(NECN: Brian Burnell) – There were heroes in the 2013 blizzard. People helped in many ways: shoveling, offering a home for people without power and, in Connecticut, several people dropped everything to help a snowed-in woman in labor.
Little Jimmie Wood's birthday is one for the record books. His very pregnant mom, Lauri, had to ride in half-a rooftop luggage carrier through the three feet of snow that covered her Naugatuck neighborhood's streets on Sunday.
It seems Jimmie decided Sunday morning was a good time to come into the world, blizzard or not. Lauri went into labor but there was no way to get a vehicle in to get her. And all the sleds in the neighborhood were buried. Then someone came up with an idea.
A neighbor said to James Wood, Jimmie's Dad, "I have a luggage carrier. I said, ‘let's get it down here.’ I said, ‘take the lid off.’ Whatever you've got to do. And we brought it down. We tied ropes on it.”
How did Lauri Wood, Jimmie's Mom feel about it?
“I was hysterical in the bathroom. I was crying. I was thinking, I am not getting in that. This is insane. This is ridiculous. And he's, like, we have to go."
And go they did. But it wasn't easy. Richard Uva was part of the crew.
"Four or five guys were ahead. I was behind sturdying it and then I ran up ahead, my son and I ran up ahead trying to pack the snow down because the guys were falling who were pulling it the snow was so deep."
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Lauri says she was "trying to hold onto the sides, you know, and I'm slipping all over the place. As they're trying to take a corner I'm trying to go with them and I'm contracting and, you know, it was, it was... like I said. You either cry or laugh."
They got Lauri to a somewhat cleared street, got her into a pickup truck and took her to the hospital where, an hour later, Jimmie was born.
"I guess little Jimmie's birthday is going to be something everybody's going to remember, Huh?” said Richard Uva.
