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It was the flood they would never forget.
Hello, I’m Neil Sagebiel, an author and writer. I’m also the great grandson, grandson, grandnephew, nephew and son of flood survivors.
Some of my earliest memories are of sitting in the homes of my relatives on visits to Jeffersonville, Indiana, an Ohio River town across from Louisville, Kentucky.
During conversations in living rooms and kitchens, I would hear family members mention “the flood” as if it happened last week.
The flood? It was a mystery to me as a boy. As I would learn, the flood had a permanent spot in the family lexicon.
The flood was a life-changing event, and one that drew a hard line through the year 1937. “That happened before the flood” or “that happened after the flood,” my elders would say in the months, years and decades that followed early 1937.
Floods — especially spring floods — were normal along the Ohio River. In the course of their lifetime, my family and thousands of people in the Ohio Valley saw innumerable floods. But the Great Flood of 1937, as it came to be known, was simply “the flood” to the people who survived it.
The waters receded, but not the memories.
My father talked about the flood up until his death in 2021 at the age of 94. Nine years old when the muddy water entered his small house near the levee, the flood changed his address and changed his life.
Here at The 1937 Flood Journal, I’ll share what dad told me, but also much more. As I’ve found in my travels from points in West Virginia to Cairo, Illinois, there are extraordinary flood accounts all along the winding river.
Come along, and allow me to tell you some amazing human stories.
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