John Berlinger laughed when someone used the term “neat” to describe the story of the events of January 16, 1967, when a fast-hitting blizzard made it impossible for Chokio Public School to get all its students home safely that day.

“It wasn’t ‘neat’ then,” John said, referring to the day when the well-being of a great many students depended on the wisdom and courage of a great many adults.

At age 21, John was the youngest bus driver for the school.  “I was out of the service in March and started farming.  Bus driving was a source of supplementary income,” he said.

The morning of the surprise blizzard, once the drivers brought their busloads of students to the school, the drivers gathered for a regular meeting.

“When we got out it was good visibility, with the sun shining. We had no clue what was coming.  Usually, if there was a storm forecast, we would have an hour or two before it arrived,” John said.

In the day, buses were not equipped with communication devices; not even the AM/FM radios which would transmit messages from the Sheriff’s Department in Morris via KMRS Radio.

“I had no nothing.  I was just on my own,” he noted.  Although the bus driven by Clayton Kolling had a teacher, Arnie Hollen, along, John’s bus did not have an assisting teacher on board.

“I was able to drop off one… two… three families,” he said, mentally ticking through the list of those children on his route.  John  remembers there were 15 families served by his route.

“We barely got out of town five miles when it really hit.  We couldn’t see nothing,” he added.

John said he had gotten three families of children “dumped off,” when he could no longer see the hood of his bus. He asked one of the older boys to walk alongside the open bus door to help guide the bus and prevent it from going into the ditch.

“I couldn’t see for the last mile. I just kept going as far as I could go,” he recalls.

Finally he pulled into the driveway of the Floyd and Dorothy Zimmerman farm.

“I limped the bus into the driveway and the bus engine got wet. That was as far as the bus went. I was gonna stop anyway,” he said.

The Zimmermans welcomed them all, fed them dinner, and provided a place to lie down in the large farmhouse.   He thinks there were 25 children as guests.

“No one could get to sleep.  They were homesick, so we had to help them call their parents on the party line, which was often busy.  The children had to wait until the snowplow came through,” he added.

Once the roads were cleared, parents came to the Zimmerman farm to pick up their children, John said.

“Everything turned out fine.  That was the main concern,” John summarized.  “Something like that will probably never happen again because of better communications and improved weather forecasting abilities.”

John is in a position to know.  This fall he began his 51st year driving bus for the school. 

(Ramona Self is a member of the Almond Sr. and Betty Drone family, sister to the three individuals featured in the adjacent  post. Of the six children who were on the bus, two have passed. Ramona is the last of the group to share her memories for this blog.)
 
 Ramona Self seemed surprised at how emotional she became while calling up memories of the Chokio Bus Rescue.
 She wasn’t the youngest nor the eldest member of her blended family on the bus that  day. Perhaps it is because she was at the age of 8, in the 3rd grade, and able to understand enough about the situation to understand its import, yet not old enough to put the event in perspective.

Ramona recalls that the roads near the family’s farm home were dirt roads, which could make travel difficult.  “It got kinda rough going at times during the winter.”

“I remember it being quite cold that morning,” Ramona says.  Ramona remembers being “kinda glad” that the students were being sent home not long after arriving at school.

“They got us on the bus.  Unfortunately I was wearing a dress,” Ramona said. “We dropped off a few children, and then the bus just conked out.”

Ramona said that when the bus heater went out “it started getting quite chilly. The bus driver [Clayton Kolling] told us to stay on the bus, that he will walk  to a farmhouse.”

Later, the need to go to the bathroom made uncomfortable moments as students filed outside in groups to find relief.
Ramona says she was aware that older students were writing “wills,” or notes to their parents.  “I didn’t want to do that because I didn’t want it to come true.”

Instead, Ramona remembers talking to her older siblings about her worries.  “They said, ‘Don’t worry, they’re coming to get us.’”

“I tried not to bug them. They kept things on the “up” side, by chatting.  I was wondering what was happening and when the driver would be back.”

Ramona recalls that when Kolling returned to the bus from his first foray, he told the waiting students he had reached a farmhouse and called for help.   “Help is on the way,” she remembers him saying and candy bars and blankets were distributed among the students.

“The wind was blowing terribly,” she said.

When the rescuers arrived, she was happy to see that her step-father, Almond Drone Sr., was part of the team.
“They had blankets, hot chocolate, and they got us transferred to the other bus, which was warm,” Ramona said.

