Norma’s Mom in the 1934 New Year’s Flood – Part 2

Last week we heard about the travails of Norma Quinn Potter’s mom Leone Potter from an oral history recorded in 1977. Leone was in charge of the American Legion’s disaster relief efforts in 1933. As such she was called on to serve on New Year’s Eve when the big flood hit, destroying the La Crescenta Legion Hall and killing most of those inside. Fortunately, Leone was serving at the Glendale Legion Hall.

I left you with a cliffhanger last week. Leone had urged her family by phone to go to the La Crescenta Legion Hall for shelter and as far as she knew they had gone. When she got word that the Legion Hall had been destroyed, she was distraught.

What she didn’t know was that her family had decided not to go to the Legion Hall. It was several blocks away and they didn’t think they could make it. Instead they had sheltered at home.

Leone wrote: “Mom said she’d taken the girls and gotten up on top of the piano, and we had that big heavy piano, you know. She had the girls and the dog in her lap all evening, all night. They were all too scared to leave Mom, and she was just as scared as they were. The dog was scared and he would get between Mom and the girls and push down in there.”

But Leone didn’t know that at the time and she continued to worry. There was no way to find out, as all communication was out.

“The night passed and early in the morning they came and asked me if I would come up to Montrose and take over up here, ’cause they [the American Legion disaster relief crew] had been killed … had been drowned,” Leone recalled, “and the clubhouse was out. They had to find a place up here.”

Leone agreed to go, still not knowing the fate of her family.

“They had a big old-fashioned car,” she said. “You know how the old cars are way up off the ground. We’d never have made it in a newer car. We came up Verdugo; Cañada was out. Verdugo Road, you would get part way and then it was blocked. That’s the only way we got out, ’cause that car was high and there were workmen moving things out of the way … You couldn’t tell much where you were or where the streets were. It was such a mess.”

When they got to Montrose, Leone had a moment of panic.

“I saw this stretcher and I tried to hurry,” she said. “It looked just like Jeanne’s [her daughter] hair. It was hanging off. This was when we first got up there. I don’t even know how I found out about the family [being safe], but some one of the men found out.”

With the knowledge her family was safe, Leone got busy with disaster relief work. They commandeered the Masonic Hall, which was then in the upper floor of one of the businesses along Honolulu Avenue. Today that would be the offices above Walk This Way and Montrose Optometry.

“The days and nights all ran together,” Leone said. “I went eight days without any sleep … 15 minutes here or a half hour there on top of a table.”

Leone witnessed this terrible tragedy firsthand. “Somewhere or other going over Montrose Avenue there was some man ahead carrying what looked like a girl, a small girl. It must have been a week after the flood. After I came home it must have been two weeks that they were still hunting for people. They were still digging. What they do is that after awhile they say that the final tally was this, that or the other. But there wasn’t anybody up here, lived here, or had anything to do with this that didn’t know there was more than what they said.”

Leone is referring here to the notion that many victims were transients, Okies living up in the canyons or by Verdugo Creek. They would never be counted. A terrible time to live through but Leone served her community in its time of greatest need.