Remembering the Great Floods of 1993, 1973, and Even 1543

A lot of attention is being paid this week to the 20th anniversary of the Great Flood of 1993. What a heckuva deluge that was, and as a TV news reporter/anchor, I was right in the thick of things. In addition to the devastation of Biblical proportions, I’ll always remember that ’93 flood for bringing out some of the best in the brave, toughest in the tenacious, and most heart in people across the area. Look at the hundreds of Gummersheimers and Boscherts sticking it out in the St. Charles flood plain, for example. For more than a hundred years, come hell or high water, they haven’t gone anywhere. In fact, the name Boschert is derived from the German for hard, tough, even audacious. And pioneers in our flood-prone region have been showing those characteristics since at least 1543—the year of the first major Mississippi River flood on record. Sheer coincidence that the Great Flood of 1993 happened exactly 450 later? Or that both those years end in ’3?

Since you’re going to be taken so frequently down a Memory Lane that is actually the Mississippi River Corridor of 1993 in the coming days, I want to hearken back to a different great flood. It swamped millions of acres in and around our region exactly 20 years before the Great Flood of 1993. In fact, there were dozens of towns under the raging waters of the Great Flood of 1973. Any coincidence that it was exactly 20 years ahead of 1993? Or that it ended in ’3?

Let’s see a show of hands of those who remember the Great Flood of 1973. That flood, to my understanding, was the worst uprising of the Mississippi River since 1927. (There goes our ’3 theory.) While I wasn’t around in ’27, of course, that deluge is indelibly etched in my family as the flood that ran all of my ancestors off their properties near Honey Island, Miss. I guess it could be said that the ’27 flood is responsible for my being in St. Louis some 86 years later.

But let’s get back to the humongous flood that drowned out so much of the St. Louis community in 1973, when we were swamped with rapidly rising waters from March through May. The Great Flood of ’73 was the third most severe swelling of the Mississippi during the 20th century.

It was also my baptism by water, so to speak, as a young, energetic, and really novice TV news reporter. I had recently been hired by Channel 5, which was clearly willing to throw the dice by accepting enthusiasm in place of experience. And that was the year Channel 5 promoted its trademarked Eyewitness News shtick. Reporters were tasked with getting as deeply and as personally into a story as possible.

To get ready for my literal immersion into the news in March of ’73, I remember my two-man film crew and I going out to the GrandPa’s discount store in Overland. I purchased a commodity that no other guy who grew up in the heart of the city needed in his wardrobe: hip boots! They were no fashion statement—and damn hot and uncomfortable. So, with the camera rolling, this inexperienced reporter waded out into an underwater St. Charles residential community. We met a man wading with difficulty toward us through the waist-deep water, carrying—arms held high—a huge mahogany table on his head. As I extended the mic in his direction, I asked: “Pardon me, sir, do you live around here?”

Suddenly, I heard my cameraman scream: “Stop! Cut! Damn it, Julius. That’s the dumbest damn question I’ve ever heard! ‘Does he live around here?’ Do you think he just hangs around an area till it floods, so he can move furniture around for fun? Now, start over!” He was right, and I rephrased my first question to a flood victim who was obviously trying to save a valuable piece of his furniture. Duh.

With another crew on another day, we managed to hop a ride on one of those workhorse Sikorsky helicopters used by the Army. We gave our viewers something special: a bird’s-eye Eyewitness aerial overview of farmland that had become lake land. My cameraman got strapped in so he could dangle his legs outside while he shot. “Thank God the open door is on his side of the craft,” I thought. And then the pilot came around and began sliding back the door on the side where I sat. “No, no, no!” I waved off the pilot. “I don’t need my side open!” The Army pilot looked at me like the idiot I was, and informed me that he needed to have both sides open to equalize the pressure. It was the sickest I’d ever been. Especially when the pilot banked on my side.

As the waters receded in ’73, we wanted to Eyewitness someone returning home. We found a dear little lady whose face should have been on a jelly jar or cookie box. She had been living with a sister in St. Louis after floodwaters forced her out of her West Alton home a month earlier. When we found her, she was going home to the great unknown. How much damage would she find? Was her house still standing? We helped her hail a passing boat, and—camera rolling—I helped her in. Then our boat came to a railroad track. No way could we get over the tracks in our jon boat. So we abandoned ship—camera rolling—and trudged with the dear lady about an eighth of a mile along the rusty tracks. Eventually, we got to an area where we needed a second friendly boater. After flagging one down, we floated onto our new friend’s completely flooded street and into her front yard. The tears began to stream down. There was no doubt that she would find some severe interior damage. Water came up to the base of her front steps. Camera rolling, I plunged out in my hip boots to help pull the boat as close to her steps as possible.

Then, in camera-rolling chivalry, I helped the dear lady out into shallow water. She caught her breath and she took my arm. Very carefully, I helped her up the slippery stone steps to her front door. The camera watched as she fumbled through her cluttered handbag. Fumbling. Still fumbling. And then, finally, she said apologetically, “Oh, dear. I seem to have left my front door key at my sister’s in St. Louis.”

But it was Eyewitness News to the rescue again! The crew and I hastily figured if the front window could be jimmied open, I could climb through and open the door. My audio man found a big screwdriver in his tool bag. Window popped open, a younger, thinner, and suppler version of Julius Hunter managed to climb through. I got my second foot almost onto the hallway floor, when splat! I slipped and fell in deep, black silt and slid at least a foot or so on my back. Slip-sliding awkwardly trying to get to my feet, I got almost totally covered with fishy-smelling black silt. It was like a combination of mercury, graphite, and yuck. Thank goodness my clumsy slide and fall were caught on film, as the cameraman shot through the window. Hopefully, we could edit out the colorful word I let fly.

Triumphantly, I unlocked and managed to open the door. Camera still rolling, we let the dear lady back into her flood-spoiled home. I must have looked like a coal miner as I wrapped up the interview. Sadly, flood victims lost so much more than I did, of course. I was certainly mindful of that. But my suit, shirt, and tie were a total loss. And then I remembered that I actually gained something on this adventure besides the experience of covering my first flood. After a severe scrub-down, I was now the owner of my very own pair of field-tested GrandPa’s hip boots, all ready for another Great Flood 20 years later.

Commentary by Julius K. Hunter