Thursday, March 28, 2024
Miles from the Mainstream
D. R. ZUKERMAN, proprietor

August 19, 1955

August 19, 2015 --

At Camp Wabigoon, that Friday morning, 60 years ago, the sun was out, again, and we campers were amazed to hear radio news broadcasts mentioning that Winsted, Connecticut, a city of 8,000, had been hard hit by a flood caused by Hurricane Diane.

Our camp, on a hill above Winsted, suffered no flood damage; the only effect was that the camp lake -- Rowley's Pond -- now extended onto the softball field.

The radio reports told us that Winsted had been devastated by Hurricane Diane, which followed Hurricane Carol, the week before. It had started raining just as our Color War (three days of athletic and other events with the camp divided into two teams) concluded, the night of August 17. It rained all day August 18 and into the night of August 18-19.

We walked down Spencer Hill Road to Winsted, Sunday, August 21, and saw Main Street turned into a ravine of rubble, with buildings on the Mad River side of Main Street gone, or turned around, or cut in two. A marker on the Winsted green, erected at the intersection of Main Street (Route 44) and Park Place (Route 8), on the first anniversary of the flood, is dedicated to the memory of Josephine D. Cornelio, 49; John M. Gould, 28; Maney Leshay, 67; Mary C. Machrone, 46; Sinclair L. Meggison, 52; William A. Samele, 56; and Concettena Zappula, 58 "all of whom perished in the devastating flood of this city August 19, 1955." Mr. Leshay, proprietor of the United Cigar Store, at the corner of Main and Elm was known to the Wabigoon/Wahanda community.

Sixty years later and this witness to the devastation still recalls the remains of a building on the Mad River side of Main Street, across from St. Joseph's Church, cut in two, the pinks and blues of the interior rooms now in the open, as if the structure were a doll's house.

There was no FEMA in 1955. I guess it was the Army Engineers who quickly set up temporary "Bailey" bridges in place of the spans in the area washed away by floodwaters.

Camp ended one week later, August 26, on schedule and those Bailey bridges made it possible for our buses to take us back to New York City and the metropolitan area for the next school year, during the first presidential term of Dwight D. Eisenhower, when gas cost about 25 cents a gallon.