Advertisement
Sweating in the 90-degree afternoon, Tom Oevering and a crew from his landscaping business rolled out the last of the grass squares � one thousand yards of sod in all.
 |
Don Woxland, 83, right, talks with Chris Florin, center, owner of Christine’s Landscape Design as her crew works on the yard around Woxland’s new home Monday in Rushford. Woxland and his wife, Laurine, are in the final landscaping stages after replacing the flood-damaged home they had lived in for 62 years with an updated modular home.
(Photo by Melissa Carlo/Winona Daily News)
|
“There’s a low spot here. I may fall in,” Woxland joked as he examined the sod. “If you’d been here a week ago, this was all mud. It looks to me, I’m going to have a heck of a lawn to mow. Is that the deal, Tom, you’re going to mow the lawn?”
Woxland, a witty 83-year-old Rushford businessman and his wife, Laurine, are putting the finishing touches on their new modular home on Park Street. It replaces a 13-room mansion the Woxlands lived in for 62 years � a home lost last August when floodwaters brought 3� feet of muck into the first floor and devastated two-thirds of the town’s other buildings.
Eleven months later, more lights are coming back on in the once flood-wrecked community of 1,696. The Woxlands’ neighbors across the street have a newly built home. Their next-door neighbors have a foundation and basement started.
Official numbers of Rushford residents who have rebuilt or moved back into a new or replaced home are not yet available, city administrative assistant Heather Larson said. But the city issued 440 building permits in 2007 and 150 in 2008. Rushford averages 75-80 building permits a year, according to Rochester-based Construction Management Services.
About 75 Federal Emergency Management Agency mobile homes once sprinkled the town after the flood, but that number has dwindled to 17, Larson said.
For Woxland, he’s glad to see normalcy return from Rushford’s rubble.
“This is one of the first homes done in town, and it’s good to show it off and say Rushford is getting back to normal,” Woxland said.
One of the plumbing business’s buildings was recently torn down because of flood damage, something his father would’ve cried over, Woxland said. He said he had to wave away a few tears himself.
The Woxlands spent most of their recovery at their condo in Arizona. They never got water in their Rushford home before, and the destruction was too much to take in, he said, so the couple packed and left one afternoon last fall.
“It was a big old home here � 114 years old,” Woxland said. “It was hurt beyond what my wife wanted to repair.”
Their new three-bedroom modular has improved kitchen appliances as well lighting and plumbing fixtures. Woxland’s love for old clocks and Norway can be found throughout the home. They came back home in May.
Savings allowed the Woxlands to bounce back to the upgraded modular home and thousands of dollars in landscaping.
“I tried to save some money, but I think it’s about gone,” he said.
Woxland couldn’t find a picture of his old home, except for an engraving on the back of his future headstone in a Rushford cemetery.
It was Woxland’s 83rd birthday the night of the flood, Aug. 19. He hoped his 84th year will bring better luck. And his lawn back.
Contact Amber Dulek at (507) 453-3513 or amber.dulek@lee.net.
UnHappy wrote on Jul 30, 2008 2:01 PM: