Below is a transcript of a conversation with Dr. Richard Rothaus, Dean of CMU’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and including audio clips from the WCMU documentary he co-produced, “The Sanford Voices Project”
David Nicholas:
I'm David Nicholas and this is Central Focus. This week as part of our series looking back on the mid-Michigan floods in May of 2020, I sat down with Dr. Richard Rothaus, Dean of CMU's College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. Five years ago, two dams along the Tittabawassee River Waterway failed and the Village of Sanford took the most direct hit. Ten percent of the homes were destroyed. Twenty-eight out of thirty-three businesses were shut down, but, with early warning, there was no loss of life. In the aftermath, Dr. Rothaus, along with WCMU’s Adam Miedema, produced a documentary, “The Sanford Voices Project.” He recalled those voices, and I included some of them here: Sanford resident Glenn moots, Rick Hartfield, one of the volunteers who helped in the recovery, Dolores Porte, Sanford's Village president, and this first voice, resident and business owner, Connie Methner…
Connie Methner:
Everybody knew each other, but everybody's on their little islands. Today, they're not on their islands. We've all been humbled. We've all realized that we're not all that special that you can lose everything in a blink of an eye.
DN:
What I sense is getting people in the moment telling their story and (and) whatever part of that story they're living at that time of that day, when you're talking to them, that was what you wanted to put into the film.
Richard Rothaus:
Everyone has some sort of traumatic stress after that incident, and it manifests in different ways. So, some people have thrown themselves into the work. They're completely upbeat no matter what. Other people and (and and said), you can see this, you can just watch the whole range of emotions shifting right through them. I remember one of the hardest interviews and they're all hard in different ways, Glenn Moots, who's now my friend. Glenn was, he was a tough one to crack. Glenn was and he said this to us, so he was perfectly conscious of this, but he was in some serious PTSD, and it was hard to find the spot and the discussion and the style where he (he) felt he could open up and it's not that he wasn't willing or anything like that. It's just we're all humans and he was a, he was a tough interview and one of our best interviews, but we had to figure out, OK, what works for Glenn to make that happen.
Glenn Moots:
So, to your question about timeline, I think there's the inside of the house, there's the outside of the house, and then there's a psychological timeline and the psychological timeline is (is) when you stop thinking about it. When do you feel settled into your house? When do you stop thinking about the old house? And then probably at that point, maybe there's a timeline at which you begin to live this new life that was forced on you. And I would say that as far as those two last things, I'm somewhere in the middle, I'm getting some idea of what the new life looks like. And I'm still in the old one.
DN:
There were also the stories of folks that came in from all over to lend their help, lend their time, lend their equipment. Anyone that stood out, somebody that that made a real impact on you?
RR:
There were a lot. I think, Rick, who appears in the documentary, was and I hope I have his name right. I could see him. I could hear his voice. He was amazing! He threw himself into it and he and he kept going. He, it took us a long time to get him for an interview. Everyone kept saying his name and he kept going.
Rick Hartfield:
It's tough out there. A lot of people out there with that, nobody that's coming to their (their) aid. We have an opportunity right now to (to) show the world love like you don't see no more in (in), you know, nobody's taking it but, we'll keep doing what we're doing. Give hope to those that we can.
RR:
We always have to mention Dolores Porte, the (the) mayor. We, I remember very clearly asking Dolores, if you knew then what you knew now, do you think you would have thought you could do all this? Absolutely not!
Dolores Porte:
When you take a crisis, and you eat the elephant one bite at a time then it seems manageable. And if I'd been faced with it with all the knowledge I have now, I might have doubted whether I could actually go through the process and still be standing and…
DN:
And yet still resilient. And because that word meant so much as you heard it and saw it in people, the voices of Sanford. Dr. Richard Rothaus, who produced the documentary with W CMU's Adam Miedema, looking back on the five years since those events in May of 2020, thank you very much for sharing this story with us.
RR:
Thank you.
