I actually don't remember much about the day Mt. St. Helens erupted...truth be told...I don't remember a single thing. The reason for this is that I was born the day the mountain erupted. My mother was giving birth at Swedish Hospital in Seattle the morning the mountain lost its top! As the story goes, the nurses were all in the hall watching the eruption on t.v. while my father was attempting to console my screaming mother. Happy Birthday to me!!!

My name is Ron Allen. I wrote and sang the song called "Harry Truman, You're Spirit Lives On". Hard to believe it was 26 years ago. I have received lots of requests for a copy of the song over the years. If you would like a copy just e mail me @ callenremax@comcast.net and I will be happy to send you a 45 record.We used the name RW Stone for the artist but our names are
Ron Allen and Steve Asplund.

LINDA'S EYEWITNESS STORY OF MAY 8, 1980 DURING THE MOUNT ST. HELENS ERUPTION.

It was Sunday morning, May 18th, 1980, 11 a.m. when I was awoken by the phone ringing. A friend of mask or said, "Don't freak out but the mountain just blew! Approximately 100 miles from the mountain, I was living in Ellensburg, Washington and was sleeping in. I looked out my window and saw an enormous black cloud coming down on the ground. There was about 1 inch of daylight left on the horizon and then total black. I jumped out of bed and went to turn on the TV, it was all over the news. Looking out my front window to the street I could barely see a little glimmer of light from the street lamp the city had turned on. It was blacker than the blackest night I had ever seen.. No one could go out that day and everyone was discouraged to go out for several days, if you did, you had to wear a mask over your nose and mouth

When I did go outside the ash was almost up to my knees, what a desolate site, it was gray and dusty everywhere! The ash was so fine it got into my closed suitcases that were in my closed garage. Just a few weeks before the eruption I had planted some wildflowers. When they came up later that summer they had the most vivid, beautiful colors I had ever seen in my garden. Having such a unique, once-in-a-lifetime experience, inspired me to write a song about it, "Mount St. Helens was a Blowin". This is now aired on the permanent playlist on KAOS radio station in Olympia Washington and also aired on several radio stations throughout the Northwest and Colorado. Hoftsted Bluffs visitor Center on the mountain also sells it. It can be heard by logging onto www.lindastorey.com

i was just 6 years oldliving in Kelso WA when the mountain blew. my sister and i were sitting on our back porch waiting for the church bus to come and watched it happen. it is probably my most vivid early memory, my sister yelling for my folks to come look!

i am trying to find a copy of the folk song that came out shortly after the mountain blew, called ode to harry truman (your spirit will live on and on) if anyone knows where i can purchase a copy feel free to contact me.

I WAS 10 YEARS OLD WHEN MT ST. HELENS ERPUTED. THE WEEKS PRIOR TO THE ERPUTION I REMEMBER OUR MUSIC TEACHER WROTE A SONG ABOUT HARRY TRUMAN. WE ALL SANG THE SONG AND I STILL REMEMBER THE WORDS. "HARRY TRUMAN LIVES ON THE MOUNTAIN, HARRY TRUMAN HE WON'T COME DOWN, BUT WHEN THAT MOUNTAIN STARTS A ROCKIN AND A ROLLIN, HARRY TRUMAN HE'LL CLIMB RIGHT DOWN. SADLY WE ALL KNOW HE DIDN'T.
I REMEMBER ALL THE ASH AND CARS STALLED ALL OVER THE PLACE. THE SURGICAL MASKS YOU HAD TO WEAR SO YOU COULD BREATHE.
MY COUSINS IN OHIO WERE EXCITED WHEN WE SENT THEM SOME ASH. IT WAS EVERYWHERE AND I DIDN'T THINK SO MUCH ABOUT IT, BUT THEY MADE SOME MONEY SELLING IT TO THERE SCHOOL FRIENDS. I STILL HAVE SOME TODAY AS A REMINDER OF SUCH A MOMENT IN HISTORY.

Everyone remembers a different experience now don't they?
Yes I do remember the experience on May 18 yet it was not quite as memorable as the one on June 12th... At least for me anyway.

I was inside Memorial Coliseum with the Grateful Dead and at exactly 9:09 p.m. Mt. St. Helens exploded and so did the band! What had been a hot show already...really started smokin' when the band launched into "Fire on the Mountain"!

