Today is Monday, January 16, 2017.  It is 50 years to the day since Chokio saved a bus load of their children from freezing to death in what I call the Chokio Bus Rescue.

I have looked to this day for more than two years.  For me, this day is a celebration of small-town strength and selflessness.  It is also the day I will finish posting about the Chokio Bus Rescue. The blog will remain on my website indefinitely.

This project started and ended with the wonderful Chokio Review. Just three days after the heroic rescue in 1967, the brand-new owners of the newspaper had a nearly-full front page of information about it, including photos of the stalled bus.

This page has been saved and carefully preserved by many.  When I found my mother’s copy, it sparked my interest in writing a book about the rescue.  When reality set in, I decided to create instead a blog on my website, where I could write about the memories of those involved in or related to the Chokio Bus Rescue.

Kay Grossman, editor of the Chokio Review, was warmly enthusiastic about the project, and kindly used her news columns to invite participation.  Later Nick Ripperger, owner of the Chokio Review, gave permission for me to post the original news coverage and images of the front page on my blog.

And finally, on January 19, Kay plans to reprise the story of the Chokio Bus Rescue in the pages of the Chokio Review, fifty years to the day since the original rescue coverage was published.

Community newspapers are the lifeblood of small towns.

Likewise, a school is the heart of a small town.

Chokio and neighboring Alberta combined  schools the same calendar year as the Chokio Bus Rescue, beginning in the fall of 1967.  This was just one of many decisions school leaders had to make over the years to keep their local schools viable and the children safe.

Responding to the crisis of a stranded school bus quickly became a community-wide effort on Monday, January 16, 1967. Everyone did what they could do and tragedy was averted.

And so, for most of the people interviewed for this blog, memories of the Chokio Bus Rescue are positive. The people I talked with tended to focus on the success of the mission and the uplifting outcome. 

Readership of the blog was modest, as I had made no effort to promote it.  For that reason, I am making a .PDF document available to those who would like the blog in its entirety in electronic form.

There is no cost for this copy.  Simply email [email protected] and I will reply with an attachment of the .PDF.

While actually getting a book published might have better preserved the story of the Chokio Bus Rescue, at least this blog may have pulled the story of this heroic event just a few decades back from eventual oblivion.

And maybe, like me, there will be a little preschooler, safe at home on a blizzardy night, who hears the story of the Chokio Bus Rescue, and is touched by the wonder of what strong and selfless small-town folk can accomplish by working together.

With gratitude to the Chokio Review and all who shared their memories,

Julie Stillwell Sorenson
 
P.S. Special thanks to my mother, Donna Stillwell, and my sister, Lisa Benusa.  Your unwavering support and encouragement made it possible for me to take this blog from an idea to a finished product. 

Burton Nypen was Superintendent at Chokio Public Schools at the time of the Chokio Bus Rescue, Monday, January 16, 1967.  He died in 2015, and so his widow, Gerry Nypen, shared her recollections of that  unforgettable day.

The Nypens lived in a large, two-story, older home provided by the school and located near it. Gerry said whenever there were winter storms threatening the area, Burton would be up early to decide whether or not he should close or delay school.

“About 4 a.m., he’d be checking on the weather.  Burt would be out on the highways, driving, checking on road conditions,” Gerry said.

The day of the blizzard started out with relatively mild temperatures, causing many to think they would be enjoying an unnaturally pleasant winter day. Reality would prove to be shockingly different.

School had barely begun when snow, driving wind and plunging temperatures made it apparent that a surprise blizzard was bearing down on the region.  Students were loaded into buses by 9:30 a.m.

John Mount, Harley Peters and Don Grossman were the bus drivers who found it necessary to turn back to the school, unable to see enough to drive safely.  Roger Amborn delivered all of his students, but could not get home, and stayed overnight with the Earl Melberg family. John Berlinger and the children on his bus stayed with Floyd and Dorothy Zimmerman.

Because Chokio’s buses did not have two-way radios, Clayton Kolling could not simply call in to the school to let them know his bus was stranded several miles south of town.  However, telephones were working, and calls were flying all over the community, especially to the Superintendent’s office.

