Retired photojournalist Ed Porter loved the unpredictability of his career with the Sioux City Journal.
“You never knew what was coming,” Porter said.
What arrived 50 years ago brought chaos to parts of Iowa. A blizzard, known as the “Storm of the Century,” claimed 58 lives in the Midwest, including 15 in Iowa. It crippled the western and northwest parts of the state between Jan. 10-11, 1975. Some areas saw up to 16 inches of snow, with 60 mph winds that created 20-foot-tall drifts.
The National Weather Service called it one of the worst winter storms on record.
“We were out waist-deep taking pictures of the big plow coming at us, and you didn't dare slip or anything — and your car was probably stuck someplace,” Porter said. “I don’t know why people were trying to dig out. There was no place to go because the snow was as high as the top of the car. Maybe they wanted the exercise?”
Capturing the storm from above
After the winds calmed down, Porter took to the sky in a small yellow Piper Cub airplane with skis attached — and the door removed. What he experienced seemed to defy gravity.
“The pilot would fly over and tilt the airplane about 90 degrees, so I was looking straight down,” Porter said. “We were so cold coming back that we could hardly move. They had to cut me out of the seat belt because I was just about froze stiff. We were in snowmobile suits — and that didn’t even come close to cutting into the cold.”
"They had to cut me out of the seat belt because I was just about froze stiff."Ed Porter, photographer
Because of the extreme conditions, Porter couldn’t change his lens or re-load his film. He relied on only 36 shots per flight.
“It was just pure white, except you'd see a bump in the road where the car was stuck, the train with the plow on the front of it being totally bogged in — the cattle and all the other things that were going on,” Porter said.
What Porter couldn’t see from the air — the dead livestock. More than 100,000 farm animals perished during the storm, and the fallout lingered for days.
“I even flew with an Air National Guard helicopter a few days later, and they were delivering coal and hay bales to the farmers who needed help,” Porter said.
Weathering the storm was part of the job
At the office, many employees of the Sioux City Journal weathered the storm — out of the elements.
“They just cleared off their desk and slept there overnight,” Porter said. “The pressmen slept on the floor or wherever they could find a place because they couldn't get out of the building."
Porter and his wife, a nurse at the now-closed St. Vincent Hospital, stayed in a downtown hotel so they could still work their essential jobs.
“It was a little room with a single bed and bathrooms clear on the other end,” he recalled. “I do remember the bar stayed open. So, instead of sleeping, people just sat at the bar and drank all through the night. That was mostly fun.”
Porter was no stranger to natural disasters. He started at the newspaper in 1957 after taking photos of major flooding along the Big Sioux River in the middle of the night.
“They were trying to get debris out of the river and collapsed a crane into the water — that caused even bigger damage," he said. "I was just goofing around. They published it on the front page!”
Someone suggested Porter should be paid for his picture.
“The managing editor instead said, ‘You want a job?' I said, ‘Yes, that would be kind of nice.’ And he said, ‘Can you type?’ and I lied," Porter recalled.
Porter quit his job in the film room of a local photography studio to launch a 42-year career as a news photographer.
Many stories remain etched in his mind: a fire that killed six children on Christmas Eve in 1980, the crash landing of Flight 232 on July 19, 1989, and the coverage of many presidents including Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Harry S. Truman.
"The former president was giving some talk at the University of South Dakota, and somebody called up and said, ‘Hey, Truman’s over here at the Warrior Hotel.’ So, I went over there and took photos of him, and he said, 'Oh, you don’t need my picture,'" Porter recalled.
Porter said Truman seemed down-to-earth and even called his own cab for a ride to the railroad station from Sioux City to Vermillion, S.D., for his appearance.
For Porter, his most memorable moments in journalism were the snapshots he didn’t take to protect the privacy of people in tumultuous situations. He put ethics over headlines.
“Sometimes what I saw going on wouldn't have been appropriate. So, you turn your back and walk away,” he said. “One time, a little old lady was walking down the street with no clothes on. This young cop pulled up — took off his jacket, put it over her and helped find her caretaker.”
As Porter reflected on an assignment from a half-century ago, he admitted to being too busy to understand the magnitude of what transpired before his eyes.
“Yeah, I don't think we knew at the time we had a record breaker until the people got to measure it afterward,” he said. “Blizzards of that size weren't all that unusual at the time — but things have changed.”
