Looking back: Teens rescued during blizzard

IDAHO FALLS — EastIdahoNews.com is looking back at what life was like during the week of Dec. 29 to Jan. 4 in east Idaho history.

1926-1950

ROBERTS — Two teenagers were rescued after wandering for hours in the wastelands west of Roberts during a blizzard, the Idaho Falls Post Register reported on Jan. 2, 1940.

Delbert Ahlstrom and Dick Gardner, both 17 years old, had been hunting rabbits when they got lost in the snowstorm. They were walking in the wrong direction, more than four miles away from their car on the Butte Highway, when Ahlstrom’s dad found them. He’d been searching for them for five hours.

They were drenched from the wet snow, and Ahlstrom said they “were about ready to drop” when he found them.

“They were walking in circles, then I crossed their tracks in the snow,” Ahlstrom, who then followed their tracks, said.

The teenagers had fired two boxes of rifle shells in hopes of getting Ahlstrom’s attention, but he didn’t hear the gunfire because of the distance between them.

1951-1975

DUBOIS — A mother delivered her baby in a sheriff’s vehicle that was racing to get to the local hospital, the Idaho Falls Post Register reported on Dec. 29, 1952.

Clark County Sheriff Earl Holden said his wife and Mrs. Lawrence Hensley, of Spencer, had been visiting a friend in Dubois when Hensley felt like she needed to head to the hospital. She called the sheriff, and “the race was on.”

The sheriff picked up his wife, Josephine, along with Hensley, and they headed for the hospital. The roads were clear up until “the crucial moment when he discovered he would not reach the destination in time.” He then hit icy roads and was forced to slow down.

With the help of the sheriff’s wife, Hensley delivered her baby girl about five miles north of Idaho Falls on U.S. Highway 91 about 9 p.m. The baby was named Patty Marie and weighed 6 pounds, 2.5 ounces.

“It’s a good thing I brought my wife along,” Holden said. “I wouldn’t have known what to do.”

Hensley’s husband, Lawrence, was in Idaho Falls during all of this. He couldn’t immediately be located and didn’t know his daughter had been born until midnight when he returned to Dubois.

The article said he had made eight previous “false alarm trips” to the hospital with his wife.

The child was the Hensley’s fifth daughter.

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