“Burt was a calming person, and he tried to reassure others.  He was a hard worker for the school system,” Gerry said.

As the day wore on and early attempts to reach the bus failed, the tension rose.

“Someone called Burt and told him ‘I hope you have a heart attack,’” Gerry recalls. While her husband was handling the ordeal at school, Gerry was “at home, taking phone calls,” she said.

Finally the rescued children arrived at the school to warm up, eat and connect with the families that would provide overnight hospitality.

This writer recalls her father, Larry Stillwell, telling how Supt. Nypen had tears rolling down his face when he stood at the door as the children walked in.

After closing up the school, Burton returned home, where he and Gerry provided overnight hospitality to a couple of bus drivers and children.

Roger Gerdes knows what makes a small town tick.  He’s been mayor of Chokio for 20 years, and was recently re-elected to what he says will be his last two-year term.

He remembers how his introduction to elected community office began.  He received a surprise visit from Jim McNally, Doc Busch and Ervy Nelson.

“I had no idea why they came to see me,” Roger said.  They wanted him to run for mayor because the incumbent was not seeking another term.

“I told them I had never even been on the council before.  I said ‘put me down for the council,’ but they told me they already had that taken care of,” Roger said.  “So that’s how I got into this.”

Roger said he hadn’t planned on running for mayor in November 2016, but it appeared no one was going to run.  He decided to be on the ballot, and despite a competing last-minute candidate, Roger won two more years of work.

“It’s a job nobody wants. It don’t pay nothing.  You don’t do it for the money,” Roger explained. “Somebody has to do it.”

It’s this kind of commitment, seen repeatedly demonstrated in many local folks, that make a small town strong enough to withstand the forces that bring a community to decay and demise.

When the blizzard of January 16, 1967, suddenly put a busload of children at risk of freezing or death, a great many in Chokio did whatever was needed to support a rescue caravan and provide warm shelter at homes in town.

Roger was among those who helped.  He worked for Federated Telephone.

“Federated had trucks with dial telephones in them,” Roger explained.  He drove the truck in the rescue caravan and communicated with the Stevens County Sheriff, updating him on the rescue progress.

“The buses did not have two-way radios back then,” Roger said.

Earlier in the day Ruth went to get milk and take Avon products to Nelson’s store.  She could not see the garage in town, the visibility was so poor.

“We didn’t get weather warnings then like we do today,” Ruth noted.

Muriel Kolling and two children stayed at the Gerdes home.  “They couldn’t get home,” Roger recalls.

Muriel’s husband, Clayton, was the driver of the stranded bus, out walking in the blizzard to find help for the stranded busload of students.

Thanks to Clayton’s success in finding a farm home in the blizzard, he was able to tell rescuers how to find them.

“We knew exactly where the bus was,” Roger said. 

Jean Hollen worked decades as a music teacher, at Chokio-Alberta and other schools in the area.  However, January 16, 1967, found her at home with her first child, Heidi.  Arnie, a teacher, had left for school, and Jean was handling her usual routine when the weather turned rough and a blizzard began to ravage its way throughout the region.

Jean was listening to the radio and knew a Chokio bus was stranded south of town. Since school was cancelled for the blizzard.  But as the day wore on, Arnie didn’t come home.

 Finally she got the word.  Superintendent Burton Nypen was shocked that she didn’t know.

“Didn’t anyone call you?” he asked.  “Arnie is a chaperone on the stranded bus.”

Jean kept listening to the radio, and heard that they were trying to get a snowplow out to the stranded bus.

Heidi was old enough to remember that when Dad was away from home, she sometimes was allowed to sleep by her mother.  She began her campaign early.

“If Dad is gone, I can sleep with you,” she told her mother enthusiastically.

Meanwhile, Arnie had his hands full supervising and encouraging the bus load of students while driver Clayton Kolling made three forays into the storm, twice bringing back blankets and candy for the freezing students.

Arnie coordinated bathroom trips, not allowing students to be outside the bus alone, and then requiring the students to stay right by the bus door. The blowing snow was so fierce a child could have been easily lost.
 
Arnie’s job was made a bit easier as the older girls took the young girls under their wings, and, in a similar fashion, the older boys were mindful of the younger boys.

