October 1992. I was in my early twenties, driving south from Athens, Ohio, to research the Great Flood of 1937 for a college story. No internet or GPS. Just a red notebook and the feeling that my story was probably sitting in a dusty library room somewhere.
The Ironton Public Library sat close enough to the Ohio River that I remember thinking the flood never completely left the building. The periodical room smelled like wet dust and old paper. The newspapers from 1937 were brown at the edges and brittle in your hands. The wood pulp was literally eating itself.
I turned through the old pages.
The rains poured on January 19 that year. Brown, roiling water swelled over the river banks.
By the 27th, there was twenty feet of water in downtown Ironton. The river crested at seventy feet. Flood stage was fifty. The mayor toured the city by boat and had to duck under traffic lights.
I turned another yellowing page and found an editorial. He …
