Future is as big a challenge as river
Posted 7/1/1998 12:00:00 AM

STORY INDEX

Saturday, May 3, 1997

One thing must be clear to anyone who wanders around our cities:

How hard we worked to save them.

The sandbag dikes run for many blocks along the river. The clay dikesrun for many miles.

And still, we lost.

It is hard to accept this bitter truth, even two weeks after the dikesbroke and the city was flooded.

How hard we worked.

How hard we fought the rising water.

How confident we were that we would turn it back.

All of this contributes to the shock of losing, the sense of disappointment,the well of anger, the sense of grief.

It is vital that we understand that all of these reactions are normal.We have suffered a trauma as deep as any community. It was unimaginablebefore it happened, and we will be shaking our heads about it for manyyears to come.

The river was a challenge, and we rose to meet it. Throughout the daysleading to the crisis, we rallied ourselves to fill more sandbags and makemore sandwiches. We felt the community drawing together, and we celebratedit. Together.

We lost that battle. The river was bigger than we were, even all ofus together.

Now, we need to hear the voice that propelled us in the days that wefought together. That voice told us two important things. The first wasthat our community was important enough to fight for, and that we had tofight together.

Nothing that has happened has changed these truths. Events have onlymade them starker.

These are very special places.

Before the flood, these were cities with character. Neighborhoods weredistinctive, each with its own identity and the loyalty of its residents.Downtown was lively, with galleries, stores selling all manner of collectibles,great restaurants, night spots, apartments. These supplemented commercialcenters spread around our cities, serving customers from a huge geographicalarea. The same for our hospital. Our university.

The preceding paragraph is written in the past tense. It has to be.Our cities are damaged, and we don't know what the future holds.

One thing we do know, however, and that is that the future depends onus.

We need to bring the same determination, the same confidence, the samespirit to our effort to rebuild Grand Forks that we brought to the effortto save it.

We lost once, but the loss need not be permanent. We can succeed. Together.

Then, decades from now, the pain will be replaced by pride in how hardwe worked to regain what the river took from us. We will be winners then.