50 years later |
7/10/01 Hop into a time machine traveling 50 years back, and suddenly your portable CD player spins into a record player, your desktop computer digitizes into a manual typewriter and your cell phone melts into a large, black rotary phone.Walking down the halls at school, your Nikes grow a leather sole and are now called penny loafers (and you actually put a penny in them). You're enrolled in classes called 'Auto Mechanics,' 'Stenography' and 'Office Practice.' And at the beginning of each class, you join your classmates in saying the Lord's Prayer and then the Pledge of Allegiance. |
7/9/01 HERINGTON -- It was a marriage made in heaven. It was a wedding from hell. And there was high water in the package.Bob Tousignant was a soldier stationed at Fort Riley back in 1950. Part of his duties included the enviable job of driving a USO bus to pick up women for dances at the base. One of his stops was in Herington. "I'd pick up around 18 girls on the route," Tousignant said. "There was this real looker from Herington named Juanita, but every time I talked to her, she was real snooty. But, by golly, I finally got a date with her. We dated for seven months." The romance was cut short, though, in August of that year when Tousignant was shipped off to the Korean War. |
7/8/01 This raging mess must have come straight from hell.No place on Earth could send this much unholy horror -- this much stinking, swirling, dirty river water into the lives of so many good Kansans. Water topped and toppled dikes, bowed and broke bridges, sending them like matchsticks down the river that swallowed homes and businesses and lives forever. There is a reason the Flood of 1951 is legendary. That June and July forever changed not just the face, but the very soul, of Kansas. The state's worst natural disaster in the 20th century humbled even the most tenacious. |
7/8/01 "Pard" Sherman wasn't scared as he sat in that tree with his brother 50 years ago, waiting to be rescued. "I just wasn't going to leave it," he said.It was a tree just south of where the Little Jayhawk Motel is now, near the intersection of N. Kansas Avenue and US-24 highway. Rolland "Pard" Sherman and his brother Pete were in a canoe when they ran into a heavy current. They abandoned ship and climbed into the tree. |
7/8/01 Just after orders came to evacuate his new home 50 years ago, Jim Miller got the call that would offer him the opportunity to become a hero.Miller, along with more than 4,500 other people, saved the Topeka's water supply. It is an effort that has grown to legendary status in the past half century. |
7/8/01 Lydia Porubsky remembers the first time she saw her young husband cry.It was after the most destructive flood since 1903 had ravaged all of North Topeka, including the business that Charles and Lydia Porubsky had worked so hard at building. |
7/8/01 The days of rain hinted of the deluge to come. But the sun shone bright that July 8 afternoon, a Sunday, as close to 100 Girl Scouts from across northeast Kansas converged on Camp Mary Dell, a few miles from Abilene.For six young friends from Emporia, a week of horseback riding, walks and merit badges beckoned. |
7/8/01 Hailed by former Gov. Edward F. Arn as "the greatest catastrophe in Kansas history," the 1951 flood altered the course of life throughout the rest of the century.It destroyed property, raided the land, changed lives. It also changed the flow of the rivers. |
Historical coverage |
7/13/01 The following story appeared 50 years ago today in The Topeka State Journal, published the afternoon of July 13, 1951. That Friday the 13th was one of the unluckiest days in the history of Topeka:The churning Kaw maintained an almost constant level at slightly more than 36 feet Friday and flood-besieged Topeka paused briefly to catch its breath, hoping the crest of the worst flood in the city's history had arrived. While Mayor W. Kenneth Wilke reported evacuation work in North Topeka, Oakland and East Topeka had lessened to some degree, the city found courage in the fact that the sharp rise in the river had halted, and that no rain had fallen since noon Thursday. |
7/8/01 From the July 17, 1951, issue of the Topeka Daily Capital:Scrubbing Starts as Oakland Families Return to Homes Monday -- traditional wash day for housewives everywhere -- had a new and more important meaning for the women of Oakland this week. |
7/8/01 The miles-wide Kaw River, rampaging in its worst flood, isolated whole towns in its course Thursday and was causing unprecedented losses at Topeka, Manhattan and Lawrence. |
7/8/01 Approximately 4,000 homeless Topekans were cared for Thursday night in emergency relief shelters, and many times that number took refuge in South Topeka homes. |
7/8/01 Kansas floods have left at least 10 known dead, 50,000 homeless in the seven worst-hit cities alone and inundated scores of communities. |
7/8/01 Police headquarters reported early Friday morning that two men who apparently had been aiding rescue operations were seen floating through the North Topeka flood area with a dead motor. They were signaling with flashlights, but National Guard officers refused to permit a rescue attempt because it "would be suicidal." They were reported in the area near Highway 24. |
7/8/01 North Topeka was a city of watery destruction Thursday. |
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