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“Oh God, I loved it,” Coulter said. “It was beautiful.”
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Joan Coulter, 50, displays a crystal angel given to her by her mother and salvaged, along with the rest of her angel collection, from the August 2007 flood which destroyed her Rushford home. Coulter moved into her new home in Winona at the end of July and displays the angels in her living room.
(Photo by Melissa Carlo/Winona Daily News) |
Home for Coulter now is a cute white house facing a busy Winona street. It’s not as quiet or as spacious as her old house.
After floods ravaged Rushford last August, some people chose to rebuild homes. Coulter, 50, decided to make a new one. Moving on means making her new house feel more like home. Right now, she’s contemplating whether she wants hunter green or slate green for her kitchen. There’s more cleaning, landscaping and painting to be done.
She has a hard time looking back.
“That’s the past,” Coulter said. “It was part of my life, and it was precious. Now, this is my life.”
She didn’t think much of the sirens she heard in the early morning hours of Aug. 19, 2007. “They go off all the time,” she said. But then she got out of bed, squishing her way through several feet of water. She couldn’t open the doors or her garage because the water was too high. Coulter broke a window, slid out of her home and climbed into a boat.
She spent the night at the former TRW Automotive plant in Rushford with her dad.
“The tears I heard. The groans. The disbelief,” she said.
Unlike some who wondered if they would be able to return to their homes, Coulter knew right away hers was a complete loss.
Not much was salvageable. Her new Winona living room has a few totes of Christmas decorations and other items spared from the floodwaters and mud.
She was able to salvage her angel collection, since the ceramic figures were placed high on shelves. A crystal angel was pulled out of all the mud. She also has a picture of the Lord’s Prayer that hangs over her kitchen sink.
“It belongs here,” Coulter said, straightening it.
Coulter is originally from the Twin Cities and moved to Rushford 10 years ago after a divorce. Her parents, Pat and Dick Fogel, and other family members are still in Rushford.
After the flood, she worried she’d have to go back. She didn’t want to. It was too painful.
Coulter moved into her new house at the end of July.
She likes calling Winona home. It’s bigger and busier. Neighbors help her out. But mostly, the memories of last August aren’t so close.
Lutheran Disaster Response helped her find $51,000 to pay for the house. She borrowed the rest from her parents. It’s been hard to accept the help.
“You get to the point where you have to accept it,” she said.
Coulter hopes to find a new job soon. In Rushford, she worked as an activities aide at Good Shepherd Nursing Home. She hopes to get another job where she can help people, especially after all the help she’s been given.
“Everyone has been so good to me,” Coulter said.
She wants to forget. To move on.
Contact Käri Knutson at kknutson@winonadailynews.com or (507) 453-3523.
