At the time of the hurricane, my maiden name was Stebbins…and what I remember…living in Ludlow... I remember the wind…and we couldn’t understand how it could be so strong…you know how it would hit the house and rattle in the windows…and the noise it would make…of course our house wasn’t that new…and the old windows all rattle…we asked whether it would blow in or not…we didn’t realize it was a hurricane… 

It was during the day…it just got worse and worse…we used to have a great big peach tree in our yard…and the wind took that Peach Tree…roots and all…and just flew it straight across the lawn…and we all missed that good tree with beautiful tree…It blew the whole tree…roots and all…across the lawn…so you could see how terrific that wind was…Seeing that happen…it made us realize…none of us had experienced a hurricane…I don’t think there’s been another one like it in Springfield…At that time, you never think of taking pictures…it wasn’t the greatest time of being able to afford such a thing…

After the hurricane, the Red Cross had called…and they were in dire need of boats…and my father had a big boat…because we traveled to school in Indian Orchard on that boat…it seated five people comfortably…so my father volunteered the boat…so the Red Cross came and got the boat, and they were so excited to have such a big boat because so many people had to be taken out of their homes…

They brought the boat back…it wasn’t in as good of condition when it came back but it was still floatable, and we still used it to go back and forth to school…I think from going to so many homes and rescuing the people…the water and everything…it would hit the foundations…it was basically dented on all sides…It was hitting up against the first floor of houses…and being such a high body of water and so many people, there wasn’t anything stationary to anchor it on…so they’d just hold it…That was evidence that they’d used the boat…it was pretty handy. My father always had it all nicely painted because we were all girls going to this school and he didn’t want anything to happen to all us girls…we were happy to get it back…so that was good.

You just didn’t think it was possible that it could happen…once in a lifetime thing…you hope it never happens again…And of course…they say there’s no reason why it won’t happen again…so you keep your fingers crossed. You can’t stop mother nature…she has to do her thing.