What A Year With Reinert Brothers

On May 25, 2008, Tom Reinert and his family lost their Parkersburg home to a tornado.

On June 12, 2008, Mike Reinert and his family lost their Cedar Rapids house to the flood.

Since then, I've followed the brothers, who grew up in Elkader, in their recovery efforts in The Gazette. (Today's is the 9th and last installment of that series.)

It's been quit a journy for the two families.

Tom, his wife, Maureen, and their children, Nic and Dani, pretty much had everything blown away. In May, they moved into a beatiful new 4,000-square foot two-story home among dozens up dozens of new homes in Parkersburg.

Mike, his wife, Angie, and their children, Matt, Jenny, Amy and Jonny, luckily saved most of their possessions. But they had quit a chore mucking out their house and rebuilding it. A huge saving grace was all the help they received from family, friends and church members who pitched in to make the house live-in ready by mid-November.

Mike, who is now working on the flood damaged rental home he'd bought before the flood (left), knows how lucky he and  his brother have been. Nobody was hurt or killed. Nothing major was lost. Family and friends came to the rescue. They both have places they can now call home again.

"It sure is nice to be back in your own home," Mike said as he showed me around the rental house. "The Lord has been in charge of everything that happened to us over the flood. We didn't really suffer."

Mike now looks around the neighborhood along Eighth Street NW, about eight blocks from the Cedar River, and knows that a lot of the houses will come down as the city buys them out to construct future flood protection. He hopes for a bright future.

"I would like to have a beautiful green park near my house," Mike says. "This was such a nice neighborhood. It is. People are coming back."