Faces of the Flood

Lisa Thess

As floodwater overtook towns along the rivers, some animals were deserted by their owners, strays were stranded and others were lost in transport. Dogs could be found on roofs of homes, helpless against the water that steadily crept higher. The situation was beyond comprehension for Lisa Thess, who was then the director of the St. Charles Humane Society Pet Adoption Center.

“On the news you would see all of these people loading up their big-screen TVs and their refrigerators, and they would leave their dogs tied to the porch,” Thess said. “My animals are a part of my family. I couldn’t understand how anyone could flee and leave their animals behind.”

Loading up her small Ford Escort with animal cages and supplies, Thess took to the flood zone searching for pets needing rescue.

“I would drive until I ran into water, and then I would sit and wait for someone with a truck with big wheels or a boat to take me out to search for animals,” Thess said. “Somebody always eventually picked me up and helped.”

The St. Charles shelter, which normally cared for about 50 animals, rescued and cared for hundreds of pets over the course of the flood. They were all eventually reunited with their owners or adopted out to new homes.

Marie and Jackie Wright

While many were evacuated during the flood, Marie Wright was evacuated twice — first from her St. Louis home near the River Des Peres, then from her sister Janice Moore’s home in Lemay where they had sought refuge. The rising Mississippi knocked 51 propane tanks from their saddles at the Phillips Petroleum Co. propane tank farm and brought them close to exploding.

Wright, her sister and their children were homeless.

“You didn’t know where you were going, and you really didn’t know what you were going to do,” Wright said. “I had small children and didn’t know what was going to happen. That’s scary.”

Along with her niece Jackie Fischer, 13 at the time, Wright and her two children, Jonathan, 2, and Amanda, 10 months, found shelter at Cleveland Naval Junior ROTC High School, where they spent hours working to find a place to sleep.

Wright recalls spending several nights on the living room floor at the St. Louis home of another sister, Patty Steelman. Huddled together on their makeshift sleeping pallets, the family would gather to watch the evening news.

“You knew it was history because you saw it on the news every night, so it was very sad and mentally draining,” Wright said. “We’re thankful, though; other people had it much worse than we did.”

Wright later took a buyout on her ruined home and moved with her kids to Gerald in Franklin County — “nowhere near water.”

“I won’t ever live by water again. I’m done with it.” she said, laughing. “You couldn’t pay me to live by water these days.”

Amy Brewer

The flood taught 13-year-old Amy Brewer an important lesson — “that things are not always in your control.”

For Brewer, who grew up along the Meramec River in far south St. Louis County, a little flooding wasn’t uncommon. But the Flood of 1993 was unlike anything her family had dealt with in the past.

“I just remember sitting on the basement steps and watching the water come up to the windows, and eventually it just poured through the windows,” Brewer said. “The higher it got, we just moved up a step ... moved up a step ...

“It didn’t take long to fill up the house. It happened really quick.”

The family moved out most essentials.

“We lost a lot of things, but we had each other,” Brewer said. “All that stuff was material. We got what we needed.”

After evacuating, Brewer, along with her father and sister, stayed in a camper at her grandparents' house nearby on higher ground. Eventually, they bought a home in the Imperial area of Jefferson County.

“Having to deal with the flood was obviously not ideal, but as a kid it was pretty cool to hang out with your grandparents for the summer.”

Robert and Christine Hurst

Their life together began a year before the 1993 flood. Former Spec. 4 Christine Schuler, 26, and Sgt. Robert Hurst, 26, met at Jefferson Barracks as members of the same National Guard unit — the 35th Engineer Brigade.

“They were strict about keeping us assigned to different areas,” said the now-married Christine Hurst, laughing. “God forbid we get too close to each other.”

The couple had decided that July 31, 1993, would be a perfect day to get married at the St. Louis County Courthouse. But on that day, Christine found herself standing guard at the First Baptist Church of Festus-Crystal City, and Robert was sandbagging in Kimmswick. They had been called to duty on July 26.

When an Army public relations officer and an Army chaplain heard about the couple’s situation, they offered to arrange a wedding. There was one stipulation: They had to wear their Army fatigues.

“My hair had to be up like it would for a hat, but they did let me put flowers in my hair,” Christine Hurst said. “Everything else had to be to standards.”

On Aug. 9, 1993, they married in the Baptist church that Christine helped save.

Valmeyer

In June 1993, Valmeyer village board members sat down to discuss a group of nuisance jet-skiers on nearby Moredock Lake. Just one week later, those same civic leaders were in crisis mode. Floodwater was quickly rising.

“We went from talking about the normal stuff at our board meetings before the flood, to all of the sudden talking about what to do with the hundreds we have displaced here,” said Dennis Knobloch, who was mayor at the time.

The Mississippi River broke through the Fountain Creek levee just north of the Illinois town, leaving about 70,000 acres of cropland in Monroe County under water, including Valmeyer.

“To me it was pretty obvious: If we didn’t do something, the town probably wasn’t going to survive,” Knobloch said. “But I think we found a creative solution.”

A town planner proposed moving the town. “And that was just such an abstract idea at the time that I just looked at him like he was crazy,” Knobloch recalled.

But just weeks after flood water receded, in September 1993, residents began planning their move. Leaving behind only a handful of people who prefered to stay in the flood plain, the sleepy town of Valmeyer shifted to higher ground.

“I think what led to our eventual success of what we did here was the involvement of the citizens,” Knobloch said. “We brought everybody to the table, and listened to their raw ideas. From Day One, they were a part of the process. It wouldn’t have been the same without that.”

Brick after brick, street after street, home after home, they went to work rebuilding the town.

“I do miss the old location,” Knoblach said, “but it’s the people that really make Valmeyer what it is.”

Jerry Naunheim Jr.

As journalists from around the world flocked to cover flooding in the Midwest, the Post-Dispatch’s team of more than 20 photographers were on the story from the start. Wading through the water, boating into towns and flying over the devastation, they were there to document what quickly became history.

Jerry Naunheim Jr. was one of the many photographers who captured iconic photos. After receiving a tip that a cemetery had been washed up by the flood, Naunheim took to the flood zone to find the casket-covered roadway.