Jean said Arnie took off his own winter jacket and used it to wrap around some little girls.  Instead of slacks and boots, some girls wore patent leather shoes and tights.

“Arnie made them keep moving.  The students crawled over the seats.  He told them they could not just sit, they had to keep moving. They were very lucky the way that it turned out,” Jean recalled.

Through it all, Arnie was aware that Clayton’s life was in danger.

“Arnie said ‘I didn’t have time to be scared. I couldn’t think about it. You have to do what you can do to survive,’ Jean remembers.

However, Jean says Arnie did get scared after it was all over, thinking of how the outcome could have been disastrous.  Arnie told her, “You couldn’t show the kids you were scared.”

The day’s drama was not over when Arnie walked through the family’s front door about dinner time.  He was met by his pint-sized daughter who was furious that his presence cancelled her bedtime plans.

“Now I can’t sleep with Momma!” she wailed.

Although a teenager at the time, Dean Monson has a good supply of memories about the Chokio Bus Rescue of 1967; both of his own experiences, and the stories his dad, Luverne Monson, told.

“I remember the day.  School got out real early,” he recalls.

“We talked about (the rescue) almost any time there was a winter storm,” Dean said.

“The hero was Clayton Kolling.  If not for him the kids on the stranded bus would have frozen,” he noted.  “How he walked to nearby farms and back, loaded with blankets, and managed to find the bus every time … that was unbelievable!”

Dean was not one of the students on the bus.  His family lived in town.  He and other strong young men were put to work loading a bus with blanket and candy bars  at the school.  This was to be the rescue bus, driven in the caravan by Dean’s father, Luverne Monson.

He remembers watching men work on the Cat, trying to get it started in the bitterly cold weather.

“At first they couldn’t get it to fire, but they finally got it,” he said. “They would have never made it without the Cat.”
Dean remembers his father telling stories about the rescue.

 “My father drove the bus, and couldn’t see the Cat ahead of it.  He kept ‘tapping’ the back of the Cat, so that’s the reason why they chained the two together,” Dean said.

Ultimately, Dean credits the driver of the stranded bus, Clayton Kolling, for his ability to make multiple walks in the blizzard to call for help and bring blankets to the freezing children.

“He was tough as nails,” Dean said.

Having served as Chokio’s  longtime postmaster, Jim McNally had no trouble recalling names when recounting his memories of the Chokio Bus Rescue of 1967.  He even remembered the interviewer,  how many siblings she has, and other details from her family’s relatively short residence in Chokio.  When talking of the rescue crew, he was careful to add, “Your Dad (Larry Stillwell) was there.”

Jim recalls the morning of the surprise blizzard.

“It started out mild, but then the temperature went down bad.  The snow was coming down in balls,” Jim said.  “The superintendent decided we must get the children home.”

Jim remembers that John Berlinger’s bus-full of children spent the night at the Floyd and Dorothy Zimmerman home, but Clayton Kolling’s  bus went into the ditch three miles south of town.

Jim recalls how the men in town gathered to outfit the rescue caravan.

“With a storm, a gas engine couldn’t keep up.  I was in the Federated telephone truck, and that was a diesel,” Jim said.

The (stranded) school bus had no heat, and it was getting pretty cold. They weren’t (all) dressed warmly.  We helped get them out and into the (rescue) bus,” Jim recalled.

Mary Herrera seemed tickled to be asked to share her memories of the Chokio Bus Rescue.  She was quick to explain her memories were limited and possibly inaccurate; yet her comments mirrored so many  of the others shared by people connected to the January 16, 1967 event.

Mary’s family name was Nitzel.  She has a sister Charlotte who was not on the bus that day.  They have an older brother named William.

“I think I was in the sixth grade – age 11 or 12,” Mary recalls.

“All I remember is there were two or three older students, high school age.  All the rest were younger,” Mary said.

“It started to snow before the weather really hit.  Then we were on a bus that went past the Catholic Church.  We dropped off at the Kaleys and Wernsings.  At the Wernsing drop the bus driver told us the weather was pretty bad.  He said we’d take the next turn and head back to town,” she added.