Upon arriving at the school, Ramona wanted to change out of her damp clothes.  She doesn’t know how clothes were available, but she recalls the relief of changing into dry clothes.

She also remembers someone making a public statement giving God thanks for the safety of the students and rescuers.

Later all six children and their father/stepfather Almond Drone Sr., stayed in one home in town together.  To this day, Ramona remembers what the home looks like and can describe it easily.

The Chokio Bus Rescue story had a mystery built inside it.  When you read the transcript of the Chokio Review, the headline refers to 29 children.  The list of students on the stranded bus provide names for only 27 students.  Where are the two missing children? They are Starr and Lois, members of the Almond and Betty Drone family.

The power of the internet solved the mystery.  Research on the Drone family name yielded a series of interrelated obituaries that provided the answers.  By studying the names and relationships it was determine which children of the blended family might have been of school age in January of 1967.

So it was that the Almond Drone Sr. family had seven school-age students enrolled in Chokio Public School that year. The family, originally from Staples, Minn., lived south of Chokio.

“Dad worked for the Northern Pacific railroad.  He took a job at Morris, Minn.  He was railroad foreman from Morris to St. Cloud,” Bruce explained.

They were the largest family on Clayton Kolling’s bus route.  Six of the children were on the bus that day. Bruce Drone was home, but the phrase “safe at home” might have been stretching it a bit.

He had recently been hospitalized for appendicitis, and still had drainage tubes extending from his abdomen.  The day of the blizzard the tubes malfunctioned and fluid built up in his abdomen.

“Mom called the doctor, but she couldn’t get me in because of the blizzard,” he said.

“Dad got as far as Chokio.  He joined the rescue team and stayed in town overnight,” Bruce said.

The next day a snowplow cleared the route  to the Drone farm nine miles south of town.  “Dad was right behind the plow,” Bruce said.  Then Bruce was taken back to the hospital in Morris, where he was re-admitted.

The Drone family children who were on the stranded bus included Ramona, Dale “Rusty,” Almond, Jr., Norman, Starr and Lois.
Norman recalls that the morning of the bus rescue it was cloud and storming.

“At 9 a.m. at school we were told ‘Get ready to go home,’” Norman recalls.

Almond Drone, Sr. made it from Morris to Chokio on the train, where it stopped.

“Then Dad helped with the rescue,” Norman added.

Memories of the long-ago rescue are hazy in Starr’s mind, but there are parts she recalls. “I remember we (older children) were writing notes to family, thinking we weren’t going to make it.”  Starr was 13 and in the 7th grade.

“We worried about the little ones. We helped keep them calm and warm.  We told them everything would be OK.”

She recalls bus driver Clayton Kolling as “pretty heroic.”

“It was scary when he left to go get help. He had to go through the deep snow, and walk along the fence, and bring stuff back to us.

One thing Starr does remember is what a fun year she had at Chokio Public School, and how nice the town was.

“It was a fun time being in Chokio.  I just really liked the entire town.”

Jim Erickson was farming south of Chokio. On the day of the blizzard he was taking care of their youngest, Dean, and watching for the men from Rural Electric to arrive at the farm to do some work.

Audrey Erickson was working at the bank in town and had picked up their daughter Janet, 9, and a friend of Janet’s, along for a sleepover.

“On the way home she couldn’t see and ran into the ditch,” recalls Jim. 

“That was a dumb venture, I tell you,” Audrey jokes.  “But I wanted to get home!” After getting stuck, Audrey assessed the situation.

“We had just passed a corner and I knew that family had a car sitting on the end of the driveway,” she said.  They got out of their stalled car and began walking to that car.  To protect the children, Audrey opened her coat and the two girls walked behind and on either side of her, using the panels of the coat to break the wind and protect their faces.

Relieved to find the neighbors’ car unlocked, they piled in long enough to catch their breaths.  Once rested, they walked about a block through deep snow to the neighbors’ farmhouse.  Even as the intrepid trio stood at the farm’s garage, the family inside could not see them. In clear weather, their presence would have been noticed immediately.

Audrey’s heroic use of her coat to protect the girls resulted in severe freezing of her legs. Jim heard later that the Rural Electric Association men who worked on their farm that morning took refuge in Artichoke Lutheran Church.

(Audrey Erickson is sister to Roy Erickson.)