When the storm hit, Robert Reynolds was on his way from the Pronger Brothers Ranch to the hospital in the town of Cactus to see his wife, who had recently given birth to a new baby. With him were his three young children and his mother-in-law. When he got his pickup truck stuck in a snow drift and could not budge it, he walked to Sam Wohlford’s house for help.
Sam, a local farmer and rancher and a true son of the Old West, tried to persuade him to bring the others and spend the night, but Reynolds was a newcomer to the Texas Panhandle and couldn’t be convinced of the risk he was taking. Sam took his tractor and pulled the pickup out of the snow and watched them drive on. Hours later, Robert Reynolds came back, almost frozen, and told Sam they had again gotten stranded in the snow and sub-zero temperatures.
Sam improvised a makeshift sled on his tractor and finally located the pickup and moved the near-frozen family to a nearby farm building. Then he set out again on his tractor in search of medical aid. But his tractor stalled in this worst blizzard in half-a-century, and he was forced to continue on foot, feeling his way along the railroad track and using highline poles as guide lines. He finally arrived at the home of a neighbor whose wife, as fate would have it, was in the deep pain of childbirth. Once more Sam set out in search of not one, but now two doctors!
At the time Sam Wohlford was a man of 57 who summoned up the strength and courage it took to complete his rescue, finding a doctor and ambulance in Cactus and leading them back to find Robert Reynolds and one child, a 15 month old son, alive. Two other children, a boy and a girl, aged two and a half and four, and their grandmother had not survived.
Sam Wohlford suffered from severe frost bite and exposure, and for many years he could not talk about this event without being overcome by emotion. The Reynolds family moved to Wheeler and attempted to put this tragedy behind them as best they could. To that end, Robert Reynolds made the decision to study for the ministry. Sam Wohlford continued to live in Sherman County, and received the Silver Carnegie Medal and the Gold Lions International Medal in recognition of his heroic efforts during the historic blizzard of 1948.
A second honor bestowed on Sam, and also bestowed on his wife Ovie Lee, will end this story on a happier note. In 1974 the Wohlfords were inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City.
Thanks to Ellen Tillery and the Sherman County Depot Museum in Stratford, Texas, for providing information used in the writing of this story.
For High Plains Public Radio, I’m Dave Miller.
High Plains History is a production of High Plains Public Radio.
