VIDEO: Father, Linn County spar over deceased son’s flood-damaged home

Kevin Langan bought his 38 acres of paradise soon after graduating from old Regis High School in 1977. For nearly 30 years he hunted, trapped and fished along this heavily wooded stretch of the Cedar River near Palo. In April 2007, he died there, too.

“He loved the outdoors and every part of it,” said his father and business partner, Darrell Langan of Cedar Rapids.

He and his wife, Karen, found their son's body in the small frame house, more than a century old. He had died of a gastrointestinal hemorrhage.

“It was tough for us,” Langan said one recent afternoon in the dooryard of his son's home. So, too, is a dispute with the county over the home's future.

Fourteen months after Kevin Langan's death came the flood, which also wrecked Darrell and Karen Langan's home at 1718 Ellis Blvd. NW. In its wake, Darrel Langan is sparring with Linn County over what he sees as his son's legacy to family and friends.

“It's pretty much back to nature, but I want to keep it in one piece,” he said.

The issue is the county's need to clear non-complying structures from the Cedar River's flood plain, an effort launched in early November with 18 sites set for demolition.

One is on the Langan property - a seasonal cabin heavily damaged by the flood that he's given the county permission to remove - but Langan draws the line at his late son's former home, one of the county's oldest. The property's original deed dated Feb. 15, 1850, shows the property was part of a 160-acre parcel owned by Charles R.P. Wentworth.

“It goes back a long time, and it's survived pretty much everything that's been thrown at it,” Langan said.

After taking on only a few inches of water in the floods in 1993 and '95, the house saw about eight feet of water in June 2008. The flood collapsed an addition on the house's west side, which Langan has removed. He said the remaining, original structure is sound.

“I've got a pretty good building here,” he said. “I'm willing to put the effort and work into it.”

Langan's goal is to get the house back in shape for occasional use by family and friends.

“I was thinking I'd put a woodburner in here, and the old boys could come out and talk about old times,” said Langan, 71, who's retired from the plumbing business that he and his son operated. “I'm going to make sure it's sound.”

“If they wanted to put enough money into the building, they could salvage it,” said Brita Van Horne, Linn County building official.

The hitch: a federal requirement that any structure sustaining damage equal to 50 percent or more of its value must be elevated out of the flood plain. If the Federal Emergency Management Agency decides the county isn't fully enforcing the rule, it could disqualify any county landowner from receiving subsidized flood insurance.

“If we didn't do it, we'd jeopardize our ability to get flood insurance for the county,” Van Horne said.

“I don't have money for that,” said Langan, who used his son's flood insurance settlement to pay off the mortgage on the property. He and his wife have taken out their own mortgage on a house in southeast Cedar Rapids; they figure the Ellis Boulevard house is a buyout candidate.

Van Horne said Langan may qualify for FEMA aid for “increased cost of compliance,” something he said he'll look into.

“It was a blow to me to tell me it would have to be torn down,” Langan said of the old house.

Langan walks a visitor over to a sapling his family planted after Kevin Langan's death, a bald cypress selected by Karen Langan.

”It's good for floods,” he said of the variety. “It sure survived 'em. As a family, we used that as a means of closure. I think he's in a better place now, and I talk to him quite frequently. ”

The late autumn colors were mostly under foot now, but enough remained on the trees to give the clearing a bronzed glow.

“It's like a big chapel,” Langan said.