Children

Children's reactions to the flood were especially poignant. In pictures, poems, stories - even facial expressions - they reflected fatigue and bewilderment over the endless tasks of rebuilding lives after the flood.

April Flood

I touched a Lincoln School brick.
I felt sad.
I was sad when all my animals
were lost in the flood.
I lost a teddy bear I got from my dad.
I was happy because I had somewhere to stay -
at my dad's in Mayville.
I got to play with Alison. We rode bikes together.
I saw a teddy bear floating in the water.
It was covered with mud and
it looked soggy and wet.
I head lots of people crying.
They sounded really sad.
I smelled my house.
It smelled like mud and rotten food.
I tasted spaghetti at my dad's house in Mayville.
It tasted good.

Audrey Dakken, grade 2

Flood Poem

I am mad at the flood because it
snatched half the summer from me.
It turned some of my things into useless garbage.
Before the flood,
my parents freaked trying to get
everything out of the basement.
The day we were evacuated,
I was a little excited because I knew we were going to Kansas to stay with my parents' families.
When I got back,
I was upset because the summer was half gone,
and I had to work harder
to get our house back to normal.

Ben Blake, grade 6

Poems by students at Lincoln Elementary School, Grand Forks, ND,
published in A Flood of Memories, November, 1997.

A child's view of the flood, from the Village Family Service Center's
publication One Year Has Passed, April, 1998.

"We started serving her children in April while they were sandbagging...She's got 3 children, her youngest in April was 7 weeks old. She'd drop them off [at the Family Service Center], she'd go out and sandbag and about 6 hours later she'd come, breast-feed him, go back out and sandbag. And she did this for a week because they were trying to save their home. All they got out of their home was their grand piano."

Mary Barrett, East Grand Forks Head Start director.

For many weeks after the flood, the Tri-Valley Family Service Center provided child care in East Grand Forks -- virtually all of the city's home day cares had been flooded.
Quote from Community in Crisis, December, 1997

EBB TIDE: Recovery From the 1997 Flood

Children