The Hurricane of 1938

The hurricane of 1938 as seen through the eyes of

four high school students and others in Marlborough

Peter B. Snyder

…
The winning essay in the
2011 Marlborough Historical Society
Scholarship Competition

The Marlborough Historical Society

Marlborough, Massachusetts

www.HistoricMarlborough.org
 Seventy-three years ago on September 21st four high school students from

Marlborough along with the rest of the town, in fact along with all of New England,

experienced something that had not happened in over a century in the northeast. One of

the high schoolers encountered it while commuting in a Model A Ford; another was

caught unaware on his cot in the kitchen; one teen had a hilarious run in with a self-

appointed crossing guard; and the last student saw an unforgettable sight out her

bathroom window. This was the great Hurricane of 1938!

The storm formed near Africa in the Azores on the tenth of September. It

continued to head straight to Florida,

however the wind from the west and a

southerly wind pushed the storm up

towards Long Island and New England

rather than curving away as was expected.

The category four hurricane’s eye was 40

Fig. 1. Goddard, Steven. Chart of path of Hurricane of 1938.
miles wide, with a 200 mile diameter http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/
2010/09/800px-1938_new_england_hurricane_track.png?w=640&h=396
of swirling winds.

Charles F. Brooks, founder of the American Meteorological Society, and former

Director of the Blue Hill Observatory, was quoted in Minsinger’s book, The 1938

Hurricane, “This vortex rushed northward to Long Island and New England with the

speed of an express train, augmenting wind velocity to extremes of about 120 mph on the

east of the path of the center.” 1 What made this hurricane in particular so unusual was

1
Minsinger, William Elliott, M.D. The 1938 Hurricane. Randolph Center, Vermont,
Greenhills Books, 1988: 10.
that it ran up the eastern seaboard so fast and so straight. Most hurricanes lose speed

when they hit land and veer off to the Atlantic. The Hurricane of 1938 did neither, it

maintained its straight course and went all the way up the Connecticut River Valley into

Vermont and even into Canada.

Weather advisories had been issued, however given the unexpected speed,

traveling at fifty mph, a lack of advanced metrological equipment, and no quick easy way

to spread the word, save for the radio which really was more for light entertainment at the

time, there was little that they could do to warn the populace.

Arthur Marsan who lived in Marlborough for many years said,

“I was 16 years old, and had just started attending Worcester Trade School

that fall, being trained as an electrician. The winds were really picking up.

As we were looking out the school window from our electrical class on the

4th floor, we said ‘Man look at that wind and rain!’ Then all of a sudden

we hear, ‘O.K. class is dismissed.’

I think it was about 11 o’clock in

the morning. The school cleared

out fast. We were in a Model A,

real fancy. Most of the cars were

Fig. 2. Model A Ford.
http://www.anyupholstery.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/
owned by older guys. And they would pack as many as you could pack in,
images/Model_A_Ford.29693941_large.jpg

sometimes five of us or as many as eight, if someone needed a ride.

We’d come up to Shrewsbury center, into Northborough to drop off some

of the guys. The police cordoned off the area in Shrewsbury due to

downed electrical wires. The trees were down and we couldn’t get any
 farther. So okay we turned around and went back. We were driving

against the wind and the Model A, being a light car, we were sitting up

high. We really could feel that wind. All the way back we were saying,

‘Gee I hope we make it.’ We had no idea it was a hurricane. All we knew

was it was a heavy rain storm.”

John Noble, (pictured right) another lifelong resident of Marlborough, recalled,

“I was a freshman at Marlborough High in what is now the Walker Building.

I was at Glee Club rehearsal. Somebody heard that the storm was coming,

and I guess that the wind was starting to

blow or something, and suddenly they sent

us all home. By the time I got home [146

Prospect Street], the storm was getting

pretty wild. It obviously by then was going

to be a terrific storm, but we were not

expecting a hurricane.

So my father immediately woke my brother and told him to go to the shoe

factory on Howland Street where my mother worked. He told him, ‘Get up

there and walk your mother home.’ Thank God he did that, because it was

picking up by that time. He got her back, but I don’t know what the factory

did with everyone else. I was just happy to have my mother home.”

