Thread:Merrimack/@comment-26581037-20160618145405/@comment-32738051-20160618173349

Thanks for sharing, Only8. I've been to Pittsburgh on business trips a few times but never had the opportunity to get to Johnstown but I certainly will visit the museum and ride the incline if ever I have the chance. That one can still see the path of the flood water from the ride only underscores how devastating it was.

The first time I ever learned about the flood was from John Jakes' book The Americans, the last book in the Kent Family Chronicles. It was around the same time as adaptations of the first 3 books were televised. I no longer have that book but still remember how vividly detailed Jakes' fictional account was. Years later, I obtained and read a copy of David McCullough's 1968 historical recounting. I still have that copy and re-read it occasionally. This was long before the age of the internet. Now one can read, and I have read, about it on Wikipedia and on the National Parks memorial site and Johnstown museum page and still other pages on the internet. It is so well-documented with photographs, dramatic renderings, and recountings that anyone with any imagination at all can get a fairly good sense of how horrifying it was but I'm sure no amount of imagination can come close to what the American Red Cross and other rescue workers and survivors and the media on-site experienced firsthand. You are so right about their fortitude and compassion. I can't imagine being so tested...I've never had to be and probably never will. I can only hope I would have even a fraction of their courage. What your great great grandfather witnessed and the losses he experienced, no one should ever have to go through. That he lived to tell about it and share it with the rest of your family and have that knowledge and those experiences past down through the years is as much an amazing gift and legacy as it is a terrible chapter in your family's history. Again, thanks so much for sharing.