Word: morton
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...stage of the Chamber Music Auditorium of the Library of Congress the oldtime pianist sat at the keyboard, facing an open microphone. "Mister Morton," said Alan Lomax, assistant curator of the Library's American Folk Song Archive, "how about the beginning? Tell about where you were born and how you got started . . . and maybe keep playing piano while you talk...
...North. Occasionally he hopped into a helicopter for a hurried look at a new danger point. By week's end, as hope mounted that the main crisis had been met with only two lives lost, many a Winnipegger sent up a waterlogged cheer for Brigadier Ronald Morton, 49, veteran of D-day in Normandy...
Dogged Battle. As boss of "Operation Red Ramp" (for Red rampage), with nearly 5,000 army, navy and air force men under his command, Morton's job was to prevent complete inundation of Canada's fourth largest city (pop. 320,000). At least 10,000 houses and eight of greater Winnipeg's 75 square miles were already flooded; traffic on two of the city's key bridges was cut off, dividing the area into semi-isolated segments. The water level stood twelve feet above the point of first flooding. The city's vital power stations...
...Morton and his men were fighting a dogged, seldom dramatic battle of containment, with wet snow and rain adding to their difficulties. At suburban East Kildonan a 25-foot dike section burst, swamping 150 homes in a boiling wall of water ten feet high. But in most places the dikes-made of sodden burlap sandbags-were holding...
Outward Bound. During the week, Morton directed the greatest mass evacuation in Canadian history. In eight days alone, an estimated 80,000 people left the Winnipeg area in special trains, aircraft, buses and a fleet of cars and trucks. Some went to boarded-up resorts to the north, others to points as far away as Calgary and Montreal. The Red Cross provided emergency funds for the needy. Thousands of other evacuees crowded into downtown Winnipeg, safe on relatively high ground. The city auditorium was turned into a dormitory. If the situation worsened drastically, Morton had a master plan for compulsory...