Clearly nobody would ever even think that a hurricane of such magnitude was

possible here in our city. In the Marlborough Enterprise the news on the day of the

storm consisted of two actors being paired in a movie for the seventh time and savings on
groceries. The next day on the twenty-second, obviously, there was a drastic change in

the news. For starters the Enterprise was published in Framingham that day due to storm

related issues. Also it would seem the vultures did not take long to take advantage of the

situation, as there were already ads for house damage repair and insurance. Interestingly

enough regular news such as dresses for the season and comics were still to be found in

the paper despite the hurricane. 2

During the storm Leonard Tremblay over on 51 Grant Street was at home in their

third floor apartment not doing too much. “I was 15 years old,” he reminisced. “I had

injured my knee at school and had to have stitches. So I was laid up on a cot in the

kitchen recovering. My family was with me in the kitchen, when all of a sudden the

chimney came down. I wasn’t hurt, only plaster came down and covered me, it was a

mess. We didn’t realize it was a hurricane.”

When a member of the current Immaculate Conception

Choir, Phyllis Fortin Tremblay (pictured left), was asked if she

remembered this storm, she gasped, saying that she quite

clearly remembered it, and, more importantly, she saw the

moment that the Immaculate Conception parish steeple fell.

“There are many stories associated with this

hurricane, I’m sure. But I vividly remember

seeing the Immaculate Conception Church

steeple go down,” Mrs. Tremblay started. “You might ask: how could we

see the I.C. steeple fall? Visualize our house on the top of Washington

2
Marlborough Enterprise, September 22, 1938, page 1
Street, number 58. We, the Fortin family, were on the second floor

apartment, my aunt and uncle owned the house.

If you walked to the back of the apartment

(pictured right), the bathroom window faced out

toward Prospect Street, right in alignment with

the Church steeple.

My aunt and uncle and my parents were at

home. I don’t know whether the factories let

people go home or not. But I think that they must have let them out

because my parents there. My father worked at the Diamond M (I think

that was the name) Shoe Factory on Pleasant Street. And my aunt and

uncle worked at the Curtis Shoe Factory on Cotting Avenue. My mother

took care of my aunt’s only child, my cousin, we were closer than sisters.

All of my family lived on Washington Street.

There were seven of us living upstairs looking through the small bathroom

window. There were no houses in the way, and the steeple was very very

tall, about 100 feet tall. We could see it swaying. Absolutely! We were

just gasping with awe watching out the window. We saw it sway about a

half dozen times or so. We stayed right there and saw it go for good, right

on Judge McDonald’s big round porch. The steeple didn’t hit the house

proper, but mostly it knocked the porch down.”

 However had the steeple fallen it would find nobody to smash since a heroic

patrolman, Eugene Mullane, had just saved the people in the house. According to the

Marlborough

Enterprise, Eugene was

on his beat when he saw

the hundred foot steeple

waving in the hundred

mile per hour wind and

saw that the steeple was

going to fall to the north. Fig. 3. Immaculate Conception Church minus its 100 foot steeple. From postcard courtesy of
John Noble, printed by Tichnor Bros. Inc. 160 No. Wash. St., Boston, Mass.

Since the late judge’s house was no less than fifty

feet away he rushed in to the house telling them to get

out. Officer Mullane then went into the next house

belonging to Miss Mary Campbell and evacuated her too.

No sooner were the people out then the resounding crash

of the steeple was heard “leveling [the McDonald’s] front

porch to kindling wood” 3

Fig. 4. Immaculate Conception Church with repairman on top. Alatalo, Susan with the
Marlborough Historical Society, Images of America Marlborough, Charleston, South
Carolina, Arcadia Publishing, 2003: 91.

The four local residents told other stories besides

the ones about the terrible strength of the storm, but there were two pertinent tales which
3
Marlborough Enterprise, September 22, 1938, page 1.
were quite amusing. Mr. Marsan (pictured below) told a story that happened during the

hurricane,

[M]y father and I were looking over the street and walking around

retrieving whatever we could. Our neighbor, Dick, who lived two doors

down the street liked to bend the elbow a bit too

much. By then he was feeling no pain. He had a

metal roof that was built in slots like layers. One

of the layers had just come off, just rolled off,

rolling UP the street. My father said, ‘I’ve got to

go stop him, he’s going to cut his arm off if he

retrieves it,’ because the guy was running after his

roof trying to stop it. My father said, ‘It’s a good thing he’s feeling good.’

Even today I can see clearly old Dick running trying to catch his roof.”

In fact there were two funny stories about drunks that day. According to Mr.

Noble after he was dismissed from school, as he was walking up Prospect Street to get to

his house “[t]here was this fellow directing traffic at Lincoln and Prospect. He said to

me, ‘Alright now, move along before somebody else gets killed.’ I said, ‘Why? Did

somebody get killed?’ He said, ‘No, but I might.’ I then discovered that he had a little

smell of the brewery. Laughingly I recall that was all right, I guess he had appointed

himself to that job.”

