I was 14 at the time of the hurricane. I don’t remember too much except that we heard that there could be a storm. Where we lived the banking is high…so in the 1936 flood we had not been flooded. There was water near us from the north and south…lots of water…but it was not in our immediate neighborhood…So we felt safe…but my brother was down at the exposition. He had a little calf, and he was showing his calf at the Big E…and when my mother heard we had a flood she was very concerned. We didn’t have a car…And we walked everywhere we went…it was say a mile-and-a-half to the Big E…She was concerned about my brother, who was 16, but she wanted him home…so she walked out after him. The rest of she told to ‘Stay Here’…and we were concerned for her. She had to walk up over the underpass, because it was flooded down below. When she found my brother, he was on his way bringing all the cattle, out of the Big-E and up to higher ground. She wanted him to leave with her…but he wasn’t about to leave what he was doing…he felt very needed, very important…to be part of what he was doing…and that’s the part that I remember about it, that hit me personally.

The other thing I remember about the flood…both the flood of 1936 and 1938 (after the hurricane)…was that after it was over and the water that had gone down…those people had to go back to their homes…and take everything out of their house…and lay it…in their yard to dry…and …it was so sad to go down there and see how those families had to go back to their home and…start all over again…we felt very fortunate that we didn’t have to go through that. We helped so many people by putting them up…we had a houseful. My sister used to say ‘ don’t take anything off…because mom will give it away’…so we remember that about being so generous because we were so fortunate, and we weren’t hit so hard…and I remember thinking how brave those people were…going back to their homes…and facing all that…seeing all their things soaked…and yet staying there, and getting it all back together again…and start all over.

Oh yes…there was wind. It seemed like it was late afternoon / early evening. I remember my dad coming home from work during that time…and my mother left us and said ‘dad will be home…but stay here’…It was more rain and wind that we had ever seen, even with the ’36 flood. The ’36 flood was more rain…but this was wind and rain. I don’t remember seeing a lot of trees down…either they had been cleaned up…but what had impressed me most about traveling down town…was that people had everything they owned laying out in the yard or on the porch to dry and to get them washed and to start all over again.

The Corps of Engineers came to town…and they built the dikes and the walls that we have…and the dike up by the VFW and we’ve always had them for protection since…and we’ve never had an event again…and that’s what they said when they came to town…they said we’d never have another flood like that again…because the dike would take care of those high waters…and then the Knightville Dam was built soon after…and that’s part of the (flood) control system.