Sam E. Wohlford rescued Kenneth R. Reynolds and others from exposure, Stratford, Texas, February 11, 1948. Kenneth, 15, his brother Robert, his sister, his grandmother, and his father stayed all night in the partly exposed cab of an auto-truck which had stalled off a country road and become snowbound during a blizzard with a north wind of 35 m.p.h. Seeking aid, the father on foot finally reached Wohlford’s home, which was three miles by road from the truck, the next afternoon. Wohlford, 57, rancher, made a wooden platform, which he placed on his tractor and covered with a tarpaulin. Heavily clothed and protecting his face with a handkerchief, Wohlford with the father drove the tractor south of the road, which was blocked by drifts, and east through fields to a point near the truck as darkness gathered and visibility grew poor. Wading through deep drifts they found the children and grandmother in the cab, all unconscious except Kenneth, and placed them onto the tractor platform. Wohlford drove back a mile and a half to a dwelling, into which the men carried the others. Robert showed no sign of life, and Wohlford feared the others rescued would die without medical attention. No home in the area had a telephone, and the nearest physicians lived at Stratford 10 miles north. Wohlford drove the tractor two miles through the fields to the Stratford highway. Visibility had grown worse, and there were deep drifts on the highway. Doubting he could reach Stratford, Wohlford drove a half a mile south on the highway to a neighbor’s home. Telling the neighbor to watch for passing vehicles so that word could be taken to a physician, Wohlford started to drive back to the Reynolds family. The tractor stalled in a field a half a mile west of the highway; and after losing his way for a time and falling in drifts, Wohlford on foot finally returned to the neighbor’s home, his face, hands, and feet being numbed. He and the neighbor watched the highway for several hours, but no vehicle appeared. The neighbor’s wife, who was in an advanced stage of pregnancy, began suffering labor pains; and her husband becoming greatly upset expressed the wish that a woman relative who lived two miles farther south on the highway were present. On foot Wohlford for a half a mile made his way through deep drifts along a fence and then was guided by a line of poles to the woman’s home, reaching it in state of near collapse. He had been exposed to the blizzard total of five hours, during which time the temperature had fallen from eight degrees to zero. The woman’s husband got out his auto-truck while Wohlford worked off cramps in his numbed legs. The couple and he drove to the neighbor’s home, where the woman got off to attend the neighbor’s wife; and the men resumed driving to within two miles of Stratford, where they found the highway blocked. They drove south 19 miles to an ordnance plant. By then there was daylight, and the wind had slackened and the snowfall ceased. Wohlford in an ambulance guided a party including a physician to the Reynolds family. Robert and his sister and grandmother had died. Kenneth and his father had suffered frostbite, but they recovered. The physician delivered the neighbor’s wife of a daughter. Wohlford was cold, tired, stiff, and sore; and his cheek had been frostbitten; but he recovered. 41314-3570
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