Losing a grandfather For me the remembrance of the flood of '87 is not where me and my family were during that horrific time but what we had lost because of it. The flood of '87 caused the loss of one of the greatest men I had ever gotten to know in my life of 14 short years. In the flood of '87 I lost my grandfather Richard William Dickey, a man who could not be forgotten for all he did not just for his family but all he did for everyone.

A trip to work during that terrible storm and a drop into a washed out ravine on a back road to Bingham were all that it took to change our world forever. I went to the washed out road and could not believe the sight of what it was like for that car to drive right into that ravine. He could not see it because the water had washed the road out and no signs were there to tell him the road was gone.

The bridges in Solon and Madison were closed, water making it so they could not be crossed. My dad did get home to us kids after taking my mom to the hospital to be with her dad. So as the 20 year comes to mark the flooding of '87, it is not with what we remember in our family but the great loss we had to suffer from it. On April 7th, it will have been 20 years that my family lost a man who we all wonder what our lives would be if he were still here today.

The Flood of 87 will be something this family will never forget. From one generation to the next, the talk will be there of what the Flood of '87 was to this family.

Dulcie Welch