Insights From an Ice Storm 25 Years Ago & Random Acts of Kindness

From July 1993 through June 1995, I was living in Pittsburgh doing a surgical oncology fellowship while my wife was living in Philadelphia in a maternal and fetal medicine fellowship. This meant living apart for the first three years of marriage and so I took many long trips down the Pennsylvania Turnpike from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia to spend time with my wife.

One trip stands out in my mind because of the severe weather. It was January or February 1994, and I was traveling late on a Friday afternoon down the Pennsylvania Turnpike in an ice storm. It wasn’t snow, but sheets of ice coming down in waves, diminishing visibility to no more than a few hundred feet. I limped into Philadelphia at around 7:30 PM and spent the next hour trying to find a place to park as street parking had been suspended because of the storm.

I pulled into the parking lot of a strip mall that contained a coffee shop and a big box discount store. As we didn’t have cell phones back then, I used the pay phone in the coffee shop to call my wife and tell her I was in town and safe. I then got a cup of coffee to warm up and looked out the window of the shop at the storm.

One of the first things I noticed were several homeless people huddled by a steam grate in an alley across the street. I asked the guy behind the counter whether there was a shelter nearby. He told me that on a night like this all the shelters were likely full, and the city had outlawed trashcan fires last year. The steam grates were the only warmish place in the city.

I grew up in Southern California, and though we had our share of homeless people I never thought about what happens in inclement weather as it never got colder than about 60oF back home. I figured it was about 10oF outside that night and I couldn’t see how anyone would survive. After I finished my coffee, I asked the man at the counter if I could park my car in the lot for the night. He said, “no” because they needed to plow in the morning

I thanked him and went back out to my car, still looking at the people by the steam grate.

Making up my mind, I changed course and went into the big discount store next to the coffee shop and grabbed a cart. I went down an aisle and found some cheap blankets made out of rough material that were selling for $2 each. I wasn’t exactly a “starving student” anymore, but I was only able to buy 50 blankets with the cash in my pocket.

The cashier helped me pile them in the back seat of my car and just shook her head as I took six blankets over to the people in the alley across the street. These people were wary but accepted the blankets without speaking. When I got back to my car the cashier was still standing in the door.

She asked me what good it would do, as there were hundreds of homeless and I had 44 more blankets. I remember answering, “It can’t hurt,” and she shook her head again and went back inside. I then spent about three hours diving around central Philadelphia depositing blankets in places people obviously camped, and giving out the rest to anyone I found.

At about 2:00 AM I finally found a parking spot near my wife’s apartment and was able to get inside. I never told her or anyone else what I had done that night as I thought it would lessen it somehow. However, few things have given me as much satisfaction as giving out 50 cheap blankets to cold people in a Philadelphia ice storm 25 years ago.

About Dr. James Goydos

Dr. James Goydos is an expert in melanoma research and specialist in surgical oncology with an M.D. from Rutgers University. With over 20 years of experience as a Professor, Surgeon, and Clinical Trial Lead, he is a leading expert in his field.

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