Gary Evans: Watching the dike and the heroes on it

A real who-dun-it?

It was late winter 1965. I was a young fella, six years out of high school, married and the father of two children. I was the sports editor of the Winona Daily News. But there were no sports contests to cover. Everything had been cancelled because of the Mississippi flood that, before its crest on April 20 at 21.75 feet, severely threatened Winona with a deluge that could have wiped out much of the city if the dikes had broken.

IF the dikes had broken.

It was also a time of which memories, good and bad, were made and when rumors circulated daily, some of them crediting well-known Winonans with acts of heroism that saved the city.

My memory, I discover as I write this, is not as good as I thought it was. I remember perhaps the biggest news of the flood as having occurred on Sunday, April 18. Not so; it happened on Friday, April 16.

Here is what I do remember. With no sports contests to cover because every able-bodied young man at Winona’s high schools and colleges was pressed into duty sandbagging in an attempt to keep the river out of the city, those of us in sports served then as news reporters. My assigned area was the dike that guarded the eastern sector of the city. I walked it daily, but as I set out on what I was sure was Saturday but must have been Thursday, I found not a person, not a truck on the east side of the city.

I began my trek west, seeking to find the action. There was nothing downtown. Nothing from there to the road from Prairie Island, either. The Prairie Island road was barricaded; dike construction was going on atop it, where it existed.

I drove out old Minnesota City Road and the traffic was fierce. I parked a half mile from the road that led to the Minnesota City Boat Harbor. As I reached that intersection, a friend driving a grader waved at me. Charlie Frank worked for Winona Excavating and he was trying to keep the road passable. He signaled me to enter the cab, and I was grateful for the ride.

As the grader moved toward the river, the ruts were unbelievable, easily deeper than my 5-foot-5 height. As we reached the spot where the road winds its way down toward the backwaters of the river, I was amazed to see an unbroken line of trucks that stretched from the base of the hill as far as I could see.

“Big trouble,” Charlie told me. “We almost lost ‘er (the dike) last night. The dike moved off the top of the road and we were sure she was going.”

What he meant was that the floodwaters pushed the earthen dike built atop the blacktop road back. Had that caused a breach, it would have been a disaster, because a map published in the Daily News a few days earlier showed only a few square blocks in the city’s west side and another area of about the same size in the near east side would be dry if the dikes broke at a 21-foot flood level.

For those of you who remember the building at 601 Franklin St. as the home of the Daily News (now Family and Children’s Center), boards covered the windows and a ladder led from the roof to the grassy area between the newsroom door and the garages. A boat was tied to a tree there to allow newsroom personnel, compositors and pressmen to escape if the dikes broke, because the water would have covered the windows. Plans had already been made to publish the newspaper in Rochester if the dikes broke, but none of us knew to whom we would sell them, because two-thirds of the Winona customer base would be homeless.

Charlie drove me back to the spot where I boarded the grader, and we shook hands. Charlie knew that if the dikes broke while he was smoothing the road, he would have little chance to reach safety. It was a terrifying time. And there were many heroes like Charlie.

Up early the next day, I retraced my steps toward Prairie Island, and there was Charlie and his grader. He had been working for two days without sleep. We drove onto the dike and I then walked until I came upon some athletes I knew. They were beat, dead on their feet. As I stood there visiting with them, one still working on the river side of the dike shouted and waved. We expected it might be another boil (an area where the water would make its way under the dike and begin to boil as it flowed through the opening. The sandbag crews then would try to stem the flow before the hole grew and the dike was breached.

As we walked to the edge of the dike it really was frightening, because the ribbon of earth that comprised the dike was the only area out of the water that could be seen and the structure was terribly muddy. As we watched, the river fell. None of us believed our eyes. One young man drew a mark just above the water line and over the next half hour the gap between the water and the line grew. What happened, we wondered? Did a dike downstream break? Was Winona flooded?

Later we found out. A dike had broken, but Winona was not flooded.

What had happened was that the Burlington Northern railroad dike on the Wisconsin side of the river burst and 4,000 or more acres that comprised what was known as the Delta Fish and Fur farm across from Winona was flooded. That area consumed nearly a foot off the top of the floodwaters, relieving pressure on the Winona dikes and likely saving the city. A few days later, the river crested, and Winona, for the most part, was still dry, the only city along the river that could say that.

Was the break in the B.N. dike an act of God? Rumors swept the city. Some credited Winona Mayor Rudy Ellings and a group I later christened “Rudy’s Raiders” for “helping” the dike break. Others suggested it was Al Kurtzman, who operated a dredging company. Still others said Winona attorney Harold (Rip) Streater was responsible.

It was always my intent to chase down the real story and publish it. My best source – Mayor Ellings, a good friend – died before his promise to tell me, that went something like this: “One of these days, kid, we’ll talk about that. One of these days!”

That day never came. I have no doubt that someone who reads this knows the truth. I have run into several who think they do, and each names a different hero. Maybe it was a team of heroes.

Winona later became known as The City that Saved Itself.

As for me, I like Rudy’s Raiders, captained by the mayor, for the act that saved the city.

