White crosses were meant to make people think about demolitions

They sank white crosses at the graves of demolished flood houses to make people think, not to offend and not to equate the loss of a building with loss of life.

“Ultimately, it's just to show that people still care,” said Mike Clemons, a third generation Time Check resident who with a handful of neighbors conceived and carried out the plan.

The crosses appeared earlier this week among the overgrown yards and fresh dirt where flooded houses once stood. Unlike the angry-looking spray-painted messages in the neighborhood, the crosses communicate something ineffable, prompting a mixed reaction from the neighborhood. Clemons said people can interpret the crosses as they like.

“More than just one person came up with that idea,” he said. “It was a collaborative effort.”

The crosses are made of two thin pieces of wood, screwed together, and painted bright white, bringing vaguely to mind the white crosses at war graveyards in France and Belgium. The people who planted them remained anonymous until now.

Clemons, neighbor Ajai Dittmar, and a “handful” of others did the job, Clemons confirmed. The group of flood victims is angry with city government, angry with contractors, angry that homeowners aren't getting their buyout checks fast enough, angry that bulldozers are knocking over trees, that roads aren't being repaired and that sidewalks have been torn up. They want people to remember what's happening to their neighborhood.

“I have to admit, at night (the crosses do) make the neighborhood look morbid. It looks a little like a graveyard,” Clemons said. “It doesn't look good anyway!”

Karen Dlask, who lived in Time Check all her life and moved west to Johnson Avenue after the flood, took down four of the crosses - two at the site of her old home, and one each at two of her rental properties that were demolished.“To me, a white cross symbolizes death, human death. Not a property,” Dlask said. “Things are replaceable, people are not.”

More than anything, she wishes the people who planted the crosses would have asked her permission, or would have put them out in the light of day.

“I might have given them permission if they'd asked, but probably not,” she said.

Linda Seger, the flood victim who lives in the 1600 block of 8th Street NW, walked past a string of white crosses on the opposite side of her block, along Ellis Boulevard. She said she had nothing to do with the crosses, but she likes them.They commemorate a historic moment for Time Check, for Cedar Rapids. To her, the crosses communicate “hope and faith and understanding and love,” she said.

“This is rebirth. This is resurrection,” she said. “Somebody didn't want it to go by without people actually thinking about it.”