“So the driver took the next left to get us back to school.  He didn’t go very far before the bus slid into the ditch.  It was still morning,” Mary said.

“The driver, Clayton Kolling, said he knew where we were at, and he would get help to get us out of the ditch,” Mary recalled.  “We had to stay on the bus.  We played games and sang songs.”

“It seemed like five or six hours before the rescuers arrived,” she recalled.  “They had four guys on each side with rope.

Mary doesn’t remember much about the ride back to Chokio or the gathering at the school.  She recalls “there was two or three of us who stayed in a home that had a basement with rooms.  They were very gracious to us.”

Note from the writer:  Usually writers strictly keep themselves out of the story. In this case I felt the story reach out and pull me in.  Mentioned in this post are Duane and Betty Busch, my maternal uncle and aunt.  They have since passed away.  My memory of their kindness and their love of Chokio, Minn., and its people, is something I will never forget. – Julie Stillwell Sorenson
 

Ted Eul

January 16, 1967, was misty and rainy, as Ted Eul recalls.  He sensed weather trouble.

“I talked about maybe we should go to Chokio and get groceries,” Ted said.  They did.  The weather worsened and the visibility fell. They drove slowly in an effort to stay out of the ditch.

“About half a mile before we got home, I dropped a wheel off the road,” he remembers.  “Back then, before four-wheel drive, if you did that, you were stuck.”

Ted and Delores had their youngest child, Ann, with them on the trip. 

“She was one or two years old,” Ted recalls.  “I rummaged around and found a moving blanket, and wrapped her up in it.  We covered her up and walked home.”

“About three o’ clock, I said I thought I better try to go do chores.  It was really wild.  The temperature had dropped, Ted noted.

“I remember that by then everyone knew the status of the stranded bus.  It was being broadcast on KMRS-AM radio.  They were talking about the kids on the radio.  They kept emphasizing how cold it was,” Ted said.  “Finally, I called and asked if they could discontinue talking about how cold it was.  I told her there were a lot of people getting very worried.”

Ted said the woman he talked to was understanding and agreed to talk less about the cold.

Ted and Delores relied on KMRS to get their information on the effort to rescue the children stranded on the cold bus.  “The radio kept track of what was going on,” he said.

“The guys in town (who went on the rescue) deserve a lot of credit,” he said.

After the children were rescued and brought to the school for hot food, in-town families came to be matched with children who needed a place to stay overnight.

“All four of the kids (Diane, Alan, Susan and Scott) stayed with your relations (Duane and Betty Busch).  They were very glad to be together, and were treated so kindly,” Ted recalls.
 

Diane Greiner

Diane is quick to add an asterisk to her memories, with a footnote of “I’m not really certain when.” Yet she does have rich memories of people and situations which made the greatest impressions.

“I was the oldest in our family, about 12 or 13, I don’t really know,” she noted.

“The day of the blizzard we barely got to school and then they were sending us home.  Clayton Kolling had no radio on his bus and so the school sent a teacher with him,” she said.

“The next thing I remember is a whiteout.  He (the driver) couldn’t see where he was going.  The bus got stuck at an angle.  The snow was getting in the windows and collecting on the floor.  It got really slippery,” she recalls.

“Clayton went to walk to a farm house to try to get help.   He got to where he needed to be and sent out a snowplow,” she remembers. “And there were guys leading the snowplow.”

She wonders what would have happened had there not been a school teacher, Arnie Hollen, on the bus.  She pointed out that Clayton could not have made his heroic walks in the blizzard to get help if there had been no other adults on the bus.

“We would have been sitting ducks if he hadn’t gone walking,” she said.

Looking back, Diane says winters no longer seem to be like they used to be.  “Not even close,” she stressed.
 

Scott Eul

Scott was content to let his sisters and father tell their families’ memories of the Chokio Bus Rescue of 1967. He was the youngest family member on the bus.

“I imagine I was worried, but I don’t recall too much,” he said.

Scott recalls being stuck on the bus, and bus driver Clayton Kolling walking out in the blizzard to get help.  He remembers the rescuers taking the children back to the school.  He remembers staying with his brother Alan and sisters Diane and Susan at the Duane and Betty Busch home.
 

