesitated as he turned to my mother to tell her this was the closest he could get to Teaneck. He had no choice but to drop us off. As we exited the bus he told my mother to be careful. She thanked him as we got off. We were now four miles from home.
After walking quite a bit, a male driver stopped to ask if he could drive us to wherever we were headed. My mother, however, was very cautious about getting into a car with a man she did not know. She had been educated in a private parochial girls’ school. Nuns taught that accepting such an offer would not be proper or safe. My mother politely declined and told him we were almost home. That statement was not at all accurate.


Later, a car with both a male driver and a female passenger stopped to ask if we needed a ride. This time my mother accepted. Although in 1969 many Caucasians would have declined such an offer from an African-American couple, my mother did not. She had been raised differently. My mother knew instinctively this couple was trying to help a woman with a little girl walking alone on a bitterly cold night.


We were now safe and warm inside the car of the good Samaritans. As the car approached the immediate vicinity of our apartment, I became excited as I could now recognize Teaneck. We passed our dentist’s office as the car made the two turns necessary to reach our one-way street, Walraven Drive. We were now minutes from the end of what turned out to be the most unanticipated and arduous journey home.


I will never forget the look on my father’s face as my mother and I climbed to the second floor of our garden apartment. He acted as though he believed he would never see us again. There were, of course, no cell phones in those days and all the telephone lines were down. He had no idea what happened to us other than all flights bound for the New York/New Jersey Metropolitan Area as well as New England had been diverted to the Mid-Atlantic region and points south. The memory of February 10, 1969, reappeared on the overnight of March 1, 1996 and again today, February 10, 2026.

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TO BE CONTINUED in 4 days on the 30th anniversary of my saving my own life on Valentine's Day 1996 (including how and why it matters to you and your loved ones in the 21st century).

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