By Glenn Rolfe

LEWES – Survival mode was the shared focus of the great Storm of ’62 Friday at the Lewes Public Library.

At an event hosted by Sussex2030, those who experienced first-hand, and others armed with hand-me-down accounts offered remembrances of the three-day nor’easter that pummeled Delaware’s coast 60 years ago the first week of March.

Adele Jones of Milford was not yet two years old at the time.

“So, I don’t remember it, but I remember my family talking about it. I’m from a farm family. My grandparents would talk about it, my uncles and my mom,” said Ms. Jones. “I remember them talking about the farmers. March is when you start getting ready for the spring planting. It was flooded. They couldn’t get in the fields. Then, when they got in there, there was so much salt in the ground, there was no crops. They had a hard time growing crops. My family still remembers the Storm of ’62 and all the repercussions.”

Nancy Feichtl was a 14-year-old sophomore at John M. Clayton. Her family lived on the road to the Indian River Power Plant, where her father was plant assistant superintendent.

“When the storm first hit, we didn’t think much of it. But dad got an alert from the power plant that it was going to be worse than they thought. We lived on the river, and he kept a pontoon raft. The reason he kept it is if something ever happened that he could always get to the plant by the pontoon raft,” said Ms. Feichtl.

With school called off, Ms. Feichtl accompanied her father to survey damage.

“For days we rode on the pontoon raft. We couldn’t get to the coastal side. Millsboro dam had gone out and the Indian River Inlet bridge had gone down. So, the only way to get to this was by water,” said Ms. Feichtl. “We saw floating dead chickens, floating horses, and cars and kinds of stuff. It was just amazing to us. We went all the way down to areas that would be on Old Landing Road now, and I jokingly said, ‘I rowed over where I now live, in a pontoon raft in ’62.”

She remembers it being horrendous and for several months powerless.

“It was shocking to see what was then Rt. 1 that didn’t have much on it, but it got covered with water. Rehoboth was really slammed. It was slammed more than Lewes. But inland was slammed too. Ocean View was really slammed,” Ms. Feichtl recalled. “They didn’t even know how to even begin to restore current. We didn’t get back to school for the rest of the year. Lord Baltimore was the main center of where the National Guard stayed. Electricity was not restored fully until July 1 of 1962.”

Nick Carter rode out the storm from his family’s bayfront home in Lewes.

“I was there during the Storm of ’62. I was in the house,” said Mr. Carter, who today works in the real estate business.

With the drawbridge about ready to wash out, he recalls an Army amphibious duck craft coming down the street with orders, ‘Time to go.’”

“Of course, my father is standing on the doorstep saying, ‘I’m not leaving.’ So, we stayed. It was a pretty horrific storm. It was a three-day nor’easter. It was a full moon,” said Mr. Carter, who still owns that house today. “We have a basement. We did not get a drop of water in the basement, not a drop. We are on a fairly high portion of the ground.”

They weathered a 9 ½ foot tidal surge. ‘I think (Hurricane) Sandy we had about a 4 ½ foot tidal surge,” said Mr. Carter.

Jeff Seemans shared what his wife, local artist Pamella Bounds-Seemans and her family experienced at two locations – their home in Milton and beach house in Dewey Beach.

“Her parents had their main house in Milton, which we are living in now, on Chestnut Street. It’s probably one of the highest points. That house was not affected,” said Mr. Seemans. “According to her, their beach house was not destroyed but there were two inches of mud throughout the entire first floor of the house.”

While his wife’s family home escaped, much of Milton did not.

“The entire downtown Milton was flooded. The theater was ruined,” Mr. Seemans said. “I think there are still photographs of people in row boats, rowing past the theatre into downtown Milton.”

Lewes resident Judy Rolfe experienced trauma and devastation just south of Delaware’s border.

“I am a survivor of the Storm of ’62. My home was Ocean City, Maryland at the time but I’m not going to let a state line divide what was really happening down there and here at the same time. We experienced the exact same storm, pretty much,” Ms. Rolfe said.

She was seven at the time. Her grandmother had come for dinner. When her grandmother went to leave, she saw that the water was up to her hubcaps.

“She said, ‘I don’t think I can get home.’ We started playing cards. Then the electricity started flickering on and off. We had no guest room. Grandma slept with me. She was a survivor of the storm of 1933. That storm was actually more catastrophic than the storm of ’62 was. I think she was experiencing a little post-traumatic stress,” Ms. Rolfe said. “So, she didn’t sleep all night, which meant I didn’t sleep all night. I’m pretty sure my dad wasn’t sleeping, which meant my mom probably wasn’t sleeping.”

She recalls her dad pulling her out of bed. “Since there was no storm prep, we didn’t know what was happening. He hoisted my mom, my grandmother and I onto this amphibian. We didn’t cry but the look that we gave each other … and leaving my father behind. I remember this like it happened yesterday,” said Ms. Rolfe.

They were shuttled via a National Guard truck to a staging area seven miles inland at Stephen Decatur High School in Berlin, Maryland.

While their home on 26th Street escaped serious damage, the apartment building her parents had built was destroyed. The only things salvaged were a sofa and a lamp, Ms. Rolfe said.

“As a person that survived it, you know you never really forget it. I think that is what has pushed me in the direction where I am today, which is trying to tell the story about the impacts of climate change and our environment and development,” Ms. Rolfe said. “I do think I carry a little bit of post-traumatic stress. I know that when (Hurricane) Sandy came my heart was skipping a beat for sure.”

Ms. Feichtl recalls sharing her storm experience with her sister, who was at the University of Delaware and didn’t come home.

“I said, ‘You just won’t believe what daddy and I saw.’ Traumatized, we were all traumatized.,” said Ms. Feichtl. “I spent many years telling people the story and they wouldn’t believe me. You just didn’t think that it could never happen. We didn’t really know if this area would ever come out of it or not.”

The storm also received the silent treatment, she says.

“Then after that, people got so they wouldn’t talk about it. I don’t know if that was because they didn’t want to tell that it happened because they couldn’t sell their property. It was not a common thing of conversation,” Ms. Feichtl said. “But I didn’t get over it. I was right in the middle of it and my father, who was the least stressed man in the world – and he was totally stressed then trying to get power back to the people.”

Ms. Feichtl says there remains today an unfinished chapter in her sophomore year, her teacher’s request to write themes.

“I loved to write, and so I had written this wonderful theme that I was going to turn in that Monday. And I never did get that theme turned into Miss Waples,” said Ms. Feichtl. “The storm came.”