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A
Memory by Dorothy Brittingham (Carr)
At
the age of twelve, Dorothy remembers it rained day and
night.
Our
home was flooded, eventually only the chimney was sticking out.
The home was on South Second street. My mother Clara Carr and I
stayed with Carrie Dell Loudon and my father and brother stayed
next door in the old Betty Carr house, which was in disrepair
then.
My
brother had a rowboat and my brothers would help people get out
of the flood, without charging them anything. I remember I had a
beautiful china doll, that someone stole out of the house before
we got to move. Keith, my brother would row sightseers across
the water for $.25. He was on second street. People who weren't
in the flood wanted to ride the water and see what was flooded.
All of downtown was flooded. The National Guard came to town.
Keith was ready to launch the boat, and a National Guard person
put his foot on end of the boat and said "I'm taking charge
of this boat in the name of the Guard." Keith acted like he
didn't hear him and pulled out and the Guard fell in the water!
They had been commandeering boats.
Krogers
brought a semi truck full of food but could only leave it on the
south side of town, mostly canned foods. Dr. Tyler Senior came
over to give everyone a shot for typhoid. A neighbor, Gertrude
White, came running and said "Charlie (Dorothy's father)
get the kids and take to the hills, the dam broke upriver."
My father told her if it did break, it wouldn't hurt us, it
would be impossible. It took quite a while to calm her
down.
They
eventually had food at the high school, if you were of the
political persuasion (Democrat) you could get anything,
otherwise you got dried beans and bread.
My
brother Charles worked for Mentor Shaw and he had two big gas
tanks in the middle of the river. If they broke loose and hit
something the whole town could catch on fire. My brother went
out in the boat and put big metal ropes on the tanks and managed
to tie them with cables. All sorts of things went floating down
the river, houses, you would see all kinds of animals, some
alive and some dead. Small animals on the barns and the houses.
Only the highest ground escaped.
A
Memory
of Ripley resident, Miriam Zachman
"The
flood of 1937 did more damage to Ripley than the depression.
Throughout the depression, we were self-reliant people; there
were gardens in everybody’s back yard, and we relied on our
“pioneer stock”, but the flood of 1937 devastated the town.
It was supposed to be a small flood, so merchants just put the
merchandise up on the shelves and did not expect the water to
keep rising like it did; the bank where my dad was the president
(Citizens National, currently the Integra back) sealed the
bottom vault but the upper vault was not sealed because they
weren’t expecting it to be so severe; then when the water rose
they could not get in to seal the upper vault and the front door
was underwater so they couldn’t get to it. The bottom vault held money and bank records, but all the
safety deposit boxes were in the second vault.
I spent long hours with a mangle (ironing machine) going
through bank records drying them out. We were living in what is
currently the museum; the water got to the baseboards. In the
home of my grandparents, Grandpa was a bed patient on the second
floor and could not be moved; Dad brought supplies in a boat and
handed them through the second-story window.
Originally
the bridge over Red Oak was an iron bridge; the road went down
very swiftly and was much closer to the creek; there were homes
on either side, and the flood took all the houses on Cherry up
to 2nd and 3rd streets. These wooden
houses, built in the 1800s, just floated away. We saw houses,
barns and dead horses, cows and pigs all floating down the
river. Easton Alley was lined with barns that had no foundation
that just floated away. The
library lost a lot of its books. They asked for help from the
Carnegie foundation that helped build it but were turned down.
My dad had a hardware store and they were moving stuff out of
the second floor into boats; the National Guard came in and
ordered them out because of the fear of busted oil tanks leaving
potentially flammable oil on the water. The National Guard were
young fellows who had never been in a flood. Our dad lost a lot
of money at that time. He moved upstairs when the water did
start coming up. The flood covered most of the houses on Front
House; my grandparents house had 6 feet of water in the main
living room; this house was raised after the 1913 flood to make
it taller, and that’s why the home wasn’t covered. The flood
washed fields away. To this day, if you open an electrical
outlet in some of the older homes, you will find leftover mud.
Most of the people moved completely out of Ripley. Hardly anybody was left."
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A
Memory
of the 1937 Ohio River Flood
as told by Jo An Richard Briggs (age 82) to her niece Judith
Richard Gray in an interview on March 14, 2002
"I
was a senior in high school during the 1937 flood. My Aunt Cleve
had bought me a fur coat. I had left it in a closet on the
second floor of our house where I thought it was safe. However,
when the first floor of our house was completely flooded (the
furniture had been removed except for the player piano which was
too heavy) there wasn't time to remove it.
The
sad news is as the waters were still rising and I thought
"Oh my goodness! My beautiful coat will be ruined." I
contacted James Lightfoot, a boy who worked in my father's
grocery. "James, you have to help me get my fur coat.
Please get a boat and row me down to my house." He said,
"Jo An, small boats aren't allowed on Front Street. The
currents are too strong, besides, I don't have a boat."
"Well", I said, "Just steal one". I started
to cry and he felt sorry for me I guess 'cause he managed to get
a boat somewhere. The waters were quite rough, but we made it. I
climbed into the second floor window, so happy to find no water
as yet on that floor. As James was rowing away, we heard a small
voice crying. "Help me, please help me." It was Mrs.
Parker, a darling old lady living next door. No one even knew
she was there and in danger. She was stranded on her second
floor with no telephone to tell anyone she was there. James and
I helped her climb out the window and on to the porch roof and
into the boat.
The
next week our local paper published this item: "James
Lightfoot and another Negro boy rescued Mrs. Parker from her
home on Front Street." I didn't even get any recognition
for the save, but I didn't care. I had my beautiful - not mink,
not ermine - but my beautiful muskrat fur coat." |
