Someday John Robert Reece is going to her the story of how he was born … and it’s going to be quite a story. Dad was in Texas in military training. The Tuesday blizzard had left five-foot high snowdrift around the Reece home in a rural area near Warrensburg. That’s mom’s water broke.

It took two members of the Missouri National Guard, driving a six-wheeled vehicle built for desert warfare to get through the snow to the house, bringing a paramedic with them. They managed to get Cynthia Reece through the snow to a hospital in time for John Robert’s birth.