On May 25, 2008, Tom Reinert and his family lost their Parkersburg home to a tornado.
On June 12, 2008, Mike Reinert and his family lost their Cedar Rapids house to the flood.
Since then, I’ve followed the brothers, who grew up in Elkader, in their recovery efforts in The Gazette. (Today’s is the 9th and last installment [...]
Posts Tagged as ‘Flood’
June 15, 2009
What A Year With Reinert Brothers
June 8, 2009
Geneva Tower After The Flood
Geneva Tower, the 12-story HUD project built in downtown Cedar Rapids in 1971, has always fascinated me. That’s why I enjoyed touring it with administrator Bob Hagarty as my guide for today’s Ramblin’ column in The Gazette for a report a year after the Flood of 2008.
Virtually a city unto itself, it has 183 efficiency and one-bedroom [...]
May 25, 2009
Parkersburg A Year After Tornado
An amazing sight in Iowa these days is the quick recovery of Parkersburg a year after a tornado destroyed nearly 300 homes.
I’ve been following the family of Tom Reinert (left) because he and his brother, Mike, faced similar tragedies. After Tom’s family lost their Parkersburg home to the tornado on May 25, Mike and his [...]
December 17, 2008
Richard’s Story As First Written
Often writers want to write longer stories than space in The Gazette allows. Such was the case today when my original column about Richard McLaud ran 30 inches, even though the newspaper had space for only 20.
In some ways, writing shorter improves a story. In other ways, the longer version is better. In this case, I like [...]
September 15, 2008
How They Wrote in ‘29
As I perused the scrapbook of the 1929 flood that hit Cedar Rapids compiled that March by Bertha Alden Grueterich (see today’s Ramblin’ column in The Gazette), I was fascinated by the writing style of the day.
A March 18 story talked about men sandbagging to keep the water at bay:
“Higher, higher, higher came the waters, [...]
April 29, 2008
Who’ll Stop the Rain?
My sump pump’s been pumpin’ since Thursday.
The ground ’round my house isn’t thirsty.
I’ve had enough of these darn April showers.
And the flood that’s been drownin’ the flowers.
Somewhere, let’s hope, there’s relief from this pain.
But I keep on wonderin’, who’ll stop the rain?
