2 minute read
Snapshots told story of Halloween 1991
By Adelle Whitefoot awhitefoot@duluthnews.com
The Halloween blizzard of 1991 was a four-day event that left Duluth with 35.2 inches of snow.
As with any big event, photographs are always essential to telling the story.
News Tribune photographer Bob King, now retired, was just one of those making sure he was documenting everything he could.
“I love photographing snowstorms because people were such a joy. What it is really during a big story you feel much closer to your fellow humans,” King said. “They’re very open to being photographed and you’re open with them and you’re laughing and sharing griefs. So there was always a joy to it for me in that.”
One of the most memorable photographs from the blizzard that continues to get shared today is really an aftermath photograph by King. The iconic photo, which was in color and still new for the News Tribune then, was taken on Nov. 4, 1991, along East Seventh Street in Duluth. It shows a long line of cars buried in the snow and people working together to get them unstuck.
“It was a really wonderful scene to capture,” King said. “On the one hand, it was kind of a pictorial view of this great natural disaster of sorts. On the other, humanity was just kind of dwarfed by the enormity of the storm and it just seemed to sum it up really nice.”
King said he went out every day of the storm to try and capture as many scenes as he could. The biggest challenge, of course, was not getting stuck.
Continued on page 8
Jack Ryan received some help from passersby as he tried to push his car in front of his home along East Sixth Street in Duluth. They tried to move it into the street, and then move it back into the spot, unsuccessfully.
“Once you’re stuck, you’re pretty much done,” King said.
Another challenge was making sure the cameras stayed dry. So King said he always kept a few towels in his car to dry off his cameras every time he got back to the car.
Former News Tribune photographer Dave Ballard was also out on the roads during the blizzard.
“I remember the editor at the time had to pick me up because my road wasn’t plowed,” Ballard said.
Ballard was the photographer who took the iconic hot tub photo. Ballard said he saw the college kids sitting in the hot tub and pulled over right away.
“Tried to fly through the snow, which was about kneedeep at the time and just started taking photos,” he said. “And then the guy behind them in the alley starts plowing his driveway with a snowblower and I thought that was kind of an interesting juxtaposition.”
King said he remembers when Ballard came back to the office with the picture of the hot tub.
“We were all like, ‘Oh my god, what a great photo that’s going to be,’ and it was,” he said.
Both Ballard and King said the blizzard is definitely one of those events they will always remember and how important it was to document it.
“We all wanted to get out there and get photos that really told the story for people to look back on,” Ballard said. u
/ News Tribune)