Now we all have our memories and that's the way it should be but walking out of Memorial Coliseum after the show to be showered on by Mt. St. Helens ash was just icing on the cake!

I remember well how the ash from the May 18, 1980 eruption covered the town of Missoula Montana where I was living at the time. About a 1/4 inch of fine flour like ash coated the entire valley and kept us all in our homes for several days.

My husband and I live in northeast Portland and were awakened by the volcano, although we didn't know it at the time. Since it was Sunday, we didn't have the alarm set but at exactly 8:32 we both were wide awake and wondering why. We didn't hear anything and it was very quiet outside; everything seemed normal. But the feeling was like that nagging feeling you get when you know something's just not quite right. So we went to Elmer's for breakfast and found out there what had happened. We spent several hours after that on the NE Glisan Street overpass over 205 watching the huge plume of smoke and ash. It was awe inspiring! My mother, in Buffalo, NY, decided since I had survived Hurricane Camile in 69 and now had this in my
"backyard", she would call me Calamity Jean.

I was 14 years old at the time.
I had spent the night at a friends house. My friends mom woke us up and said we should come and see what was on TV. I remember watching video of the Tootle River being inundated with mud and huge logs. Everyone was scared to go out side. Remember the dust masks?

Later, I found out that David A. Johnston, the USGS worker who was on that now famous ridge of the same name was dropped off on that ridge by CHI, the helicopter co. my dad worked for, just moments before the eruption. The helicopter crew went back to look for him, but of course found massive destruction.

After attending an early Sunday service, I took some visitors from Indiana on a picnic in Silver Falls State Park, south of Portland. We had no radio on and were unaware of the eruption until late afternoon when we turned back north toward Portland. We saw a mushroom shaped cloud the size of my outstretched hand. We turned the car radio on and learned what we were looking at. We drove up to St. Helens Oregon for a closer view of the eruption. What a special treat for all of us, but especially my Indiana visitors.

Later that summer, I went back to Indiana for a visit. I took little bottles of Mt. St. Helens dust that had landed on my Portland porch in June. I quickly ran out of the bottles of ash as they were very popular!

I still have a peanut butter jar of ash. It slowly settles down about an inch from the top, I get it out, shake it and it fills the jar...until it settles back down after a few weeks.

What better present could a girl get on her 12th birthday than a volcanic eruption? In Pullman, Washington, over 300 miles east of the mountain, May 18th, 1980 dawned bright and sunny. We heard on the radio about the eruption and headed out to the annual Renaissance Fair, an outdoor hippie arts festival in Moscow, Idaho, me in my wraparound skirt and red velvet slippers. Mid-afternoon, the sky darkened in the west with what looked like huge black thunderclouds, until an eerie darkness descended, sending the vendors of tie dye shirts and dreamcatchers rushing home. When the ash started falling, it looked like grainy snow in the glare of the streetlights, triggered early by the afternoon dark. The cat came in covered in ash, looking offended. The ash reached a depth of several inches and we got out of the last few weeks of 8th grade -no algebra final! No one drove at first because no one knew what the ash would do to car engines, so we got used to walking to the store on the deserted streets in surgical masks or bandanas. The next year there was a bumper wheat crop, despite the farmers’ early fears. I hold volcano themed birthday parties to celebrate the mountain which marked May 18th in such a spectacular fashion – this year, I’m planning to explode a volcano model in honor of the 25th anniversary of the eruption.

My family moved to Oregon from Connecticut in the summer of 1980 (I was eight), driving the entire way. We went through the US to Minnesota, spent some time at my great-grandfather's cabin, and then headed up into Canada for the rest of the journey. As we drove south from British Columbia into Washington on our way to our new life in Oregon, we saw more and more evidence of the recent eruption. I remember stopping at rest areas in Southwest Washington where the ash was plowed from the parking areas, the drifts looking like piles of grayish snow. My mother collected it in those old plastic ice cream tubs, and we sent it back East to family and friends in film canisters. Mom still has some, somewhere. As an eight-year-old, I have no recollection of seeing the mountain blow (we were still in Connecticut at that point), but I'll never forget the ash drifts we saw as we headed to our new home.

