A New Year Greeting

Once again the Iowa Struttmann family has passed the Christmas deadline for the family letter. So we will bring you the second annual New Year Letter.

I wish that I could find something amusing to write about this year. Some joke or anecdote that lightens everyone’s mood. But . . .

This past six months has been full of heartache, disaster and plain hard work. On June 11 the Cedar River began to rise over its banks and continued for three days. It crested at over 19 feet above flood stage. The devastation to Cedar Rapids was enormous. In 1993 the river reached 11 feet above flood stage. We dug out then, as did everyone else, and moved on. No one could imagine water deep enough or fast enough to do the type of damage that occurred this year.

In short, Cedar Rapids no longer had a downtown. The newspaper received special permission to stay in their building—knowing full well that if their foundation gave way, as did other buildings, they would be trapped inside.

The power company, Alliant Energy, lost the first floor of their building, effectively cutting off all power to the city. The water treatment plant was overrun and outlying cities declared a state of water emergency to keep their citizens from flushing more crap into the Cedar Rapids downtown.

All the bridges were closed and the Interstate was the only way from one side of the community to the other.

Twelve hundred—yes 1,200—people rushed to the last working water pump at 10 o’clock at night to sandbag save it from the flooding. After they finished there they moved to Mercy Hospital in a vain effort to save the first floor. Never before had one of our hospitals been flooded.

And most heartbreaking are the 5000 homes that were destroyed. Five thousand families without a place to live, to sleep, to cook or to celebrate the holidays. Six months have passed and many are still without a permanent home. The governments involved are slow to move and slow to make decisions.

Nearest to my heart, our sister library lost 90% of their collection. That loss has directly affected our library and our jobs in Hiawatha. Our workload doubled—after we were able to get the circulation program back online.

You see, the three library consortium in our area relied on server computers located at the main Cedar Rapids library. Which were not underwater, but inaccessible due to toxic waste and bad air quality in the CR Library. It was a month before the servers were rescued and up and running at about half the capacity that we needed. It was another three months before the servers were fully functional. The catalog was inaccessible during those four months.

Everything that Cedar Rapids had owned had to be removed from circulation. The remaining 10% of their collection had to be re-cataloged to their branch library. It will at least a year to decide if their building can be saved, and two more to fix it if they can save it. In the meantime, they are trying to run a library out of three storefronts in a local mall.

And most devastating of all—my dear friend and co-worker, Linda, died on November 3, 2008 from cancer and complications of MS. She was my mentor, my friend. A gifted person who brought so many things into my life. She had a wicked sense of humor that we still talk about at work. She used a walker and walked slowly. One day as she was leaving the workroom to use the bathroom our letter carrier stepped into her path. She kept on moving and “walker checked” him out of the way. Linda brought a new meaning to devotion and love. I miss her with all of my heart.

And so ended 2008. Life is not all loss and grief and pain. But I am glad that the new year is here. I have healthy and fun family. I have a job that I love and fantastic co-workers. I am truly grateful for all of the good in my life. Here’s to 2009.