Published: July 13, 2007 12:04 am      

'We just did what we could to help'

Latest in a series on the 1977 Johnstown Flood



Chuck Voeghtly was 17 during the summer of 1977. He and his friends had just returned from their first parentless trip to the beach at Wildwood, N.J., when a flood struck Johnstown the night of July 19.

Voeghtly and his buddies were looking forward to their senior year at Greater Johnstown High School.

“The last thing on our minds was a life-changing event,” he said.

On the evening of the flood, Voeghtly and his friends were in his parents’ newly remodeled basement, listening to music and talking about the Ferndale Jubilee.

The group went to the festival, only to see an ominous storm approaching.

“It became real clear, real quick, that we needed to get the heck out of there. We headed home, and that is where my story actually begins.”

Taking action

Voeghtly, his parents and three siblings lived in the 300 block of McMillen Street in the Hornerstown section of Johnstown. The monster storm began dumping rain by the inches, and water levels rapidly began to rise.

“As the water began rising down our street, my mother was probably the first in our household to sense that this was no ordinary storm,” Voeghtly said. “I think the rest of us were busy enjoying the light show.”

Julie Voeghtly made several calls and eventually got through to a city councilman who, with the help of Mayor Herb Pfuhl, began the process of opening Meadowvale School as a storm shelter.

The school became a safe haven from the rising water and debris.

“The mayor stopped by to assist my parents with the shelter and ended up spending the night with the rest of us,” Voeghtly said.

“My mother initially helped (Pfuhl) maintain communications by working the switchboard in the school’s main office until the lines eventually went dead.”

The water continued to rise, and Voeghtly remembers walking to some of the back offices with flashlights to see how high the water was. The building’s windows were long and narrow.

“We couldn’t see the water line because it was very dark,” Voeghtly said. Eventually they realized the water line was above the windows.

“By then, it was probably 8 feet high,” he recalled. “We immediately evacuated that whole area and moved the kids out of there.

“We closed all the doors, and we started to hear the windows popping and breaking. It was close.”

He said a few hundred people waited out the storm on the second floor of the school.

“Most were sitting with their families, trying to rest, or looking out the windows to get an idea of what was going on,” Voeghtly said. “We could see a construction company about two blocks away that had caught fire.

“Every once in a while, you could see the lightning flash, and you could see houses collapsing.”

From street to river

In the meantime, people who had decided to ride out the storm in their homes, especially those on the Messenger Street side of the school, were beginning to have a change of heart.

The water levels were rising, and the rushing water was frighteningly powerful.

“Many cried out for help, including a woman who was clinging to a telephone pole,” Voeghtly remembered.

“She, her husband and son were swept away when their porch collapsed in Dale Borough, more than a mile upstream.”

Voeghtly’s father, Skip, and several others, began a rescue effort by using ropes and other equipment from the school’s indoor swimming pool. Voeghtly helped tie ropes to the back of a police cruiser, then watched his father make several trips through the water to help the woman and others cross to safety.

Voeghtly, his parents and two sisters eventually settled in for the night on the second floor of the school. The whereabouts of his brother, Kevin, were unknown.

“My brother had been bicycling with friends before the storm began, and we would not know his fate until the next afternoon,” Voeghtly said. “We didn’t sleep much that night.”

Loss and devastation

Voeghtly said he and others woke to “Mother Nature’s great contradiction” – a beautiful, blue sky above the aftermath of an unbelievable night.

Messenger Street had become a river, and Voeghtly said the family’s first job was to find his brother.

“His friends lived on the other side of the street,” Voeghtly explained, adding that communication was difficult because of downed telephone lines.

“We relayed messages, hoping someone would find him.”

Later, Voeghtly and his father were stopped by an aunt who lived nearby.

“She was upset, and she had tears in her eyes,” Voeghtly said. “They had found the body of a boy in the hedges behind her house. She said they couldn’t tell if it was my brother.”

Father and son walked up the alley toward the aunt’s house, where the outline of a boy’s body could be seen lying on a table, under a sheet.

“I couldn’t take another step,” Voeghtly said. “I watched as my dad continued, expecting the worst. He looked back at me and shook his head – it wasn’t Kevin.

“My dad was 41 at the time, and he handled it remarkably well. He knew he had to find his son, and identify that body,” Voeghtly said.

In a sad and ironic twist, Voeghtly said the boy was the son of the woman his dad helped to rescue from the telephone pole the night before.

It was later learned that Kevin was safe and unharmed at a friend’s home.

The Voeghtly house was spared severe damage, although the newly remodeled basement was destroyed.

“The first thing I saw was the jukebox floating,” Voeghtly said. “I spent the next two months tearing the basement down.”

He said the community came together in a massive cleanup effort.

“This is truly where you see how these small-town communities come together,” Voeghtly said. “Towns like Johnstown are the best of America ... and that was part of the spirit of this city.”

Unsung heroes

Now 47, Voeghtly calls northern Virginia home. He is a first officer with United Airlines.

The pilot’s home base is Washington’s Dulles airport, where he routinely flies transcontinental flights on a Boeing 767.

He said the flood of 1977 isn’t something he thinks about every day.

“But I’m reminded of it by other people, or by milestones, like anniversaries of the flood,” Voeghtly said. “People find out you’re from Johnstown, and they say they know two things: The flood and ‘Slap Shot.’ ”

He said he never really had time to think about pitching in that dreadful night.

“You’re reacting in the moment, and you don’t know what’s unfolding,” Voeghtly said. “We just did what we could to help people, and we were lucky enough to get into the school.”

While Voeghtly has been interviewed time and again about how he and others helped rescue folks with ropes and lifesaving equipment from the school, he said the real heroes are his late father and his mother, who chose to stay out of the limelight.

“Their actions that night helped many, and may indeed have saved some lives. They are some of the many unsung heroes from that dreadful night.”