I was 10yrs old and was traveling with my mom and sister from our home on Vancouver Island to Roseburg for a family wedding. We spent the night in Longview with my great-grandmother and got up fairly early to drive the remainder of our trip down I-5. Mom stopped for gas just before leaving Longview sometime around 8:30 and when she looked up, there was a huge cloud spewing from the mountain. Only later did we learn the magnitude of the eruption.

As a side note, we traveled back to our home on Vancouver Island the next week and we were caught on I-5 around Centralia in the midst of another big eruption. Ash blew west, covering I-5 and mimicked a blizzard for the poor drivers. We crept along I-5 until we neared Seattle where conditions improved.

We made that trip along I-5 several times and I vividly remember how the drinking water in Longview was grey for a few years before they were able to dredge the ash...impressive and yet quite unappealing to a 10yr old! Also, I remember those huge ash piles next to the freeway...unless you witnessed what had happened, you probably wouldn't realize what those grassy mounds are next to the freeway now!

On May 18, 1980 I was married, 23 years old, and living in Spokane, Washington . It was a beautiful spring day in the Inland Empire, at least to start with. Just the right kind of day to bathe the dog and plant some marigolds in the front yard. It was early to mid afternoon as I finished in the garden and a cloud blocked the sun. The temperature seemed to drop a bit. I looked up into the west sky and saw what I thought was a very nasty weather front moving in. I was struck by how utterly, solid, MASSIVE and BLACK this incoming cloud bank appeared.
Now, something told me what I was seeing wasn't good or normal. But I had no basis for comparison, therefore that little inkling didn't fully register in my mind.
So, I shooed the dog and cat inside and headed in myself, thinking "Man! Is it gonna rain!!".
Minutes later a friend called to say we should listen to the news because that 'weather' was actually the ash cloud from Mt St Helens. Just about then daylight turned to darkness, the street lights came on, and the rain of ash began. An earie silence enveloped the city. Spokane remained quiet for the next week. We didn't go to work, nor did we drive the car. If we went outside we wore something over our nose and mouth to filter the ash. Each footstep raised a small plume of ash... poof, poof, poof. We spent alot of time that week with hose in hand washing the ash away.
Sincerely,
Emilie M. Smith

It was my grandmother's 60th birthday. I was twelve, living with my family in Spokane, and when we called Grandma that morning she told us Mt. St. Helens had erupted. We didn't think much of it, because it had been erupting for several months; we didn't know it was the Big One.

That morning my mom, dad, brother and I left for Fairchild Air Force Base, where an air show had been scheduled. Halfway there, we saw the dark cloud approaching from the west, but still didn't realize that it was from the volcano. We thought a storm was approaching.

Then, traffic started to pile up, so we exited the highway and stopped at a gas station, where we were informed that the air show had been cancelled and that the approaching darkness was an ash cloud.

The cars turning around to go back to Spokane created a traffic jam on eastbound I-90, so Dad took a detour and got us home before the ash arrived. We turned on the news to hear warnings: Stay inside, keep animals inside, we don't know the nature of this ash, it could still be hot, and it will start falling!

For about 15 minutes my parents debated whether to drive north toward Canada, out of the path of the cloud, then decided to hold tight.

By now the ash had arrived and it was starting to get dark. Mom had to chase me back inside when I ran out after my kittens, who had escaped when we opened the door to look outside.

Eventually it got so dark that when I remember it now, it seems as though it all happened at night instead of the middle of the day. Once the ash started falling, my brother and I could not tear ourselves away from the window. It looked like snow, and everything was very quiet. I was pretty excited that I was living through a volcanic eruption.

The next day--when almost nobody went to work or drove anywhere--Dad, my brother and I wrapped scarves around our faces and trudged through the gray streets to the grocery store, where the shelves had been pretty thoroughly sacked of provisions. There was a slightly burnt, but chalky, smell in the air.

We saw animal tracks everywhere in the ash, even squiggles that we thought must be snake trails. When we got home, we put out food and water for the birds and squirrels.

School was cancelled. When we went back the following week, we were required to wear masks when going outside between buildings.

Except for the few scoops filling jars in our closet, I have no idea how we ever got rid of the ash in our yard.