Susan Smith

Susan was in the third grade when she ended up on a cold school bus in 1967, stranded with siblings and other students during a fierce blizzard.

“I don’t remember being afraid; not any fear.  It was a long day waiting,” she said. “I don’t remember anyone crying or anything like that.  Just waiting.”

She remembers the black patent leather boots she was wearing that day.  She recalls how the students sat on each other’s feet to keep them from freezing. She has not forgotten how hard it was to walk on the slippery, slanted aisle of the bus.

“The driver, Clayton Kolling, was not leaving town unless there was another adult in the bus,” she said.

Susan pointed out how winter storms of that era seemed so much more fierce than today.

“Back in the day we would get brutal storms.  The power would go out.  We wouldn’t have electricity.  We had a propane cooking stove.  It was a different life,” she recalls.

“We couldn’t see the barn.  We couldn’t see in front of our face,” she added.

One change that happened in the years just after the rescue was that her parents would insist on picking up the kids at school when bad weather approached.

“Even before they called off school, my parents would call and ask that we get ready to be picked up,” Susan said.

Memories naturally fade over time.  When your lifelong employment is doing work  in dangerous weather conditions, the memories of many, many emergency situations can blur together.

Marvin Wirtjes spent much of his life operating Stevens County snowplows during hazardous winter weather.  Over the years there were lots of times when he was needed to clear the road.  The blizzard of Monday, January 16, 1967, is one that has not been forgotten by this long-time county employee.

What kind of snowplow did he drive?

“FWD 10-ton snow plow with a V-plow,” Marvin replied without hesitation.  “I can’t remember the year,” he apologized, as if the interviewer might actually expect him to know that information after nearly 50 years.

Marvin said his workday started at the county shop in Morris.

“I suppose as soon as it was known the bus was stuck, we got a call,” Marvin said.

He thinks it was Lyle Syverson who accompanied him in the snowplow.  He said at times the visibility was so bad that Lyle had to walk alongside the snowplow as it crept along, so that the snowplow would not  go in the ditch.

“It took us about three hours to get to Chokio,” Marvin said.

Marvin recalls that he had the snowplow ready to head south from Highway 28, when the rescue team arrived.  He turned around and headed back to the county shop in Chokio as the team set out to reach the stranded bus.

On the morning of the blizzard, January 16, 1967,  Lauren Carlson had been in Morris for a dental appointment.
“It was hard driving,”  he recalled.  “It was very ugly, so I knew there could be problems.”

Lauren soon heard of the stranded bus, and plans to launch a rescue.  His own children were too young for school, he said. The family didn’t move onto the farm south of Chokio until the following summer.

He said it didn’t matter who was on the bus; any able-bodied, available man would help with the rescue in some way.
Lauren’s International 860 tractor with cab happened to be in a shed in town.  It was filled with summer-weight diesel, he said, which made the tractor run more slowly in winter.   It took a while for the tractor engine to warm up.
“I suppose it was the only tractor in town,” Lauren said.

Eventually, Lauren said there were five men, including himself, crammed into the cab or perched on the side steps by the open door.

Lauren said that after the rescuers gathered at the filling station, they took the highway west a mile and a quarter, then south. The Caterpillar led the way, tied to a school bus loaded with rescuers and supplies.

“We slowly went along,”  Lauren said.  “It was very cold.”

Yet Lauren said he wasn’t afraid of the situation in the least.

“I grew up in western Minnesota, and had been through lots of storms.  They [those on the stranded bus] were only 2 ½ miles from town,” he said. “It was just another job I thought we had to do.”

Lauren said after they arrived at the stranded bus, they transferred the students to the other bus which was warm.
“I guess we took off, then,” he said.

Lauren recalls that the weather started to let up as they headed toward the school.

“The kids were put up in various houses.  They had the telephones to keep up with family members,” he said.

“We were pretty surprised to make national news,” Lauren said.  “It was pretty easy, in a way.  It’s a good example of a crisis when everyone who is able-bodied is able to buckle down, use caution and go and get ‘em.  People were pretty diligent.  We were glad to be able to do so.”