After the flood, one family keeps positive outlook

ALBURNETT - Jonathan Lawrence is sick over the fact that he will never be able to drive his children past their first family home.

Five years after the Flood of 2008 destroyed his house near Time Check in Cedar Rapids, Lawrence says he and his family have moved on. There's no use dwelling on the past and the empty plot of land where his home used to sit, he says.

Lawrence, his wife, Lindsay, and their two daughters have since relocated to Alburnett, where Lawrence serves on the City Council. Even though he says they are happy there - he and Lindsay always wanted to raise their kids in a small-town environment - he says seeing the spot where his house used to sit bothers him.

“I joke about it and I say, ‘They could at least mow the lawn,' because there's nothing, absolutely nothing,” Lawrence says. “There's one house left on my block, and other than that there's nobody there. It used to be a very hopping little area, and I just think of all my neighbors and I think, ‘God, I wonder what they're doing now,' because they aren't there anymore. You get that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach.”

Lawrence says he and his family had to evacuate quickly when notice came that their neighborhood would be affected, but they were able to save a few important things, like his wife's wedding dress and the children's baby books.

They returned to their home roughly three weeks after the flood to find their house marked with a purple tag, indicating it was unsafe to enter. The garage had ripped away from the foundation, and a support beam was broken off the porch.

He says he laughed when they came back to look at their house, because if he didn't he would have cried.

“You just don't expect to see something like that. I went in with the impression that this wasn't going to be good, but I didn't expect it to be like that,” Lawrence says. “I guess that was the only thing I could do. ‘There's no use crying over spilled milk' is what I was thinking, and it's just … it is what it is. Life goes on.”

With their home deemed unsafe, the Lawrence family had to move. Insurance covered the cost of their house.

Since then, Lawrence says he and his family have tried to look at the positives of their situation.

“A lot of good things came from it, too. I always try to look at that. Yes, we lost our house. Yes, we lost a lot of stuff in our house, but we didn't lose our lives and our pets didn't lose their lives. When you look at it, no one in Cedar Rapids died,” Lawrence says.

Still, Lawrence is saddened that he can't show the girls their first home.

“I'm blessed I grew up in Alburnett, and the house I grew up in is still here. So I get to drive by it all the time and say, ‘Hey, it's my house,' but my kids won't be able to do that,” Lawrence says.