My name is Samuel Clements [no relation to Mark Twain],and Iwas born on May 17,1962. Mount Saint Helens erupted 1 day after my 18th birthday on May 18,1980! [A lot of "ones" and "eights" in there.I`ll bet a numerologist could really have fun with this one]
Furthermore,I was born at 7:15 am. Mount Saint Helens official time of eruption was 8:32 am. 8:32 take away 7:15 equals --- are you ready for this --- 1:17!

MT.ST.HELENS erupted 18 years,1 hour,and 17 minutes after I was born!

Cue the "TWILIGHT ZONE" music

I was climbing Mt. Hood that day and when I got to the summit and looked around there was a huge bellowing plume of gray and black ash powering out from Mt. St. Helens. My first thought was that Hood was going to blow next and I would be a gonner. It really was an amazing sight, there were lightening bolts coming out of the mountain and the speed of the ash as it catapulted from the crater was breathtaking. Definately a sight I will never forget. I only spent about ten minutes watching and then I put on my skies and ripped turns back down to Timberline Lodge. What a moment in time.

I was 5 yrs old when Mount Saint Helens had it's eruption. I was watching Sesame Street on OPB and I remember my mother running into the room and changing the channel to the news. Me being 5 I started to throw a fit and then she had told me to go out side and look at the sky. I did and was in awe seeing the dark coluds rise above Portland and hte rest of the NW. It was one of the most impressive sites I've ever seen. The next day waking up to see all of the ash covering the streets. Me and the neighbor kids played and collected the ash while wearing our face masks. I still have the jars of ash I collected 25yrs ago as a reminder that we as humans are so small compared to nature.

I was on a plane traveling from Virginia to Portland for a job interview. I arrived at about 9pm and went straight to bed in an airport hotel. The next morning when I woke it was raining and a lot of the ash had turned to mud. I knew nothing about the volcano and complained to a bystander "They told me Oregon was clean!" When I phoned my mother in England to tell her I was moving here I was told that according to UK news there were cattle dying in the streets.
I have been in Oregon ever since.

I was living outside Coeur d' Alene, Idaho at the time. I heard on the radio that people should get their animals, pets, and children inside because of an approaching ash cloud. The cloud arrived in the afternoon like an endless grey wall stretched across the sunny afternoon. When it got to my house, the sky went pitch black and we could hear, late into that eerie night, ash falling on the house; quietly and softly it fell like feathers. No sounds traveled through the ash, and we felt as if we were in a cave deep in the earth. The next morning, 6 to 8 inches of ash covered everything and when I turned on the garden hose to wash off the deck, bees desperate for water swarmed around me. I remember hearing a rooster crow in the pasture and a small explosion of ash announced its location. For years afterwards, ash was found in odd places, the underside edge of roofing shingles, for example, and in old bottles and tin cans along the road and in a small mustard bottle labeled "Saint Helen's blew her top" that I found among my belongings recently when I moved from Oregon to New Zealand.

I had spent the night with a friend where we lived in Chehalis, Washington. Our plans were to get up bright and early on that Sunday morning to attend a church service, and while it was certainly early, it was definitely NOT bright! My friend and I were completely freaked out that the clock said 8:00 a.m. but it was pitch black outside. Needless to say, we didn't attend the service and I was "stuck" at her place for two days before my parents could finally pick me up. There were almost no cars on the road in Lewis County that first week, and it was a MESS!! Because this was our Senior year at W.F. West High School in Chehalis, many of the end-of-the-year events such as sports banquets, mother/daughter teas, Senior parties, etc. were cancelled due to the eruption. It seemed a minor miracle that we even had our graduation ceremony I absolutely hated the eruption, and still sort of scoff at all the attention given to the event. Yes, I know it was a major geological occurrance practically in our own back yard, but from a teenagers point of view it was a major bummer!!

I was in Bend that morning, so could only see the eruption on television. The station had a fixed camera pointed at the mountain and projected a wide-angle scene continuously as the anchorman delivered eruption-related news.

It was a massively thick column of dark ash that appeared to rise slowly from the mountain. I could follow a billow of ash in that column as it emerged from the mountain and took maybe a full minute or two to disappear out of the top of the picture, moving at constant speed, perhaps five miles higher. Knowing that this persisted for many hours, I sensed a power in the eruption that I have never seen recreated in any retrospective news stories, which often show news clips of the event only 5 or 10 seconds long.