Back at home, three years after the flood

Julie Stallman and her children are observing the third anniversary of the June 2008 floods by reclaiming their home.

“Three years ago, we were being evacuated,” said Stallman, 52. “To the day, now I'm here. I did a lot of crying.”

With the Cedar River on its way to a record crest five days later, Stallman, son Calvin Voelker and daughter Jacqueline Voelker left 400 Fourth Ave. SW June 8, 2008. Their first night back home was Tuesday.

“Everything's in just pure chaos,” Stallman said – happily – this afternoon.

After the river retreated to its banks about six blocks away, Stallman and her friends and family hauled their ruined possessions from the big old house, mucked and gutted, and began reconstruction. She fired one contractor after a year and a half of little-to-no progress and hired a new one.

Stallman couldn't immediately get the required permits due to her house's historic nature.

“I didn't know it was that big a deal, but they said the house was historical, because it's original,” she said.

Calvin and Jacqueline are the family's third generation to live in the house. According to the city assessor's web site – Stallman said her deed shows an earlier date – the house was built in 1912. A 1913 city directory shows it occupied by Loyal Harrier, treasurer of the Cedar Rapids Lumber Company, and his family.

Harrier's work may help explain the home's extensive woodwork and cabinetry, most of which survived the flood.

“This house was the nicest house around,” said Stallman.

Stallman said her grandparents Calvin and Opal Rosdail, who had lived across the street, later bought the Harrier house.

Stallman grew up on a farm near Norway, Iowa, “but when I wasn't out there I'd be here with grandma.”

So walking away after the flood wasn't an option.

“Never, because it's been in the family too long,” said Stallman.

Stallman received $22,000 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and another grant from the state's Jumpstart program – she's unsure of the exact amount, because it went directly to her contractor.

The original plaster and lathe was removed from the walls, replaced with wallboard. But the floors and woodwork were refinished – the faint gray line on the brick fireplace about four feet above the floor is the only clue a river ran through it. The contractor was even able to restore an all-but-wrecked built-in bench near the first-floor landing.

“I cried when I saw that,” Stallman said.

Stallman said she couldn't have done it without friends like Nancy White, who spent her 50th birthday shoveling mud from Stallman's basement.

“We all went to Norway High School, which is no longer,” said White, who stopped in for a visit Thursday afternoon. “That's what you get when you go to a small high school.”

Only one of Stallman's immediate neighbors has returned, although work is underway on a house across Fourth Avenue. It's another blow to a neighborhood decimated by Interstate 380's construction in the 1960s, but Stallman said she's accustomed to a freeway a stone's throw from her front porch.

“We're used to it,” she said.  “When the Central Fire (station, also lost to the flood) was over there, they'd be coming every 10, 15 minutes.”

Stallman hopes her family's return home signals a change in her luck. Right after the flood, she was hospitalized with pneumonia, and its lingering lung infection kept her out of the house as friends and family mucked and gutted.  She and her children moved to her mother's home in Fairfax, where a fall down the basement stairs left her with a concussion and broken ribs.

Recuperating from that, Stallman lost her job at Kirkwood Community College, where she was an administrative worker in its driver training programs.

“I'm still looking for a job,” she said.  “This is the best break I've had in a long time.”