Where is Winona?

It was the week of April 12, 1965, and Winona was working mighty hard to try to beat back the challenge being thrown at it by the Mississippi River.

In another eight days, the river would crest at 20 ¾ feet, seven and three-quarters feet over flood stage. It was a record, and those of us who remember the year and the acts of vision and courage that saved the city, pray that we will never live through another flood like it.

My assistant at the Daily News in those days was Rollie Wussow, who later went on to a very successful health care career. Rollie and his mom hailed from Shawano, Wis. Rollie had come to Winona to attend Winona State, and his mother, who was deaf, had come with him. Rollie was working part-time while attending college.

As the Mississippi pressed toward its crest and the future of Winona grew more and more iffy, Rollie worried about the fact that if the dikes broke and he was not home, his mother would not hear the sirens and would be cut off by the water.

He decided he should take her to her sister’s home in Mondovi, Wis. Because I had the better car, I agreed to drive. We left Winona about 5 p.m. sometime during the middle of that week, heading up Hwy. 35. As we got just north of Fountain City, we were greeted by the flashing red lights of a sheriff’s car. The deputy had just placed barricades across the road because water now covered the highway in the area of Merrick Park.

We talked to the deputy about our mission, and he told us that he was going to drive north through the water on his way to the county seat in Alma. He said we could follow him if we stayed right on his back bumper.

To this day, it is the most frightening mile I have driven. It was dark and all we could see was water. We had no idea where the road was.

We made it, continued safely to Mondovi, although we drove through water again several times as we turned up Hwy. 37 from Alma to Mondovi.

We dropped Rollie’s mom at her sister’s home and decided we would take the back roads home. We drove to Eleva, then to Arcadia, then across Hwy. 95 toward Fountain City. We turned left onto County M, just before we would have headed down the dugway to Fountain City. We drove M across the ridge. Just before the road descends to its junction with Hwy. 35, as we came to the top of the ridge, we were greeted with nothing but inky blackness. There was not a light to be seen. Where Winona was supposed to be there was only darkness.

It was one of the spookiest moments of my life. What happened to Winona? Did the dikes break? Was the city flooded? What?

We wound down M, then began the trip into Winona. The road was clear and as we topped the interstate bridge, we saw that Winona Street below was not underwater. We made it home to Goodview to discover that floodwaters elsewhere had forced a widespread power outage.

It was a moment that dictated a prayer of thanksgiving.

No comic strip, this?

As the Mississippi surged toward its crest in 1965, Winona’s dikes threatened to become a weapon against the city.

Remember the comic strips that sometimes showed manhole covers atop a burst of water?

It was like that here. With the dikes guarding the city’s front porch and the bluffs providing backyard protection, we were better off than most … and then the floodwaters backed into the storm sewer system, punched out the manhole covers and threatened to flood us from within … at which point the dikes became an enemy.

I’m not sure who the genius was who figured out the solution, but someone came up with the idea that if heavy rubber bags were placed in the sewers and then inflated, they would act as corks, sealing off the river water. It was a dangerous undertaking to be sure, and for just a few days in April, Winona looked like something from “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”

A diver, who usually functioned in the oceans, came to Winona, donned the heavy suit with the lead-soled boots and metal helmet and penetrated the inkiness of the sewer system, strategically placing the deflated dunnage bags. The bags were then inflated and yet another problem had been averted through a stroke of genius.

A word we learned to hate

We didn’t have Wikipedia in 1965, and if we had, I doubt we would have Googled the word polyethylene. In fact, it was the word most hated among members of the Daily News reporting staff during the days leading up to and succeeding the record Mississippi River flood.

If you Google “polyethylene,” Wikipedia tells you that it is the most common form of plastic. Looking further, you will find it is a thermoplastic polymer consisting of long hydrocarbon chains. An even deeper look provides this: ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) is polyethylene with a molecular weight numbering in the millions, usually between 3.1 and 5.67 million. The high molecular weight makes it a very tough material.

Because of its outstanding toughness and its cut, wear and excellent chemical resistance, UHMWPE is used in a diverse range of applications. These include can and bottle-handling machine parts, moving parts on weaving machines, bearings, gears, artificial joints, edge protection on ice rinks and butchers’ chopping boards. It is commonly used for the construction of articular portions of implants used for hip and knee replacements. As fiber, it competes with aramid in bulletproof vests.

Now that I know that, I like it not one bit better. And here’s why: In 1965, the earthen dikes that were built from material that consumed a bluff behind Sugar Loaf and another just north of first intersection across the river were covered with sheets of polyethylene to keep flood waters from eroding the dirt. Once in place, the sheets were anchored with sandbags.

Daily News Editor Adolph Bremer, an outstanding newsman, was a stickler for detail, and there was not one flood reporter who failed to return without an exact count of the yards of polyethylene used to cover the dikes we patrolled who didn’t suffer a lecture. The yards totaled in the millions, and if you were mathematically challenged, you could be in for a real tongue-lashing.

The story was, although never proven, that certain reporters on occasion made up the yardage to escape the lecture.