It was Christmas Day 1987 - 29 years ago. I don’t remember that we had a lot of warning about an impending ice storm but weather predictions were different back then. Most local people were sitting down to their Christmas dinner with family when the power to their homes went off.
My turkey was not quite done but we finished cooking it on a wood heating stove we had in my office so we could eat. Then we prepared for bed early. We only had a few oil lamps back then and the house was getting cold. Our daughter was in high school and recovering from surgery, so the three of us bedded down in the living room because it was warmer there.
Then the phone rang. Our next door neighbor, Harry Hatten, was on the line with the alarming news that downtown Lebanon was on fire!
Lebanon lost at least 4 businesses in the 100 block of W. Commercial on the south side of the street that night, including Mayfield Abstract, Ted’s Jewelry Store, Mattingly’s department store, and a Stitch & Stable store owned by the Bennekempers.
Norman Jewelry did not burn but was in enough danger that a human chain was formed to stretch across Commercial Street passing fragile glass items and wedding dresses from hand to hand. My memory is that they were put into the Farm Supply Store for safety.
Beverly Thomson was an associate manager at Walmart which was located in the Southdale Center at the time and was working alone in the store all that night. The store was open only for emergency supplies and she would use a flashlight to guide the customer to the items they needed, and then “ring up their purchase” using a calculator because the cash registers didn’t work. Beverly’s husband James was on the police force at the time and would drive by to check on her. There were no cell phones.
David Hillme was the manager of Country Kitchen where the power did not go off, and they fed customers biscuits and gravy and pancakes.
Here on S. Washington Avenue, some homes had power and some did not and I can remember driving down the street, thinking that we looked like those little Christmas villages on mantels connected by wires, because the neighbors strung extension cords across the yards connecting one house to the other and shared the electricity for the things we needed the most.
Transformers were constantly exploding as ice covered wires came down and pulled the wires out of the breaker boxes, with limbs falling onto roof tops. All night you could hear the ice on the wires popping and cracking. We were concerned about tree limbs over the flat roof of my insurance office attached to the house, so we moved all my office equipment, computer, printer etc into our dining room at the front of the house, just in case.
In the days afterward, our good neighbor across the street, Butch Rowe, loaned us his generator so we could pump the water from our basement because the sump pump wouldn’t work, and later Milan’s brother, Shelva Hart, parked his RV outside and used it to run his generator to help us.
Farm families had to milk large herds of cows by hand, or borrowed generators from neighboring farms. The National Guard also provided generators for dairy farmers’ use.
There were many family reunions arranged quickly out of necessity as people who had power opened their homes to friends and family who didn’t.
Those who had kerosene heaters fared better than those with all electric homes. Many referred to Radio Station KJEL as the “savior of the town”. They stayed on the air all the time using a “trading post” format where people could call who needed help and others would call offering help. There was no exchange of money, just neighbors helping neighbors.
Eric Anderson lived on a farm and described how barbed wire fences were frozen solid with ice from top to bottom. Roads were blocked. He and other family members and neighbors worked for days clearing roads, mending fences, and rescuing lost cattle. The family met together and cooked up deer, elk and fish they had frozen to keep them from going bad. They were out of power and water for two weeks. It was too dangerous to go out into the timber and cut wood.
Irita Williams Barnard describeds how pine trees were so heavy they brought down power lines as they fell. They used battery operated radios to check on each other and the elderly to make sure their needs were met. They carried water from ponds to flush toilets and got drinking water from farmers who had generators.
Deidra K. Willis was a volunteer firefighter and a dispatcher for LPD. She was just arriving at work that night when the fire alarm for Ted’s Jewelry came in. As a firefighter, she left to go to the fire. She knew the layout of the building and gave instructions to firefighters Stan Akers and Fred Savage while she stayed at the bottom of the stairs feeding the firehose back and forth. Suddenly the building started to “flash over” and Akers and Savage came running down the stairs to escape.
She described how Shirley Mayfield whose office was burning with all her records stood in the street in a state of shock. Shirley was a dear friend to me and I had worked for her in that building about 1970 right after my daughter was born, so I can only imagine, even now, 30 years later, how terrified she must have been to have lost everything in just a few minutes.
It was a very sad night. In addition to the fire downtown, three little boys lost their lives in a fire in a mobile home court in Lebanon while all this was going on.
If I have made any mistakes in recounting all this, please forgive me. Much time has passed, and so has my memory.
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