The flood of 1972 was the most destructive flood in South Dakota, affecting many people in different ways and some are now sharing their stories, 50 years later.
“For years, I wasn’t able to talk about it. I would just start shaking and all kinds of things,” Troy Dobyns, author and flood survivor, says. “But I got past that, and this book has really been therapeutic in letting go of a lot of stuff. I didn’t realize until I started writing it how much I was hanging on to.”
In his book, “6-9-72: One Family’s Night of Terror,” Dobyns documents history and his family’s life through seven different stories through the eyes of his family but mainly through his eyes as an 8-year-old.
“Well, one thing you got to understand about my mom’s side of the family is that they all live on the same side of town,” Dobyns explains. “In 1972, they lived in a trailer court that was here behind Fischer Furniture, and you look at it today and you can’t believe there was a trailer court down here, but there was, and they all lived here.”
The tragedy of the Black Hills Flood left an impact on people that lived through it, vividly remembering the day.
“The dam broke at 11:30 [p.m.]. I think that’s why so many people died, because they were in bed,” Dobyns says. “They were just taken by surprise. There was some scrolls on the TV set, and if you live near the creek, you should go to higher ground. We’re three blocks from the creek, so we didn’t think that included us.”
Dobyns’ parents had found a house in Piedmont, and they were moving that day. They started moving things like their bed and some boxes, but everything else was still at the trailer. With a nice day without breeze, he was riding his bike with his cousins.
When the water came, dams of debris would build up and break away just to form another damn on Jackson Boulevard.
“So, it was more like tidal wave after tidal wave after tidal wave coming down and picking up more and more.” Dobyns explains. “And when I say debris, I don’t mean like sticks and patio furniture, I mean houses and trucks and all of those things are crashing into each other and it was a nightmare, and the fact that my family all survived. It’s more of a story of survivorship.”
Even though everyone survived in his family, Dobyns often things about the 238 families that did lose somebody.
“That’s hard to take. There is a woman and a baby buried in the Spearfish graveyard that was in the flood, and I don’t know them. I don’t know anything about them.” Dobyns says. “But Memorial Day, I always take flowers up there and there, of course, is more people that we don’t know what happened to them, you know. You start talking to someone else that was in the flood and it’s like you’ve known them forever and I think even people in Rapid that weren’t in the flood but were here at the time, that it was a very, very strong community.”
Dobyns’ book is set to be released in September. He will be hosting Author Talks on the Flood at the Rapid City Library at 2 p.m., June 8, and Fischer Furniture at 12:30 p.m., June 9.
For more information on his book, you can visit Dobyns’ Facebook page.
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