Very few Midlanders could remember the Blizzard of 1888 as vividly as Ira Silvus.

Mr. Silvus, 89, died in 1966. When he was a 12-year old boy, the famous storm struck on January 12. Years later, during another snow storm, the retired Omaha rug weaver recalled for the World Herald Tribune what that storm was like.

"The Blizzard of '88 had more punch in its wind velocity and there wasn’t as much moisture in the snow. The drifts…stuck out 10 to 12 feet. A man had to go over them or through them---there were no fences or roads to follow."

Mr. Silvus, who was living with his parents, a brother and a sister in a dugout between Sioux City and Smithland, IA., said some of their neighbors called his father (George Sylvus #335h) "chicken hearted" because he made the wise decision to store up on food and fuel in case of emergency. However, he said, his father later joined searching parties for some of the very people who had called him "chicken hearted."

His wife May was confined to a wheel chair during the last 26 years of her life after being hit by an auto in 1943.