I did a lot of growing up that night. Even though I was only eight, September 21st, 1938 stands out in my memory like it was yesterday. There was death and destruction everywhere but also plenty of heroism and good old fashioned Yankee ingenuity. There was also the small miracle of an old but much beloved gold thimble washed out to sea at Narragansett, Rhode Island and deposited by the flood waters on the shore over 40 miles away in Mystic, Connecticut.

Sorry, no photos. If you have pictures of the 1938 hurricane that you'd like to send us for inclusion, please email them to editor@riroads.com

Nowadays, unfortunately, hurricanes are a dime a dozen and still do incredibly bad things. They even come with fancy names. But back then, in 1938, they were rare, at least in New England, and this one struck with no warning whatsoever. Apparently in the past, hurricanes on that particular path had always swung out to sea and the weather people assumed, wrongly and tragically, that this one would too.

Since 1938, I have been through some other severe hurricanes, notably New England’s Hurricane Carol in 1965, and, this past September, Hurricane Wilma in Florida. Both were terrible storms but neither compares, at least in my mind, to the 1938 New England Hurricane.

By early afternoon of that September day, the wind, which had begun in mid-morning, had strengthened and we fourth graders at Cowesett Elementary School could see trees outside our classroom being bent almost to the ground. Every once in a while during a particularly strong gust, the earth on one side of a tree would rise up in a surreal mound and then settle back down. The rain was even being blown sideways, something I had never seen before. Excitement mixed with uneasiness began to build among us children but good old Miss Handel never let on that she thought anything was amiss. Soon, however, one by one, the trees began to topple over or to snap in two, leaving stark, jagged trunks. We could feel the vibrations of the falling trees through our feet on the bare wood floor, but couldn’t hear them over the sound of the wind.

Then Miss Palmer, the principal, always a cool customer anyway, appeared in our doorway and ordered us out into the hallway. Standing there along with all the other grades, we watched in disbelief as the ceiling tiles in our just vacated classroom begin to loosen and fall. What had at first seemed like an exciting adventure suddenly turned deadly serious.

By three o’clock when dismissal came, Bill Allen, the hired man for our family’s 40-acre dairy farm, was waiting for us in my mother’s 1936 black four-door Chevrolet sedan with the fancy wide running boards and the white sidewalls. Most of the children either walked or took the school bus home but we lived outside the school’s boundaries and had to provide our own transportation. I always liked riding with Bill. He was good natured and had even taught me how to tell time. But this day, he was all business and in a hurry to get started. By the time my sister Marianna, 12, my brother Beale, 11, and I had piled in, the windshield was being pelted with leaves and debris, and downed trees were already blocking the road. At first Bill was able to steer around them but soon he had to start going up onto sidewalks and even onto people’s lawns.

We lived out in the country on Ives Road, halfway between Providence and Narragansett, Rhode Island, about two miles from the little town of East Greenwich and just across from Goddard Park. We had a herd of about 70 Jersey cows and supplied milk, cream, and eggs as far away as Providence. In June, July, and August, we even had a second milk route to the summer people in Narragansett. Besides the cows, we had horses, sheep, pigs, and a huge new automated chicken house which would probably be considered inhumane nowadays but was the latest thing back then. My father, whose main business was in textiles, loved animals and took great pride in the way the farm was run. Nothing was too good for the livestock and he was always looking for better farming methods.

At about the same time that Bill Allen was struggling to get us children safely home, my friend Lou Shy (Louise Shy Creed, now deceased), also eight, and her mother, were trying to get back to East Greenwich after an afternoon of shopping in Providence. They were with another friend, Ellen Atwood and her 13 year old daughter, Dorothy, an only child. The four of them had gotten into the Shy’s convertible, with Mrs. Shy driving and the other three in the back seat. Mrs. Atwood was seated in the middle, with Lou on one side of her, and Dorothy on the other. Signs and awnings were being blown down all around them as they started cautiously out of the parking lot.

At just that moment, an eight-story brick wall, left standing during a demolition project, fell to the ground, hurtling bricks all over the car. Rescuers were able to remove Lou, her mother, and Mrs. Atwood from the car and get them all to the hospital, but because of all the bricks they did not realize there was a fourth person still trapped in the car. Within minutes, flood waters inundated the city of Providence and the car was submerged. Only after the water receded, were rescuers able to remove Dorothy, the young girl, from the car but of course by then it was too late.

Lou escaped without a scratch, but her mother and Mrs. Atwood were both badly injured and took many months to recover. Years later, in a conversation in an East Greenwich grocery store, Lou told my friend Tom Greene of Old Forge Road in Potowomut that she thought people were braver in those days and better able to handle adversity.

