Twice in a Lifetime: Vermonters Recall the 1932 Eclipse 

On August 31, 1932, 4-year-old Morris Pike awoke to great excitement in his house on Keewaydin Farm in Stowe. His older brothers, Merton and Milton, were already dressed and ready for breakfast. “We’re going up to Newport to visit with Uncle Perley,” his mother said. “You will remember this day, because you’re going to see something you’ll never see in your life again.”

Sitting in a comfortable chair in his apartment at the Wake Robin life plan retirement community in Shelburne, Pike, who will turn 96 in May, chuckled at the memory. (Wouldn’t Mom be surprised to see him now?)

On April 8, Vermont will experience an extraordinary celestial occurrence: a total solar eclipse. So vanishingly rare is this alignment of the cosmos that it’s billed as a once-in-a-lifetime event. And for most Vermonters, it will be. But not all.

Pike is one of a handful of living Vermonters who witnessed the last total solar eclipse visible in the state, in 1932. Finding them makes Diogenes’ quest for an honest man look like a half-day job. So imagine the response this post on Front Porch Forum would get: “Seeking Vermonters ages 95-plus who were living in the state in 1932, who have a good memory and recall, and who happened to see the total eclipse of the sun that year.”

Pike, bless the man, checks all the boxes.

The 1932 eclipse was a big deal. Perhaps the lead-up wasn’t as frenzied as the anticipation for April 8, but then again, it was the Depression — when only one in six Americans owned a car and there was no Airbnb. Nonetheless, the event had the attention of the state’s 360,000 residents, and thousands traveled to totality-rich Orleans, Caledonia and Essex counties in the Northeast Kingdom to see the spectacle. Pike’s family was among those pilgrims.

Pike remembered piling into their old Winton automobile for the 50-mile journey from the farm to Newport. Stowe was a very different place then; skiing had not yet arrived. Keewaydin, named for a Native American word meaning “northwest wind,” was purchased by Morris’ parents, Carroll and Ruth, in 1921. They ran the farm on Route 100, south of Stowe Village, as a dairy. Merton was 1 year old when they moved there. Milton and Morris arrived soon after, and Merton would manage the farm for decades in his adulthood.

The Rev. Morris Pike — he was ordained in the Congregational church — is the sole surviving Pike brother and moved to Wake Robin in 2001. He may have lost a step or two, but his mind is clear and his memory vivid. On Saturdays, Pike recalled, his mother listened to opera on the radio as she worked in the kitchen. The boys used to sing together while milking their 14 cows, and sometimes Dad joined in the harmonizing.

The Pikes had relatives in Newport, and going to visit was always an event. With the day of the eclipse approaching, Pike’s great-uncle Perley Miller insisted they come. Miller was a prominent figure in town: a bank president and the Miller of Prouty & Miller Lumber, one of the town’s largest employers.

“Perley loved having an occasion when the family would come together,” Pike said. “I have no idea whether the bank or the lumber company set it up, but my memory is, he had us all gather at Gardner Memorial Park, near the causeway that crosses the river.”

That park sits along the southern shore of Lake Memphremagog. Just a mile away, Andy Pepin was awaiting the eclipse at the Newport Country Club.
Pepin, 100, is a well-known former Newport attorney and developer of Jay Peak Resort. He related via his wife, Ernestine, that he had just turned 9 at the time of the eclipse. He followed his four older brothers to the club and sat on a big rock to watch the show.

Back at Gardner Memorial Park, the Pikes were unpacking their food. “We had a big picnic,” Pike said. “Just getting away from the farm and our chores was a big occasion. My older brothers probably knew some of what was really happening. I didn't know what all the fuss was about.”

Pike described two distinct memories of the day. The first involved the eclipse glasses that folks wore to protect their eyes from the sun.
“I was enthralled with the glasses,” Pike recalled, adding that their importance for his safety was stuck in his head to this day. “They were made with Eisenglass or something like that, and I thought those were great playthings. We smoked the glass by holding it over the woodstove.”

His other memory was of being instructed “to remember the day because it was something I would never see in my life again,” he said. “That was ingrained in me.

“My brothers knew what we were seeing was important,” he continued. “I knew the glasses were special and a gift from my great-uncle.

“I also knew that we had a great spot for it,” he said. “And we saw the whole thing.”

At the time, neither Pike nor the rest of his family knew how fortunate they were. According to the local papers, Newport residents, particularly those positioned on “the more elevated hills of the Newport Country Club and vicinity, were the favored few” of thousands who flocked into town for the event.

A scant seven miles away, the would-be eclipse worshippers who gathered at Derby’s Kingsbery Farm thought they were favored, too. A party of 30 astronomers and their assistants from Sproul Observatory at Swarthmore College had traveled from Philadelphia and set up tons of equipment there, so curious visitors figured it must be a great viewing spot. But the weather gods did not cooperate.

As reported in the September 2, 1932, issue of the Express and Standard:

The totality shadow raced through skies half filled with big, slow moving clouds that kept onlookers on the anxious seat fearing the sight of a lifetime would be blotted out. This was just what occurred in many places including the location of the Swarthmore expedition. A vision of the eclipse was gained at intervals but when the totality came, low hanging clouds acted like a curtain and disappointment came to hundreds gathered there.

Meanwhile, back in Newport:

The hundreds gathered in the vicinity of the Newport Country Club overlooking Lake Memphremagog got the break and the changing scene that greeted the vision will never be forgotten.

After the sun had been freed of moon shadow, the Pikes finished their picnic and returned to Stowe. A couple of years later, Pike recalled, when he was in first grade, his class discussed the event and made holes of different sizes in papers to simulate ways to view an eclipse.

At Wake Robin, Pike sat back in his chair, seemingly lost in reminiscence. He said he would watch the April 8 eclipse right from his room, which sits on a ridge and affords unobstructed views.

A once-in-a-lifetime event.

For the second time.