Plz help needs to be 5-6 paragraph will give most points as posible The winter of 1887–1888 was one of the worst on record for the Midwest. Extremely cold temperatures
were common, and settlers experienced devastating ice storms and record snowfalls. On January 12,
however, residents across the region awoke to unseasonably mild temperatures. Many people left home
without any protective clothing like coats, hats, or mittens, thinking that the weather was going to be
fine. Later that day, however, a destructive winter storm rolled in across the Great Plains. One weather
station in Minnesota recorded a temperature drop of more than 100 degrees; it was 44°F at 2 p. m., and
the overnight low reached −42°F. In addition to dangerously low temperatures, the storm brought high
winds and heavy snows. Hundreds of people who were caught out in the storm perished, including at
least 213 children who were unable to make it home from school. As a result of the loss of life, the storm
became known as the Schoolchildren’s Blizzard.
In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, the WPA Federal Writers’ Project was created by the US
government to provide work to writers and to record Americans’ testimonies of various events in US
history. As part of the project, members of the department interviewed survivors of the Schoolchildren’s
Blizzard.
O. W. Meier was a 15-year-old living in Nebraska in 1888. In this excerpt, he describes his experience of
trying to lead his friends and two younger brothers safely home.
Document:
“The two Strelow boys, Robert and George, with John Conrad, my two brothers, and I, put out into the
storm for our homes. We had not gone a rod when we found ourselves in a heap, in a heavy drift of
snow. We took hold of each other’s hands, pulled ourselves out, got into the road, and the cold north
wind blew us down the road a half mile south, where the Strelow boys and John Conrad had to go west
a mile or more. When they reached a bridge in a ravine, the little fellows sheltered a while under the
bridge, a wooden culvert, but Robert, the oldest, insisted that they push on thru the blinding storm for
their homes. In the darkness they stumbled in, and by degrees their parents thawed them out, bathed
their frozen hands, noses, ears and cheeks, while the boys cried in pain.
“My brothers and I could not walk thru the deep snow in the road, so we took down the rows of corn
stalks to keep from losing ourselves ’till we reached our pasture fence. Walter was too short to wade the
deep snow in the field, so Henry and I dragged him over the top. For nearly a mile we followed the fence
’till we reached the corral and pens. In the howling storm, we could hear the pigs squeal as they were
freezing in the mud and snow. Sister Ida had opened the gate and let the cows in from the field to the
sheds, just as the cold wind struck and froze her skirts stiff around her like hoops. The barn and stables
were drifted over when we reached there. The roaring wind and stifling snow blinded us so that we had
to feel thru the yard to the door of our house.
“The lamp was lighted. Mother was walking the floor, wringing her hands and calling for her boys. Pa
was shaking the ice and snow from his coat and boots. He had gone out to meet us but was forced back
by the storm. We stayed in the house all that night. It was so cold that many people froze.”