January 1959: The Flood In the Bottoms

I was eight years old in January, 1959, living on Chicago Avenue and in the third grade at Chicago Avenue School. When the westside levee broke and the flood waters came, I remember my father George Howard, climbing into the crawl space above our ceiling about bed time and turning off the pilot light to our gas furnace. Our parents gave us the sense that we were in an emergency but were not panicked. All four Howard Boys crawled in bed together and body heat kept us warm.

Within a few hours, we were awakened and it was time to evacuate; the Ohio National Guard troop transporter was parked in our flooded street and military men were carrying neighbors in porch chairs to the covered military truck. Our first stop was Engine House Number Ten on West Broad Street and from there, our family was shuttled to the Navy/Marine Recruiting Center located on Sandusky Street at Dublin Road, in the same site that now stands Confluence Park Restaurant.

I remember hundreds of people overnighting there on wooden and canvas, folding cots. After breakfast, ten hours since we were evacuated in the middle of the January night, we contacted our family friends, Otto and Josephine Charles, who had an apartment on Clifton Avenue in East Columbus and spent several days with them, before returning back to the westside.

Flood waters had crept up to our front steps, but no closer and since we had no basement at 175 Chicago Avenue, we saw no flood damage. But our family purchased acreage in Plain City/Union County, built a new home and by November, 1959, we had fled the Bottoms and flooding for good.