Many of Carrie Bartmann’s talented and gifted students at Turner Middle School frequently traversed the roads of the Big Thompson Canyon on family outings. It was her guess that until this school year, those winding routes were just part of the scenery for the youngsters.
“They’ve driven up (U.S. Highway) 34 how many times past this stuff?” said Bartmann, new to Berthoud this year. “I don’t think they really understood the significance of it.
” Her conjecture was right, at least according to eighth-grader Elizabeth Rivera.
“I didn’t even know there was a flood,” said Rivera this week as she gathered at the Loveland Public Library with fellow TAG students at the unveiling of a photography exhibit called “Flood of Art” in which they participated.
But she knows now.
Along with six other Turner Middle School accelerated students, Rivera embarked upon relating the story of the Big Thompson Flood of 1976 through use of words and pictures.
The July 31, 1976, natural disaster claimed hundreds of lives and wreaked havoc on structures — natural and man-made — in the Big Thompson watershed from Rocky Mountain National Park to Loveland. TAG students across the district participated in the effort.
Photographer, teacher and writer Bob Campagna of Mt. Vernon, Iowa, served as the students’ artistic guide as they took a field trip up the canyon the last week of September to capture on film some of the locations that were affected by the flood – Glen Haven, Estes Park, Sylvandale Ranch, etc.
Campagna then spent another full day at the beginning of October in a darkroom, teaching the neophyte photographers how to develop the photographs they took, mat them and prepare them to be displayed.
In addition to looking at memories of the flood through a lens, the students also viewed them through the eyes of area residents who were impacted in one way or another by the events of July 1976. Each was assigned an interview subject — many of whom lost family and/or friends in the disaster.
Making contact with these people was touching, according to the Turner group.
“It was very sad,” said J.T. Pickert, a seventh-grader. “It’s scary how many people died.”
Campagna first worked with Berthoud students nine years ago when Judy Mattoon, then the TAG teacher at Berthoud Elementary School, invited him to present a workshop to her students after she received grant money for being recognized as one of Colorado’s top educators.
The school district liked what he did, says Campagna, and has since invited him back to work with both elementary- and middle school-aged students on a variety of artistic endeavors.
“This was probably the most powerful of the themes,” said Campagna, adding that being able to interact with people who lost mothers, daughters, brothers in the flood made it a very intense experience for both students and instructor.
And while he is from Iowa, Campagna says he still felt a personal connection to the 1976 disaster when he learned that two of the names on the flood’s casualty list belonged to those of the grandparents of one of his Iowa friends.
After Colorado, Iowa lost the second-most amount of citizens in the watershed.
For Campagna, the flood had particular resonance because of a friend’s loss.
For others, like sixth-grader Sabine Berzins, it was because of watching recent news reports of Americans across the country anguished because of losing their homes and sometimes even loved ones to the ravaging power of water.
Said Berzins, “It’s weird with Katrina happening right now.”