03/14/2024
STORMS – Remembrances, Public Amnesia, and a Call for Help
by Stephen Sanfilippo, Pembroke Historical Society Lyceum
Edited slightly for length
Storms are strange. Preceded by a calm, then followed by a calm, they leave much in their wake. We experience the terrible thrill of the storm. We clean up after the storm.
Storms imbed themselves in memory. My grand-uncle talked about the “Blizzard of ‘88” that dropped over two feet of snow in Brooklyn during his boyhood. During the 1960s, in his 80s, he
remembered it as if it were yesterday. People still talk about the 1938 Hurricane, and reference it whenever there is a bad storm, although only a very few remain who lived through it. We continue to experience such disasters of long ago in our collective memory as folklore; as milestones of life.
I have been asked to name some of my life’s memorable experiences. I always start with Hurricane Carol, 1954, and usually include Hurricane Harvey, 1980, which Susan and I experienced in a tent at Cape Hatteras. These, and other storms, thrive in my memory.
Storms cause amnesia, in fact, and fiction. “Dorothy,” after being hit in the head during a tornado, tells Toto: “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” but she is, and Oz turns out to be her storm-distorted memory. When she awakens, the distortion, Oz, disappears, and she remembers all that is real in Kansas.
Storms can destroy memory; the physical objects and documents that help to preserved memory. Consider the recent tornados in Tennessee. When people go to the ruins of their homes, they don’t look for expensive appliances. They look for the objects imbued with meaning. With memory. Family photographs. Old letters. A childhood toy.
Pembroke came close to losing a large part of the town’s 200-year memory on December 18, 2023, when a storm brought winds up to 93 mph to Downeast Maine. Then, on the 19th, Pembroke Selectman Tony Bennett was informed that something was in the road near the Pembroke Historical Society’s Museum. Tony, with his wife Tabitha, herself the PHS treasurer, went to investigate and found the entire south side of the roof had been blown off. Tabitha and PHS secretary Lisa Sarish quickly got to work. On the morning of the 20th, they entered the Museum and found, “miraculously,” as Lisa put it, that there was no interior damage. Lisa contacted
Northeastern Roofing and Tabitha contacted the insurance company. By Saturday afternoon, damage was repaired and the Museum had a new roof.
Talk about amnesia from a blow to the head, or in this case, a blow to the roof. But Pembroke escaped, and the documents that tell the town’s story - - - yearbooks, photographs, town surveys
and records, family histories, journals and diaries, and with it the town’s memory, were saved.
The Pembroke Historical Society thanks the town and all involved for their support. We hope you will help to pay towards the large insurance deductible by sending a tax-deductible donation to:
Pembroke Historical Society P.O. Box 135 Pembroke ME 04666
For additional information, write to: [email protected]
- - Dr. Stephen N. Sanfilippo, Pembroke, Maine
