Newspaper headlines screamed the history-making news on Saturday, March 17, 1973. MONUMENTAL: Blizzard, Flood Caused Delay of 1973 St. Patrick's Day Parade
March 16, 2014
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Just once in 60 years the St. Patrick's Day Parade was delayed.
That was because of the massive Saginaw Bay flooding of Saturday, March 17, 1973. The flooding was propelled by a relentless three day 50-mile per hour nor'wester.
"It's Homeric!" might have been the exclamation by Irishman Barry Fitzgerald, had he seen the Michigan storm that day. Fitzgerald's characterization of the matchmaker Michaleen O'Flynn in the movie "The Quiet Man," starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, is no doubt inspiration for today's celebrating Irish and would-be Irish in Bay City.
The blizzard was accompanied by blinding snow and huge, swirling drifts, stopping traffic along with the parade. Waves from the bay were driven as far as five miles inland.
"Perhaps it should be in mid-May," exclaimed Arthur "Pete" Campau, a Frenchman who somehow got to be president of the Irish parade association, giving credence to the saying: "Everyone's Irish on St. Patrick's Day."
More than 300 persons, including my boss at the Bay City Times, managing editor Raymond J. Kuhn and his wife, Helen, were evacuated by Army personnel in trucks from beach areas as the water poured in from Saginaw Bay.
Helen Kuhn was carried from their bayfront home on Killarney Beach Road by a burly National Guardsman just as I passed by walking on the railroad track as water rushed from the bay into Tobico Marsh west of the road.
The St. Patrick's Day Parade moves placidly in front of the Bay County Building in mild weather, a happier time for all marchers.
I lived at 394 Ricomo Beach and recall using a bamboo pole to keep my balance on the lone remaining track to reach friend William H. Boutell's house at Athlone Beach. I helped him sandbag his sliding glass doors that faced the bay to keep the raging water out.
Returning home the same way, more than a mile, I found the storm had smashed my 15 foot fiberglass motor boat, that had been high in the air in a hoist, to bits. Everything, including the motor, was washed away in the flood except for a slab of fiberglass a couple feet square.
Besides Ricomo, Killarney and Athlone, other beach areas flooded included Wenona, Aplin, Donohue and Lagoon Beach, as gale force winds pounded Bay, Huron, Tuscola and Huron counties.
Times Photographer Wesley Stafford was stranded and had to spend Saturday night in the American Legion Hall in Unionville. Enroute back to town in a National Guard truck, he wrote: "At one spot, we had to wait while a refrigerator floated across the road. It was the first time I've ever seen whitecaps on a state highway."
The Guard was forced by water two to four feet deep on M-25 to turn around at Wisner, where evacuees were rounded up at the Wisner Bar, and get back to Unionville where 30-40 people, including Stafford, spent the night in the American Legion Hall.
Quanicassee was cut off by high waters, the entire village stranded.
Times Writer Frank Gresock interviewed Susan Haken, who lived at 4376 Northview, about a block and a half from Wenonah Beach that was surrounded by water. She called for evacuation and made it out by wading to a neighbor's home on Christiana. The National Guard picked up about 15 people there and took them to the Bangor Township Hall. She told Gresock her brother, Robert, home on leave from the Marine Corps, and some friends had tried to make to to her house but were turned back by the flood waters.
Lt. Gov. James Brickley, acting in the absence of Gov. William Milliken who was vacationing in Colorado, declared a nine county, 100 square miles, a disaster area.
As soon as I could sell the house at Ricomo Beach, I did so--at a loss, and made the move away from the bay to a new condo complex, Fairway Pines at Bay Valley. But that's another story.
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