Published: July 18, 2007 11:28 pm            

Faces of the Flood: ‘You always have those memories’

Latest in a series on the 1977 Johnstown Flood

Nine people lived in the double house at 709 Messenger St. in Dale Borough on July 19, 1977, when the region was again nearly annihilated by floodwaters.

Only three survived the night of terror.

Although she was just 9 years old, Roxanne Emmel Sabo remembers many of the events of that night.

She remembers the big storm. She and her 8-year-old sister, Judy, and 13-year-old brother, Scott, were fast asleep while her mother, Edith Faye, awaited her father’s return from working the late shift at Bethlehem Steel.

Sabo thinks it must have been around midnight when her parents roused the children and moved them onto her parents’ bed. Sabo and her brother were at the head of the bed; her mother and little sister at the foot.

Sabo remembers seeing her father kneeling at the window, where he could see the horror playing out below him.

William Emmel kept his family apprised of what was going on outside. And throughout the night they kept in touch with the Smith family, who lived in another part of the house, by banging on the wall and shouting to each other.

“With the lightning, he could see that the water was getting higher and higher,” Sabo recalled. “He must have seen the house above us shift and said, ‘Hold on.’

“There was no way to get out at that point. There was no safe haven.

“I remember him saying, ‘We’ll ride with it.’ You could hear the windows smashing and things breaking apart,” she continued. “(And then) my brother pushed my head under the pillow to keep me from getting hit with anything.”

Apparently, when the house uphill from theirs shifted, that caused debris and floodwater to slam into the big double home where the Emmels lived, and it began to move.

The structure made it nearly a block to the bridge on Von Lunen Road, where it broke apart.

Horrible ride

Sabo believes she must have blacked out because the next thing she knew she was in water.

Her terrible ride down the muddy rapids stopped when she bumped up against an outside wall of Meadowvale Elementary School. She heard a child scream nearby and wonders to this day if it was her little sister.

Sabo’s grasp on the school was tenuous. When a family across the river shone a flashlight and instructed her to try to cross the river at an angle, she did as she was told. But the water was too swift for the little girl, and she was swept away again.

She remembers either going under a car or brushing up against a car and eventually coming to rest on dry land. A couple standing on their porch came to her aid.

Sabo has no idea who the family was, but remembers their daughter was a counselor at a Girl Scout camp she had been attending at the time of the flood.

The couple gave her dry clothes and watched over her the rest of the night, keeping her awake in case she had a head injury.

“The next morning, they brought me downstairs and I started vomiting everywhere,” Sabo recalled with some embarrassment. “Everything that I had swallowed came back out – dirt, stones, glass.”

The man of the house carried her through chest high water to Mercy Hospital, where she was treated.

“I never saw a nun before, but they were very nice to me,” she said.

The traumatized child could remember her name, but could not recall how to find her house.

Angels again

Not knowing if Sabo had anywhere to go, the family who rescued her came back to get her at the hospital.

They drove around the area, and Sabo eventually was able to identify a home where friends of her parents lived. The couples often had played cards there together.

The family took the little girl in and kept her for several days while attempts were made to locate any surviving family members.

Eventually, it was learned that her brother was living with their grandparents in Richland Township and she was able to join him.

After their house capsized, Scott had been located along with his father – who insisted his son be rescued first. But when rescuers had returned for William Emmel, he was gone.

His body was found days later in debris near Bantley Hardware Co. on Von Lunen Road, about a block from where the Emmel home had stood.

Edith Faye Emmel’s body was found buried about 6 feet under her husband’s. Little Judy Emmel was found several weeks after the flood in the basement of a home in Hornerstown.

Beverly Smith, now Beverly Platt, was the sole survivor from the other half of the house on Messenger Street. Her husband, Jim, and sons Troy, 8, and Todd, 7, perished.

Very little was left of the double house or its contents. Part of the kitchen wall was all that remained standing.

A strongbox and her mother’s purse were the only things salvaged from the house, Sabo said. She also has her mother’s rings – items she cherishes.

“At that age, I couldn’t understand death,” she said.

What she could comprehend was fear. For some time after that terrible night, she would run to her grandparents’ bed every time it stormed.

Her grandparents, who raised the two children after the deaths of their parents, were understanding and allowed the terrified child to sleep with them.

One night, Sabo recalled, it was unusually bad.

“I just started puking all over,” she said. “I was so scared.”

Moving on

Although her grandparents did the best they could for the two youngsters, Sabo said it was difficult. They were older and overly protective.

She said she didn’t enjoy the things most teenagers did – there were no proms, dances, cheerleading or band activities.

“I kept to myself and grew up very independent,” she said.

Now married and a busy mother, she also is a very giving person who often drives her 14-year-old daughter and friends to various activities.

But after 30 years, Sabo still carries the marks of the flood.

She has a nasty scar in her knee from an injury she suffered during that horrific night.

But more painful are the emotional scars.

“You never really have a complete closure,” she said. “You always have those memories of that night.”

        

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