In 1938 …we really were not aware like we are today … it was a storm. It was a workday…I was working at ‘The X’ in Springfield…And, we had a boy working there as an all-around helper…and we sent him up there on the roof to close the skylight, they had it open…and we sent him up on the roof not realizing there was a hurricane…and once he got up there everybody in the store started going outside and looking at him…we saw a sheet of glass…come out of a window…and go down Sumner Avenue…just the way it was…and we thought… ’oh my goodness and he’s up there on the roof’…he got down there safely…

I was an employee of the B.F. Lieder Store in the X…It went through from Dickenson street through to Belmont Avenue…it went through that string of store. It was before a Ben Franklin store years ago…and 2 brothers bought it, and named it the B.F. Lieder store…I worked there part time while in high school..and that’s where we saw the sheet of glass go right down the road…not a person holding it…big enough for half a store window…never broke till our knowledge…it just kept on going down the road… 

And everyone that got caught inside the store during the storm were out on the sidewalk, all telling everyone what to do…nobody wanted to go out on the roads...it was a scary time…but we didn’t have the information that we have today…we were going to have a storm…and that was about the size of it…we didn’t think about a flood or anything.

but being young, only 20 years old…being engaged…and very much in love…I was worried about my date that night…how’s he going to get here that night…well he tells me, when he did arrive…he left early from his work…and went and got his mother who worked downtown to get her home…and he went up Bay Street and the trees were dropping behind him…and he said ‘I came over here with an axe…and when I couldn’t get through I got out of the car and I chopped up the tree and pushed it over to the side as best I could so that I could get over here and let you know that I’m alright.’…And we happened to live in Reaumont street off of Dickenson…so we got the breeze and the rain…but we didn’t get the flood…but I do remember being 20 years old…and very much in love…and the hurricane really stirred up our relationship a little bit.

We married July 2^nd, 1940…I was married to Charles Danton of Springfield Mass… and he died after our 55^th year of marriage in 1994…and he was 81… and I’ll be 90 the 14^th of August… so I’ve outlived him by a long time… we have two lovely children…and they’ve all done well, but that has nothing to do with the story.

I think the hurricane was practically over with by 10-12oclock…we just had a mess the next day…a real mess…there were trees down everywhere…there was a funeral home…it’s still there…and there was a big tree that just missed it not far from Belmont Ave…it was a good sized tree laying across the road…Lotta tree damage more than anything else.