Et cetera : Foul weather friends: The story of Doris Becker\'s \'Blizzard of \'73\' reunions

Today, when the family and friends of the late Doris Becker gather for her funeral, I hope someone remembers this story – the story that introduced me to Doris shortly after I arrived in Vinton in the spring of 2003.

Mid-April, 1973. A sudden, historical snowstorm. An accident on Highway 218, not far from the corner where Doris and her husband, Vince, lived and ran a saw mill for a half-century. A jack-knifed semi. Snow so deep that it completely hid vehicles drivers had abandoned on the roadway. A knock on the door… and then another… and another.

Soon the Becker house was filled with 19 people – mostly truck drivers – who were stranded in that snowstorm.

They spent nearly three days living with the Beckers before the roads were cleared. The guests slept on the floor, drank coffee and played cards, while using the Becker's phone to keep in touch with their families and their trucking companies.

A decade after the snowstorm, Doris made some calls. She had been wondering about the men who stayed with her and Vince that April. Those calls led to the group’s first reunion, in 1983.

They gathered about six more times over the next two decades. Nearly 20 of them met for the final time in 2003. Vince had died the summer before, and Doris was making plans to sell the place and move to be closer to her children.

Doris had told a reporter in 1973 that she had been sick before the blizzard, and the house full of unplanned visitors had cheered her up.

Thirty years later, Doris told me that the 2003 reunion would be the last. I met several of the truck drivers, many who were accompanied by their wives. The families kept in touch for those three decades.

Doris had asked her friends to share some information about their lives and families since the Blizzard of 1973. She compiled a list of jobs, and moves, and children – and also some words of thanks.

One of the truckers who had stayed there in ’73 was Tracy Lockmann of Rochester, Minnesota. His wife, Addie, added a note to her list, thanking the Beckers for their hospitality, which lasted a few days, and their friendship, which lasted a lifetime.

“How fortunate these guys and their wives have been, just getting to know you. It’s so good to be able to save these memories now, of the days we were all younger,” Addie Lockmann wrote. Then she concluded: “An event like that snowstorm didn’t bother you – there was always room for one more at the table – and in your case, the extra sleeping room for three days. God bless you both for it.”

That final reunion was a tearful one, as those gathered mourned the passing of Vince and realized they would not be together like that ever again.

Many of the people who spent those three days three miles north of Garrison have since passed away.

“We kind of lost touch,” said Gloria Lacina, whose husband Ken was one of the drivers who enjoyed the Beckers’ unplanned hospitality. Ken passed away last year; Gloria has spent part of the past few years as a volunteer at the Iowa City library.

Doris Becker’s funeral is today, in Vinton. I hope that along with the many memories of her life and her family and her and the work she loved sharing with Vince at the sawmill, someone will remember the unique friendships that began with a freak April blizzard, and the hospitality and friendship that filled the heart of the woman they gather to mourn.