Armistice Day Blizzard nearly claimed a teen Bud Grant among its duck-hunting victims

Early on Nov. 11, 1940 — 82 years ago Friday — the dryland hurricane that would become known as the Armistice Day Blizzard gathered near Kansas City and took aim at the Mississippi River Valley.

Hundreds of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa waterfowlers had gone afield early that holiday — now called Veterans Day — hoping that long skeins of mallards and canvasbacks would fly south on the backside of the looming squall.

When the skies finally cleared two days later, about 25 duck hunters were among the 154 people killed by the storm. Thousands of cattle also died in snowdrifts that crested 20 feet, and more than a million farm-raised turkeys perished.

Bud Grant, now 95, the retired Vikings coach, was barely in his teens in 1940, and is one of the few duck hunters alive today who survived the tempest.

Attending Superior, Wis., High School, Grant had friends who played football, basketball and baseball with him. But he had only one friend, Bill Blank, who hunted, and on weekends the two hiked logging trails around Superior toting their .22s and .410s, plinking grouse and squirrels and rabbits.

Grant and Blank had caught a break the day before the blizzard enveloped northwest Wisconsin. An older friend, Phil Cross, had invited them to go duck hunting on Yellow Lake, about 60 miles south of the boys' home in Superior. Often in late season, scaup, or bluebills, frequented Yellow Lake and the three hunters were eager to get a shot at them.

"It was a different era and our equipment was poor,'' Grant recalled the other day. "We had a couple of gunny sacks with six unmatched decoys apiece in them and we wore buckle overshoes on our feet and whatever sweaters and jackets we had. That was our hunting gear.''

Cross had rented a cabin on Yellow Lake with a wood-burning stove. But Grant was too excited to sleep that night, and when well before dawn Cross lit kerosene lamps in the cabin to make breakfast, he and the two younger hunters were soon out the door, rowing a rented boat across the lake.

As they did, the gathering morning light revealed patchy skies. Winds were light and the rowing was easy. Adding to the hunters' excitement, wingbeats of as-yet unseen ducks punctuated the otherwise quiet morning.

Unknown to the hunters as they rowed, a low-pressure system over Iowa had deepened and ultimately would produce the lowest readings ever recorded to that time in Charles City, Iowa, at 28.92 inches, and in Duluth, 28.66 inches.

"We set up our decoys and shot some ducks,'' Grant said. "Then, after a while, Phil said he wanted to return to the cabin to take a nap. So Bill and I rowed him back. Then we rowed across the lake again to our decoys and continued hunting.''

By this time, waterfowlers on the Mississippi River near La Crosse, Wis., and Winona, Minn., and north and south of those cities might have sensed that the November winds they hoped would bring ducks over their decoys portended not only good shooting but danger. Temperatures had been in the 40s and 50s that morning, and some hunters had clambered into their skiffs in shirtsleeves. Then the rains came, and the sleet. And quickly thereafter, the snow and wind.

"Bill and I were shooting a few ducks,'' Grant said, "when suddenly, the wind picked up from the northwest and we were covered up in ducks! The wind blew harder and harder. As it did, we shot more and more ducks. Some of them we couldn't retrieve because the waves were so big. Finally, we figured we'd better get out of there.''

As Grant struggled with the boat's oars, the wooden craft pitched and yawed and finally was blown against the windward shore. Abandoning the boat, the two hunters stepped into shin-deep water and as quickly water rushed over the tops of their buckled overshoes.

They would encircle the lake to reach the cabin, they decided, and they set off.

"We got about halfway, but it was swampy and Bill fell into water up to his waist,'' Grant said. "That and the wind and snow became too much and finally he said he couldn't go anymore. There was a train track nearby and I tucked him next to it and left him.''

When Grant reached the cabin, he stumbled through its door and half-frozen told Cross where he had left Blank. Alarmed, Cross bolted into the whiteout while Grant, his clothes soaked, stripped naked and pulled on a pair of Cross's waders while stoking the fire in the wood-burning stove.

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A half-hour later, Cross returned to the cabin with Blank. When they had warmed up, the three hunters made a run for it.

"We had no way of knowing if the storm was going to get worse or improve, but we couldn't stay in the cabin,'' Grant said. "We didn't have enough food or firewood.''

In Cross's car, he and Blank and Grant slipped and skidded up the resort's narrow road to Hwy. 35, the north-south route that would take them back to Superior.

Crawling at low speed while peering into the maelstrom for the two-lane blacktop, the three hunters hadn't driven far when they rounded a bend to find two cars blocking the road, stuck in snowdrifts.

"We had no way to turn around and we didn't know where we were,'' Grant said. "There were two people in each of the cars. To save gas and to keep warm we all crowded into one car, some of us sitting on the laps of others. We'd run the car intermittently to warm up, which we did for the rest of that day and that night.''

Morning came and with it still deeper snow drifting around the cars. Grant can't remember how the decision was made. But perhaps because he was young and fit and also because he still wore Cross's waders and could keep his feet dry, he was chosen to go for help.

"We were going to die there otherwise,'' he said.

Pulling tight his canvas coat and hat and gloves, Grant stepped from the car into the deep snow and walked north, along what he thought was the road. Spruce and pine and balsam trees flanked him, and he walked for an indeterminate time but probably for at least an hour before looking for shelter among the trees but could find none.

His face caked with ice and snow, he slogged ahead and in time came to a crossroads and in the northeast corner of the intersection was a two-pump gas station. There were no lights on and no cars at the pumps. Still, Grant knocked on the door and a woman and her young daughter answered. The woman's husband was away at the shipyards in Superior where he worked, she said. But Grant could come in.

"There was heat and food and I was safe,'' Grant said. "But there was no communication. My parents I'm sure feared I had died. I stayed with the woman and her daughter for two and a half days. Meanwhile, Bill and Phil and the others had frozen to death, I was sure of that.''

What Grant didn't know was that not far from where the cars had become stuck, a farmer had shot a deer and hung it in his shed.

Worried that his family would need food during the storm, on the same day Grant walked for help, the farmer hiked through the snow to butcher the deer. As he did, he saw the stuck cars.

"The farmer took Bill and Phil and the others to his house, where they also stayed for two and a half days,'' Grant said. "They ate the whole deer during that time.''

Grant's father, Harry Peter Grant Sr., was a Superior fireman, and when a plow finally headed south to clear Hwy. 35, he commandeered a fire truck to follow it. The plow, the firetruck, Cross and Blank, and the others emerged after the storm at the two-pump gas station about the same time.

"Seeing me, my dad hugged me so hard,'' Grant said. "I had never before seen my dad cry. But he cried and cried. He tried to pay the woman for feeding me and keeping me safe, but she wouldn't take the money.

"Later, when we got home, my dad sent her two $20 bills. My dad made $100 a month, so that was a lot of money to him. But he wanted to pay her. The woman wrote back that with the $40 her family bought a turkey for Thanksgiving, having it instead of venison, which they probably ate all year long.''

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After graduating high school, Grant signed up for the Navy and Blank, the Army. They remained friends, and when they were discharged, they pooled their $200 cash-out money, took a bank loan and together bought hunting land in northwest Wisconsin.

"It wasn't too long before Bill wanted to get married and needed money, so he asked me to buy him out,'' Grant said. "So I took out another loan and paid him.

"At the time, I was playing ball at the U and paid off the loans by scalping tickets to Gophers games.''

Grant still owns the land.