–A Commentary by Hope Burwell, Kirkwood Community College
It’s the first day of the fall semester, nine weeks since The Flood crested in downtown Cedar Rapids.
My neighborhood and most of the city looks, as it has since the day of the crest, as if nothing catastrophic rampaged here.
In fact, after this cool, rainy summer, yards gleam greener than in other Augusts; flower beds sparkle like fireworks. The browns of autumn seem a long way off.
Until, that is, one drives through most of the 1,300 city blocks inundated by the Cedar River in June. There, it’s every shade of brown: river stains on siding, piles of splintered wood and crumbled dry wall, drawn faces browned by weeks of carrying everything but the studs of their homes out to the curbs.
You can live in this city and never have to go down there to see it.
I suspect many of us are doing just that: those of us who spent days or weeks helping strangers and then grew tired or busy, those of us who never helped at all, those of us who didn’t have homes within reach of the flood.
The first two weeks of August are the busiest part of my working year, and flooddamaged neighborhoods lie between me and Kirkwood Community College’s main campus, where I work. Most of the last three weeks, I’ve allowed being busy to propel me down I-380 instead of through the city. And in just three weeks, I’d forgotten.
It’s the first class of the semester. I’ve driven from Kirkwood’s main campus, through battered Czech town and gasping New Bohemia to one of the college’s satellite sites on Fifth Avenue.
The drive reminds me to ask my students, “While you’re introducing yourselves, would you tell us whether you were affected by the flood?” Notice my erroneous use of past tense.
One student has been commuting to Des Moines every Monday and Friday since June 15 because her employer lost its Cedar Rapids offices.
One has been working 80hour weeks helping to recover data she spent years of her life entering.
One has a family used to living on two floors living on one.
One has just moved into her newly refinished basement. Plumbing, but no electricity; the roof overhead two stories away, neither joists nor floors between them.
One stopped living in her car last evening.
One is still in a tent in a park.
Yet, here we are in a classroom, and once again my community college students teach one another about strength and me about paying attention.
–Hope Burwell, a 13-year resident of Cedar Rapids, has taught for Kirkwood Community College since 1991. She is an English professor and Director of KCELT, the Kirkwood Center for Excellence in Learning & Teaching.