Endeavor to persevere; these simple words have stuck with me since I first heard them in the 1976 movie starring Clint Eastwood, The Outlaw Josey Wales, spoken by the character Lone Watie played by Chief Dan George. Endeavor to persevere, to try hard to overcome a seemingly insurmountable obstacle in the face of extreme difficulty. Stay the course, press on and do one’s damnedest when the odds are long.
It’s hard for me to believe that it’s been a little over 10 years since my wife and I lost our home to the catastrophic flood that inundated Columbus on June 7, 2008. I have been reticent about putting the events of that summer into words, feeling my emotions were still too raw and quite frankly, wanting to forget that it ever happened. However, the passing of time has assuaged the anguish of those events and I can now view them a bit more introspectively.
The day of the flood dawned rainy and as we stirred, my wife and I had no idea of the raw emotions and physical and mental challenges that would face us by the end of the day. It continued raining into the afternoon but by late in the day the clouds cleared and the sun finally peeked through. We had eaten dinner out and returned home to a lot of commotion in the Lagoons neighborhood as everyone was abuzz about the rising waters of the Flatrock River. Caught up in it, we walked to nearby Noblitt Park and could literally see the floodwaters rising toward us. Back home, I walked to the end of the street to check on the river, which lay less than a block from our front door. As I looked north up Flatrock Drive, I saw something that made me do a double take, a 12 inch wall of water rolling towards me down the street. The events that were soon to unfold were set into motion as the muddy water soon rolled past me.
Running back home through the water, I burst through the front door and shouted for Tracy to carry what we could out of the basement. I remember seeing the window well filling up with water and thinking, “Damn, this isn’t going to be good.” Fortunately, our home was a tri-level so we used the upper part as a repository for many of our belongings. We also had a walkout basement for easy access to the lagoon, which came into play later on. We carried as much as we could while caring for our two-year old daughter, Katie. As water cascaded down the basement steps from the main level, I felt it prudent to send my wife and daughter to higher ground. My ex-wife, Jeannie, graciously welcomed them into her home where I would reunite with them later that night
After seeing them safely off, I continued to work feverishly into the evening with water beginning to rise against the basement door. Sweat and floodwater joined together. I continued working as the sun faded away, wading through thigh deep water bent on a mission of preservation. Almost in a trance, I carried books, baseball cards, record albums, tools, family pictures, and childhood memories up the steps. It felt like something out of an old submarine movie with jets of water spraying through the basement door as the water rose outside. With the water now waste deep, the door could no longer hold. The jam splintered and the door blew open and with it, a wall of water. I didn’t realize I could move so fast, but I flew up the steps to the main level. With darkness and a feeling of dread overwhelming me, I put a leash on our golden retriever, Lizzy, and waded out into the flooded streets. Catching a ride in a friend’s truck, Lizzy and I left a surreal scene, wondering what the morning would bring.
I vividly remember waking up the next day, a bright and sunny Sunday, looking out the window and seeing a woman walking her dog. It struck me that she was probably oblivious to the events of the previous night and her life would probably go on as before. But I knew that my life would be different somehow, beyond anything I could imagine. It would quite literally be the first day of the rest of my life.
When I returned to the house that Sunday, I was overwhelmed by what I saw. The mud, ruined furniture, the deck wrenched from its posts, dead fish in the front yard, a water snake in my terrace garden, and water lapping at the top of the steps leading into the basement. This was what I could see, but so much more lay hidden, to be revealed once the floodwaters had fully receded.
So, it wasn’t the way I wanted to clean house but we had no choice. As the pile of ruined household items grew, the sense of loss became overwhelming. Mind you that I use the term ruined not destroyed. Fire destroys, water ruins. I knew intimately what every item was that I threw on the growing pile in our driveway. But it was the mud that drove me crazy; it found its way into every nook and cranny, every square inch of what we had left; driven deep into the crevices of our souls. Years later, we will still find a hidden spot of mud on something we had salvaged, a reminder of those agonizing days.
Eventually, the water was pumped out of the lagoons and after the initial clean-up, emotional and draining (there were more than a few tears shed looking over the destruction), we now faced the myriad regulatory and insurance issues of having a home in the regulated floodway. Fortunately, we had mandatory flood insurance so I felt all would not be a total loss. But the state said, in order for us to occupy the house, the main floor would have to be raised three feet above the 100-year flood level. That meant we would have to raise the main floor of our house over three feet, at an unimaginable cost. After a number of trips to the city planning department, I felt as if we had been backed into a corner.
With this issue confronting us, Tracy and I were faced with the question, should we stay or should we go? After huddling together, we felt that we could no longer live with the possibility of another flood and must chart a future away from this place, even though it was our first home together. After some back and forth with the insurance company, we were able to have the property declared a total loss and received the full amount available under our flood insurance. We then put the house on the market and found a cash buyer. With these proceeds, we were able to pay off our existing mortgage and have a cash balance; a victory after so much loss.
We eventually moved into temporary housing and, while there, befriended the couple across the hall. Rajesh and Geetha were in the US from India while he worked on a project at Cummins. We ate Indian food many evenings and Rajesh and I shared more than a little Kentucky bourbon on those summer nights. Through the simple acts of breaking bread and sipping a little bourbon, we learned a hell of a lot about the common bonds that bring humankind together, in spite of our differences.
Whether it was the support of our parents and siblings, friends lending a hand, temporary lodging provided by my ex-wife, co-workers helping pack up our remaining belongings, our pastor supplying some cold beer when I needed it most, my sons standing beside their dad, or the total strangers who lent a hand, we reaffirmed the importance of each of the people in our lives. We were touched by many people that summer, both seen and unseen, each one a reminder of the complex weave of the human relationships that intertwine us. To separate ourselves from it would be folly.
We now live in a new home a couple of miles north of the Lagoons. I ride my bike to Parkside Elementary School in the morning with my daughter, Sarah and I’m home in the afternoon when the bus drops off Katie from another day in 7th grade. I have a wonderful garden where I grow tomatoes, herbs, and peppers. I have wildflowers that attract beautiful butterflies and I feed the birds and a lot of squirrels. I say hello to my neighbors and know them by name. My sons often play pitch and catch in the yard and our daughters swing under the sycamore tree. I chat with our mailman and always greet our UPS guy. Living here now just feels like a natural progression in our lives, no longer like a forced march, it is like there was no place else we were meant to be.
Watching an ant colony going about its business has always fascinated me. What might first appear as chaos is actually very orderly and well-defined. I had an old bird box in the backyard that fell from the cherry tree a few weeks ago. When I knocked out the old nest material, a swarm of small black ants fell out along with hundreds of their tiny eggs. When I came back a while later, the ants and their eggs had completely disappeared. They survived the destruction of their home and moved on to reestablish it someplace else.
Ten summers ago, we also faced the destruction of our home. We lived through it all, we lost and we gained, and are survivors nonetheless. We love life, with all its twists and turns, and will always remember that we did our damnedest and endeavored to persevere when the odds were against us.
