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Even the strong succumbed. Tulane Senior Andrew Hillery and his friend Patrick Vizard, both 22 and experienced duck hunters, went into the Louisiana marshes bundled in thermal underwear and parkas. "They were frozen in water that had splashed into the boat from the winds. They had to be chipped out," says Hugh Lambert, Vizard's brother-in-law.
But scores were saved. On South Dakota's huge Pine Ridge Sioux Indian Reservation, volunteers brought firewood to one isolated compound just in time: the elderly Indian women had begun to burn their clothing for heat. Jack Fourier, a local rancher, donated a frozen brahma bull to hungry Sioux 50 miles away, and used his chain saw to carve up the carcass. "In weather like this," said Fourier, "people got to pitch in for each other." In northern Indiana, people did just that. Paramedic Robert Hickman flagged down a freight train and highballed it 3½ miles to pick up Kelly Braggs, 20, stranded in her rural home and suffering from a serious pituitary deficiency. The train then backed up 33 miles to Lafayette, " where Braggs was hospitalized.
For most Americans, the cold meant neither horror nor heroism.
Just annoyance: not a single taxi at Kansas City International Airport on Christmas Eve; 75 inmates at the Michigan State Prison in Jackson refusing to leave the mess hall because of cold cells. Yet as families huddled for the holidays, there were also moments of wonder. Jim Johnson, an undertaker in Parshall, N. Dak., was stunned one morning to see his thermometer reading — 56°. "I got the kids up to look at it, because they may never see anything like it again."
—By Kurt Andersen.
Reported by Sandra Hinson/Orlando and Richard Zacks/Chicago, with other bureaus