As a result of the hurricane, Marlborough was placed under martial law to ensure

against looting. Despite the drunks there was no record of looting during the aftermath,

but just to be safe the WPA and National Guard were called in.4
4
Marlborough Enterprise, September 22, 1938, page 1
 A strange quirk is that the clean-up in Marlborough apparently was relatively

quick (well the major things to make sure that life could continue easily, for instance

schools in session, most power restored, and roads cleared). This could be inferred from

the fact that in the Enterprise the next week there was a brief article about the aftermath
5
of the storm in Connecticut, but not much else.

Yes the clean-up of the some “275,000,000 trees… darkening the houses of

seven-eighths of those served by power lines, and cutting off nearly one-third of the

telephones,” would of course take a while to fix and the fact that “1,675 head of

livestock, and one-half to three-quarters of a million chickens were killed,” would

certainly be a hindrance, life in Marlborough at any rate would carry on. The fallen

steeples of many churches were repaired at least a year later, although the Immaculate

Conception Church never had its steeple’s grand height or its four clocks restored. By

the next day, by 10 A.M. all of the factories save 2 were fully functional again.

However one thing that was not immediately reopened, much to the joy of the

students, was the schools! “It was sort of exciting and having school off for the next two

days too,” said Mrs. Tremblay. Even Mr. Marsan and Mr. Noble admitted to being glad

for lack of school, with Mr. Noble saying, “I guess the important thing to me, at that age,

was that there was no school until Monday.” On Saturday the Marlborough Enterprise

warned the students not to touch any fallen wires or hanging limbs as they still proved a

threat.6

5
Marlborough Enterprise, September 26, 1938, page 1
6
Marlborough Enterprise, September 24, 1938, page 1.
 Although this storm took quite a toll on all of New England and Long Island, in

Marlborough, Massachusetts, we carried on strong, never for a moment letting ourselves

be hindered by a strong hurricane and, what’s more, we are fortunate to have vivid stories

from our senior citizens.

WORKS CITED

Alatalo, Susan with the Marlborough Historical Society, Images of America

 Marlborough, Charleston, South Carolina, Arcadia Publishing, 2003: 91 photo of

church steeple.

Any Upholstery. Model A Ford. http://www.anyupholstery.com/yahoo_site_admin/

assets/images/Model_A_Ford.29693941_large.jpg

Goddard, Steven, Chart. http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/

800px-1938_new_england_hurricane_track.png?w=640&h=396

Marlborough Enterprise, September 21 through October 1, 1938.

Marsan, Arthur, Personal interview, March 9, 2011.

Minsinger, William Elliott, M.D., The 1938 Hurricane, Randolph Center, Vermont,

Greenhills Books, 1988: 9-15.

Noble, John, Personal interview, March 12, 2011.

Tichnor Bros. Inc. Immaculate Conception Church minus its 100 foot steeple. Picture

postcard, courtesy of John Noble, Tichnor Bros. Inc. 160 No. Wash. St., Boston,

Mass.

Tremblay, Leonard, Personal interview, March 11, 2011.

Tremblay, Phyllis Fortin, Personal interview, March 11, 2011.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alatalo, Susan with the Marlborough Historical Society, Images of America

 Marlborough, Charleston, South Carolina, Arcadia Publishing, 2003: 91 photo of

church steeple.

Allen, Everett S. A Wind To Shake The World: The Story of the 1938 Hurricane.

Boston, Toronto, Little Brown and Company. 1976.

Any Upholstery. Model A Ford. http://www.anyupholstery.com/yahoo_site_admin/

assets/images/Model_A_Ford.29693941_large.jpg

Goddard, Steven, Chart. http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/

800px-1938_new_england_hurricane_track.png?w=640&h=396

Marlborough Enterprise, September 21 through October 1, 1938.

Marsan, Arthur, Personal interview, March 9, 2011.

Minsinger, William Elliott, M.D., The 1938 Hurricane, Randolph Center, Vermont,

Greenhills Books, 1988: 9-15.

Noble, John, Personal interview, March 12, 2011.

Perley, Sidney. Historic Storms of New England. Beverly, Massachusetts. Memoirs

Unlimited, Inc. 2001.

Scotti, R. A. Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938. Boston New York London,

Little Brown and Company. 2003.

Tichnor Bros. Inc. Immaculate Conception Church minus its 100 foot steeple. Picture

postcard, courtesy of John Noble, Tichnor Bros. Inc. 160 No. Wash. St., Boston,

Mass.

Tremblay, Leonard, Personal interview, March 11, 2011.

Tremblay, Phyllis Fortin, Personal interview, March 11, 2011.