The Roper family will always remember – or never be allowed to forget – the “big snow” which effectively cut Dumfries and Galloway off from the rest of the country.
In February 1996, George and Joyce were waiting the arrival of their third child – already about a week overdue – when near blizzard conditions struck.
Due to their remote location near Kirkbean on the Solway Coast, they had to be picked up in an army truck when Joyce went into labour to try to get her to a hospital in Dumfries about 12 miles (20km) away.
However, baby Dean would not wait and he was born in the back of the truck in a layby near New Abbey – becoming something of a celebrity in the process.
The story of the unusual delivery featured in local and national newspapers as well as television.
Three decades later, the man at the centre of it all is not so keen on being reminded of the story every time his birthday comes around.
Dean, who now works as a tyre fitter in Dumfries, hears the details on an annual basis.
“Every year it gets cast up, I’m getting a bit sick of hearing it,” said the 30-year-old.
“I don’t really see what the big deal was.
“I do try and keep it quiet – so when people start trying to search it up online, I’d rather they didn’t.”
Looking back, his mum Joyce remembers the day the snow started – Monday 5 February – very clearly.
They were staying at a “wee farmhouse” at the time which was “quite out of the way”.
“I think when the snow started, because we stayed near the shore, we thought – it’ll last maybe tonight and be gone the next day,” she said.
“We didn’t think it would stay as long as it did or keep snowing as long as it did.”
The snow kept falling and would become the area’s deepest February snowfall on record.
By the following day about 2,500 people had sought refuge in emergency rescue centres – many of them stuck on the A74(M) motorway through the region.
A council report on the events described the region as “effectively cut off from the outside world” for a number of days.
By the time Joyce went into labour on the Wednesday night, the area’s major emergency scheme had been activated and the army called in to provide assistance.
“It was quite scary when I discovered that I was going into labour and that I would be on my own to deliver because of the snow,” she said.
“I thought nobody would be able to get through to give us any support really.”
However, while they were preparing to be talked through the process themselves, someone did get through to try to take them to hospital.
“It was an army truck, which did have a red cross on the side, so it was a sort of ambulance,” said Joyce.
“But to be fair, I was just glad to see it – I didn’t care what I was getting to hospital in to be honest.”
She said there were two soldiers and two paramedics in the ambulance with a doctor following behind in his 4×4.
The baby, however, arrived long before they could get to hospital.
“Just before New Abbey – which is only about seven miles down the road – he wouldn’t wait and that was when he was born,” said Joyce.
She said the doors were “flung open” and “whoever needed to be in there was in there”.
“At that time, you just don’t care who’s around, and then we had a bouncing baby boy,” she added.
Looking back, she has fond memories.
“At the time I was thinking, it’s no big deal but now I think it is nice – especially for Dean to be told the story that he was born in the back of an army ambulance or an army truck,” she said.
“I think he’s got a nice wee story to his birth.
“It was in the papers and it was on the television and I was like, oh my gosh, because I’m quite a shy person really.”
Husband George said he was “panicking at first” but just delighted that everything went relatively smoothly.
The Roper family story was one of the more exceptional ones of the time – but so was the plight of the thousands trapped on the A74(M) motorway.
Graeme Wellburn was a police inspector at the time and ended up going to their aid.
They went along vehicles one by one in “eerie silence” to check everyone was OK.
“Lorry drivers were fine, you were knocking on the lorry driver’s cab to see if he was all right and he wound down the window, he was watching the television, he was having his tea,” he recalled.
Others were not so well prepared and families with young children were ferried to rest centres set up in Lockerbie and Moffat.
“The biggest problem for the snow ploughs to clear that road was getting all the cars and lorries off the road so they could clear the thing,” he said.
Alan Glendinning was also part of the police response and remembers the time it took to get the region back on the move.
“It was a slow process – roads cleared, but there was hard-packed snow,” he said.
“I remember the first journey back home when the A75 opened again, and it was a pretty treacherous journey.
“It was a slow journey home until you get the thaw and everything disappears again – it’s a slow return to normality.”
But some, like the Roper family, will always have something to remind them of that time.
Originally published at BBC News
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