Editor’s note: This article was first published in the Waterbury Record.
Liza Mackey, a senior at Harwood Union High School, arrived at her home on Randall Street in downtown Waterbury just after Irene, an unwelcome guest, left her living room. It was the morning after the Winooski River had surged in and flooded her family’s house up to the kitchen countertops. When I stopped by her home that morning, it looked as if a marauding army had just come through: furniture was overturned and strewn about willy-nilly. Water seeped from walls, couches and floors. The basement was filled up like a soup bowl. Her dad, Scott, was on the back porch just starting to hose off salvageable furniture. Her mom, Kathy, was inside frantically photographing the wreck of her home for the eventual insurance claims, before commencing the inevitable purge.
For local teens, the floods have had a major impact on their lives. And the teens have had a major impact on the community, as the Mackeys learned within hours of the flood.
As Liza and her family dug out, the troops of volunteers began arriving. Cars began pulling up to their house. “Is this Liza’s house?” asked one shy high school freshman. A swarm of girls soon followed. It was the Harwood Union girls soccer team, where Liza has been a standout player since her freshman year. They had traded their cleats for mud boots, and descended into their teammate’s basement. Preseason practice could wait.
The girls formed bucket brigades, hauling pail after pail of river slime out of the Mackeys’ home. On the other end of Randall Street, the Harwood boy’s soccer team was doing the same backbreaking work. Between them, the Harwood soccer players mucked out about a dozen basements. The Harwood cross-country running team was also busy in the cleanup, as were countless individual high school students helping their families and neighbors.
Naomi Koliba, another Harwood senior who lives off Camel’s Hump Road, immediately arrived to help clean out her grandmother’s home on Randall Street. “It’s my second home,” says the tall young woman with an easy laugh. “I just felt we had a job to do, and let’s get it done.”
Naomi soon joined her soccer teammates cleaning out other Randall Street homes. “It’s easier to work in a pack,” she explains. While helping muck out the basement of OneStudio, home for a local dance group, she was surprised to run into some familiar faces, albeit muddy ones. It was the Montpelier High School girl’s soccer team. In a few weeks, Naomi, Liza and their Harwood teammates would face these Montpelier girls to renew a fierce annual rivalry on the soccer fields of central Vermont. On this day, the girls were all part of the same bucket brigade. “That felt good,” recalls Naomi.
The water mark is mighty high. It rained so hard even my tears couldn’t dry. But there’s hope in the Valley after the 100-year flood, cuz the Mad Mad River runs in our blood.”
– Grace Potter
The cleanup, however, didn’t feel so good. After a week spent in basements breathing oil and gas fumes – not to mention other unidentifiable and foul scents – many of the teens reported feeling ill, often complaining of stomachaches. It was a price they paid for helping their neighbors and families through the worst of the crisis. A week after the storm, school resumed (it had been delayed a week), and with it, a semblance of normalcy returned.
But as the frenzy of the initial cleanup has subsided, the reality of the losses has set in.
For Liza, who loves to play music, “The worst part was seeing my piano go into the Dumpster.” But the hallmark of the storm and its aftermath has been the way that hardship and kindness have been intertwined in a bittersweet dance. “While we were loading it into the Dumpster,” she says with a chuckle, “someone offered us another piano.”
Liza and her family are now staying in a friend’s apartment in Waitsfield while their Randall Street home is gutted and repaired. “We are lucky to have our own place,” concedes Liza. But she says the dislocation and the aftermath of the flood have been hard for her and her family. “My parents are having a hard time with it. I don’t have to deal with all the rebuilding. It’s more intense for them.” She adds, “There’s a lot of cycles of stress, and then coming together.”
I ask her what it’s like to shuttle between her temporary home and her familiar space on Randall Street. “It’s hard going back home,” she says. “I don’t know which life to be in.”
Singing in the rain
When Liza Mackey and Naomi Koliba returned to Harwood Union a week after the flood, they decided to immortalize the storm in the best way they knew how: in song. The duo is a regular at high school assemblies, so it was only natural that they would sing their way through the calamity that had befallen their community.