Bill finally managed to get us safely home after an unforgettable car ride, the last part of it over bumpy fields because the long driveway to our house was already blocked with downed maples. Our Georgian house was located on the top of a long, sloping hill overlooking the Greene River. The brackish river was normally gentle and slow moving, but this day, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, it was covered with white caps and was beginning to lap at the fence on the top of the field just a few feet below our house. Our well, with its little yellow shed and black roof which matched the décor of our house, was located near the bottom of the hill and was already completely submerged. There would be no drinking water, either for us or our animals, for the next six weeks.

Once we got safely inside the house, we found only our oldest sister Alice, 15, whose school hadn’t started yet and our dear housekeeper, Ruth Bergstrom, who had been with us since before I was born. Our parents, Alice and George Emmons, were not there. My father’s back had been bothering him and my mother had driven with him to see a chiropractor in Fall River, Massachusetts. That was all we knew because the telephones had stopped working hours earlier.

Fortunately it wasn’t long before we spotted two solitary figures off in the distance. They were on foot, braced against the wind, their arms around each other, making their way slowly and painfully towards the house. We later learned they had been able to drive only as far as a grove of pine trees that bordered our farm on the Forge Road side. There they had abandoned the car and started walking. Unbelievably, the car, although blocked on all sides by fallen pines, came through the hurricane unscathed.

After they had dried off, our parents assembled all of us including Ruthie in the living room which they decided would be the safest place. We waited there, listening to the howling wind, the driving rain, and the sporadic sound of breaking glass in other parts of the house where windows were being blown in. At one point there was a sudden, sickening crash as the tall brick chimney over the kitchen fell through the roof. In a little while, two more chimneys over other parts of the house also fell in. My mother later remarked what a strange sight it had been to look up at the ceiling and instead see the sky.

As we huddled there, we were joined by two other families, both with small children, who had abandoned their own nearby homes to seek refuge with us. Many years later, it dawned on me how respected my father was in the community and how much the neighbors looked to him for guidance. Another family, the Sam Powell’s, long-time friends who lived about a half mile farther down Ives Road, were unable to get to their house and also ended up spending the night with us. Altogether there were about eighteen of us.

In addition to all these people, there were several other bewildered and troubled individuals who came to the door during the night seeking news of their families and homes at Sandy Point, the beach area at the very end of Ives Road. My parents did what they could to help them but the next day we learned that most of the houses at Sandy Point had been washed out to sea.

As the storm continued to rage, one of the outside walls of our house suddenly cracked. I remember my father saying, “If it cracks again, we’ll have to go out and lie down in the field.” I wondered at the time how we were going to lie down in the field when it was already covered with river water.

One of the first things my father did the next morning was to go out into the field alongside Ives Road and take down our fence so that people could drive around the downed trees to try to reach their families at Sandy Point. v Our state-of-the art chicken house was completely destroyed by a huge downed oak tree and any chickens that might have lived through that were blown away, never to be seen again. Thankfully, however, all the other farm animals were safe in the barn.

The morning after the hurricane, the East Greenwich Volunteer Fire Department came down with their pumper truck to provide water for the animals. They returned every other day for the next six weeks until we had potable well water again.

Living out in the country we were used to occasional power outages and already had several oil lanterns, so living without electricity was not too bad. The day after the hurricane, when they were finally able to reach their own house, the Powell’s, in gratitude for the shelter of the night before, loaned us a four-burner kerosene stove. For the next three weeks until electricity was restored, Ruthie did the cooking in the backyard!

And now for the small miracle of the recovery of my mother’s gold thimble. It had been given to her by my grandfather and was very precious to her. Before the storm struck, she had been sewing cloth name tags into my sister Alice’s gym clothing while my father swam laps in the pool at the Dunes Club in Narragansett. She had accidentally left her sewing bag along with the name tags and the thimble in our bathhouse there.

The bathhouses as well as the rest of the Dunes Club were completely destroyed and she sadly assumed that her beloved thimble was gone forever. But weeks later, a man in Mystic, Connecticut found her sodden sewing bag on the beach there. Inside along with the thimble he found the cloth name tags with my sister’s name, “Alice Emmons.” After much detective work, he was able to trace that name to East Greenwich, Rhode Island, get our telephone number and address, and return the thimble to my astonished and grateful mother.

After all the death, destruction, and upheaval of the 1938 New England Hurricane, his call to my mother was a completely unexpected and heartwarming moment. Both my mother and my sister Alice are gone now. My sister’s daughter, Sandy, treasures the thimble and has it safely tucked away, ready to be passed on to the next generation.

Ann Emmons Petri grew up in East Greenwich and lived through the 1938 Hurricane. She is a retired special education teacher now living in McLean, Virginia with her husband of 53 years. They are the parents of four (including three doctors and a lawyer) and the grandparents of 13.