Governor Garrahy’s Blizzard of ’78 Shirt Lives On

Photograph courtesy of the Rhode Island Historical Society

On the morning of Monday, Feb. 6, 1978, snow began falling in Rhode Island and didn’t stop until the following night. Residents woke up on Wednesday to find as many as thirty-eight inches had fallen, by official counts (though some residents reported more than four feet in the northern areas of the state). Cars were abandoned, hospital waiting rooms became shelters, and on Providence’s College Hill, Angell Street was turned into a ski jump. At the State House, Governor J. Joseph Garrahy hunkered down with his staff at the Civil Defense headquarters, eschewing the traditional suit and tie in favor of a red flannel shirt. For several days, he appeared on television broadcasts wearing the red button-down, urging residents to stay home and check on their neighbors — forever cementing his image as the flannel-wearing governor of the people. After the storm, aides mounted the shirt together with “blizzard supplies,” and the Rhode Island Press Club formally presented it to Garrahy during a “Governor’s Night” event later that year. In 2000, he donated it to the Rhode Island Historical Society, where it remains in storage at the John Brown House Museum. Richard Ring, senior director of library and museum collections, says the society also maintains a copy of the diary of William Geffner, former assistant controller at Rhode Island Hospital, who detailed the events of the blizzard at the institution. “We’re always interested in firsthand accounts of historical things,” he says. Ring lived through the storm as a child growing up in Ohio, where the drifts supplied easy building blocks for massive snow forts. This month marks forty-eight years since the Blizzard of ’78.