“I wanted to tell matter of factly what happened, but I also wanted to make light of it,” says Liza, “and tell about the community coming together.” In 30 minutes, the girls composed “Irene.”
“I-rene, you’re really really really really mean…you really put on quite a scene,” they croon. The girls conclude with a nod to the volunteers: “Something happened last week. So lovely I could hardly speak. So what if tears roll now and then? The whole town was my friend.”
“Irene” – the musical version – has become a local sensation. Their Harwood performance is now on youtube and has more than 1,300 views. The girls recorded it at radio station WDEV, which owner Ken Squier has immortalized with weekly airings on his popular Saturday morning show, “Music to Go to the Dump By.” It also looked like the girls had made the big time when they were asked – or so they thought – to open for Grace Potter at a concert at Sugarbush Ski Area on Oct. 10. At the last minute, the Harwood duo learned they would not be performing at Potter’s concert, but they were given a consolation prize: a free pass to the $1,000 per ticket show.
Vermont’s prodigal daughter returns
Grace Potter, Vermont’s prodigal daughter, had returned to sing for relief. On Oct. 9, she performed to a sold-out Flynn Theater audience and was introduced by Gov. Peter Shumlin and Sen. Patrick Leahy. “Thank you for coming home when we need you,” the governor declared to Potter and her band, The Nocturnals.
Before leaving Vermont, Potter, who graduated Harwood Union High School in 2001, wanted to add a special show just for the Mad River Valley, her home. The result was a solo acoustic concert at Sugarbush, with proceeds going to the Mad River Valley Community Fund for local flood relief.
As I drive to Sugarbush, evidence of Irene’s wrath is everywhere. Bridge Street, home to Waitsfield’s iconic covered bridge, remains closed and businesses shuttered. The grounds of American Flatbread, the beloved Valley purveyor of pizza and peace, has re-opened thanks to hundreds of volunteers, but still wears a coat of the familiar grey river silt. Twenty-foot high mountains of dirt line the road where a huge snowmaking pond was destroyed. Farm fields are covered with flattened crops.
Mark Grosby, president of the Mad River Valley Community Fund, announced at the start of the concert that the fund had raised $860,000 since floods swamped the Valley; the Grace Potter concert alone raised over $200,000 for flood relief. Grosby told me later that the fund is helping flood victims from Moretown, Waitsfield, Warren and Fayston, as well as employees of Valley businesses who live in Waterbury, Duxbury and elsewhere. The fund has also provided support to businesses at the Moretown Business Park at the junction of Routes 2 and 100.
Potter sang her own ode to the power of Irene. “The water mark is mighty high. It rained so hard even my tears couldn’t dry. But there’s hope in the Valley after the 100-year flood, cuz the Mad Mad River runs in our blood.”
Afterward, I asked Potter, who cuts a striking pose in her mini-skirt, long blond hair and high voltage smile, what made her decide to come home from her national tour. “There’s just so much effort that needs to be put into this, and everybody needs to do their part. I have a platform to share music and hope and a little bit of fun with the world, so why wouldn’t I?”
Liza and Naomi introduced themselves to Potter, whom they credit as a musical inspiration. Potter listened intently as Liza described what happened to her home. “I’m really touched that you are putting words to it,” the celebrated rocker told the teen balladeers. “I can’t wait to hear your song.”
Aftermath
For many teens, silence, not singing, has followed Irene. I ask Liza how high school students are coping with the flood. “No one really talks about it,” she says.
“I think there is a big amount of stress in our school right now,” Liza observes. “There are all these students roaming around. Some people don’t have houses to go to. They might have a place for one week, and then have to move.”
Naomi and Liza say that incidents of drug and alcohol abuse are on the rise among their peers. “It’s because they don’t know how to deal with it [the flood],” says Liza. The girls pause, whispering to one another. They say they don’t know if they should be telling me this. Naomi says the school has cracked down and is suspending students who are caught with drugs and alcohol. Both girls insist that punishment is not the answer.
“Maybe there could be a group at school that talks about it,” suggests Liza. “We are at an age when we don’t listen to adults. We need students to help other students, rather than adults.”
