Published: July 04, 2007 10:33 pm      

Faces of the Flood: Former star athlete recalls ‘so much mud’

Latest in a series on the 1977 Johnstown Flood

This wasn’t the summer job Mike “Tank” Brown envisioned when he signed on as a worker for the City of Johnstown 30 years ago.

Shoveling and sweeping a seemingly never-ending pile of smelly mud from downtown streets and out of City Hall just wasn’t in the job description for a then 17-year-old, who was with the city through the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) program.

“You had so much mud, you couldn’t put it anywhere,” said Brown, who now owns a company specializing in management training and human resource building in Dallas. “There was so much mud and debris. Where could you put it?

“There was just so much. We had to clean up particular areas and put waste in some spots for (crews) to pick it up. A lot of it, we had to wait for it to dry up, basically.”

Brown had made a name for himself at Greater Johnstown High School, where he would begin his senior year about two months after the 1977 Johnstown Flood struck in July.

The 6-foot-1, 270 pound Brown earned the nickname “Tank” for his prowess as an offensive and defensive lineman with the Trojans football team. He lettered in four varsity sports at Johnstown.

The summer job with the city typically had Brown cutting grass, doing cleanup duty at the park or performing minor maintenance. That was before the devastating flood waters and mud-filled city streets.

From his Prospect home, Brown saw the destruction in the valley below him.

“The smell was horrendous,” Brown said. “And, just the way it looked. ... I would stand on the Prospect Bridge. You could just see the devastation.

“I remember I woke up and looked at Woodvale from a distance and you could see it was under water. But when you went down to the Prospect Bridge, you could see the water all over town. It was pretty devastating and smelly.”

Brown made his way into town after the water had receded. He joined other city workers in cleanup efforts. Brown remembered using a squeegee to remove mud from the sidewalk in front of the steps at City Hall. He said the crew also helped clean the U.S. Post Office building along Franklin Street and the Penn Traffic Building along Washington Street.

“It was gratifying to be a part of the cleanup,” Brown said. “But we knew it was not going to be the same. A couple years before that, we were celebrating being an All-American City. We cleaned it up, but we were wondering what was going to happen.”

Brown’s immediate future was clouded. At that time, Johnstown High stood near the Napoleon Street Bridge, adjacent to the Cambria County War Memorial Arena and just above the Stonycreek River.

The school was hit hard. So was Point Stadium, where the Trojans football team played home games. There were much bigger concerns at the time, but Brown wondered how much his chances of earning a football scholarship were hurt.

“It affected the high school. We had to clean the high school,” Brown said. “We had a delayed start because the high school was right on that corner and all that water came in the high school.”

Brown played football at Slippery Rock for two years. He graduated with a degree in recreational therapy in 1982. Brown resided in Oklahoma for seven years before relocating to Dallas in 1989.

His company – Experiential Solutions T.E.A.M. (Training through Experiential Activity Management) Inc. – involves Brown working with children, adolescents, adults and families in areas such as psychiatric and chemical-dependency treatment, education service centers, domestic-violence and battered-women programs, youth shelters, juvenile justice programs and corporate- and staff-development training.

In 2005, Brown used his Johnstown Flood experience to help Hurricane Katrina victims.

“I worked a lot with Katrina victims’ families. I can share with them my story,” said Brown, who worked both as a volunteer and as a paid consultant. “I could empathize. I showed them our Johnstown High yearbook pictures. I worked with a lot of the transplanted kids in the different school districts. We tried to keep the families together and worked a lot with family programs.

“When they got to know you experienced something very similar, it did help. I talked to them from that perspective. I let them know there is still hope.”