This is the time of the year for winter storms, but most of them do not cost students their homes. A Sound Past includes a photograph of married College of Puget Sound juniors Gerald Perry ’51 and Ruth (Matlock) Perry ’51 standing inside the front door of Howarth Hall, January 1950, looking perfectly normal, but probably not feeling that way after their apartment at 3825 Ruston Way was destroyed during the huge blizzard of 13 January 1950. In those days Ruston Way was a winding road along the water front, home to ships and saw mills, but not rollerbladers. The Perry’s apartment stood over the water on log pilings. When classes were canceled as the storm raged, they returned home to find it was no longer there, destroyed by storm-tossed logs that had escaped from a nearby mill’s log boom. The Perrys lost all their belongings, including “a Turkish coffee pot, an elephant’s foot and a group of oil paintings from Naples” that Gerald had picked up during his stint in the Merchant Marine. Also gone were the couple’s silver wedding set and their schoolbooks. Said Gerald, “The only thing we can do is start all over again.” Their senior year they found a place to live only three blocks from campus.
Read about the Perrys’ loss on page 6 of the 23 January 1950 issue of The Trail at:
http://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/thetrail_all/538/
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By John Finney