David DeWayne Wilding Life during the Teton Flood. Box 9 Folder 13

Transcription

1 The Teton Dam Disaster Collection David DeWayne Wilding Life during the Teton Flood By David DeWayne Wilding June 22, 1977 Box 9 Folder 13 Oral Interview conducted by Harold S. Forbush Transcript copied by David Garmon June 2005 Brigham Young University Idaho

2 2 HF: I will ask you, Mr. Wilding, to give your full name and address. DW: David DeWayne Wilding. My address in 274 East 1 st South, Rexburg, Idaho. HF: Mr. Wilding, have you lived in the Rexburg area most of your life? DW: Yes, all of my life. HF: Have you been engaged in business of various types in means of earning your livelihood in the Rexburg area? DW: I have been in business in Rexburg since 1935 until the flood hit. HF: Let s just briefly sketch the livelihood that you followed in the past years. DW: I was working for the Taylor Chevrolet Garage in the winter of and then in the spring of 1935 my brother and I purchased Sainsbury Bottling Company that was here in town. It was a company that made soda water (Sainsbury). We operated that for a couple of years and then my brother wanted to go into a trucking business so I bought him out and then I set up a dealership as a distributor with the Old Faithful Beverage Company of Idaho Falls. Then I operated that way until 1944 when I went into the Army. Of course, the soda water business was a non-critical business during the war, so we couldn t get sugar, we couldn t get metal, we couldn t get anything to make soda water with, so we didn t have any. After two years in the service I come back and the man who I had been dealing with in Idaho Falls had passed away in the meantime, so I never did go back into the soda water business. I opened a sporting goods store because I had already bought the building for the soda water business. I had to do something with the building, so I opened a sporting good business. HF: Under what title? DW: Under the title of Rainbow Sport Shop. HF: And its location? DW: Twenty-four Carlson Avenue, Rexburg. HF: How long did you operate that business? DW: I operated that 1948 to 1969 when I sold out to the Ricks Brothers here. Then I opened the Old Timer Gun Shop on College Avenue. This I was operating right until the time of the flood. HF: What motivated you to open the Old Timer s Gun Shop? Had you had some experience with the repair of guns?

3 3 DW: Yes, of course. All of the time I was in the sporting goods business I was selling firearms and repairing them. I had had experience in the Army and I needed something to do. I was old enough to retire, but not ready to retire so I opened the gun shop. It wasn t that big a business, it kept me busy all the time, but it did give me something to do. It was a partial retirement is what it was. HF: And its location? DW: Twenty-four College Avenue, Rexburg. HF: In conjunction with the Old Timer Gun Shop, you held and wore another hat I believe. DW: Yes, when I set up the Old Timer Gun Shop I had rented the building and it was way too large for me. So I talked to the Upper Snake River Valley Historical Board of Directors, which I was a member of, and they agreed they would pay half of the rent and could use half of the space in the building, and I would serve as curator of the museum and take care of the museum for them. So this was the way we were operating at the time the flood hit. HF: Now DeWayne, could you give us a little idea as to where and in what these two buildings were located and the storage facilities for this so that we will have a better idea just what type of an inventory we were dealing with and you had custody over at the time of the Teton Dam bursting? DW: Well, we were located in what was known as the Idamont Hotel Building. The size of the building was, I think, twenty-three by eighty on the inside and there was a full basement. I didn t use but very little of the basement so we used that for storage for the Historical Society. They were using about two-thirds of the upper floor space upstairs for display of historical artifacts. We had a terrific inventory, although it was crowded into a small space, and this was real disastrous when the flood come along because we couldn t salvage any of it, a lot of it being stored in the basement but during the flood it was under about of twenty feet of water, fifteen to twenty feet of water. HF: Can you break down that inventory according to our index, our itemization? As I understand we had well over 1500 separate artifacts. DW: We had started a file card system for keeping track of the artifacts after I had started as curator. Prior to that time we had been kept in a record book. Now, we had about 800 file cards on file at the time of the flood and this was about half of what we had altogether, well, it was a little more than half. The book record was lost in the flood, we never did recover it and I don t suppose if we had recovered it that we would have been able to read anything in it. But we did recover the file card system and after a lot of cleaning and drying and so on we could read the records. So it helped quite a bit. HF: Just briefly, these artifacts, generally speaking these artifacts embraced what items?

4 4 DW: Oh, we had just about everything that would be used in this area. We had Indian artifacts, quite a few that had been donated to us and some were on loan. We had some farm equipment, not too much because of space. We had clothes, buffalo coats, bear coats some things of that sort. Some saddles one or two rather famous saddles that were used in this area. Quite a lot of written material and a lot of pictures, lots of pictures, early day pictures. This was one of the heart-breaking things about the flood. We did salvage the pictures and try to clean them, but they did go to pieces after we cleaned them, they curled up and twisted around, so we lost the pictures, too. We lost our displays, even the displays that we had, we had fourteen or fifteen display cases they were completely destroyed. They were floated and lifted up. I thought the ones that were against the walls, the big ones, would stand, but the water got deep enough that it lifted them up and turned them over on their face and broke the glass and ruined everything in them. Even though the artifacts in the showcase would have been above the waterline, if the showcase would have stood in place. HF: Now on June 5 th, 1976, where were you on that day? DW: I was at home. HF: Who was in your home at that time? DW: Just my wife and I. We have a family but the family are all married and moved away. Just the wife and I were living alone at home. HF: Now the morning of the flood, will you just briefly account for some of the things you were doing just prior to your first hearing of the flood. If we could just take one step at a time, what were you doing, what were your engagements that morning just prior to your first hearing of the flood? DW: Well, as you know, this was a Saturday. I close my shop on Saturdays. I had a man by the name of Doug Siepert up home helping me plant some lawn. We had done some construction recently on the house and a strip of the lawn had been ruined and we were replacing that. At least he was working on that and I was mowing the lawn when my neighbor, Alma Teuscher, came over and said, I don t know how important it is, but it has just come over the radio that the Teton Dam is washing out. It was quite a shock to me, it didn t really register til I pulled the lawnmower on around behind the house and there was Doug Siepert working on the lawn. I thought, Oh, boy, he lives right on the bank of the Teton River in a trailer house. So, I stopped the mower and went over and told Doug what was going on. He wife was visiting with my wife, so I told them they had better get in their car and get down there and salvage what you can, because you re right in the path of the flood. HF: DeWayne, can you fix a time when this conversation took place? DW: It was just before noon, it was the time that it first come over the radio.

5 5 HF: Detail what took place then, step by step, is historically significant, as you witnessed it. DW: I well, we sent Doug and his wife, they each had a pickup there so they each jumped in their pickups and dashed down to their home. I told my wife that we d better get down to the store and see what we could do there. So we took our pickup and went down. I have a suburban, and when I fold the seats down it serves the same as a pickup. I loaded it, all I could load with merchandise that I had in the store on display, for sale, you know. One of the surprising things was, as soon as I showed up at the shop President Grant showed up. Charles Moses Grant, he is a member of our stake presidency. The winter before all this happened, my wife and I had both had surgery and had been quite sick and President Grant was keeping charge of us, keeping track of us to see how we got along. It was surprising and I don t know where he came from or how he got there, but he was there right after I got there. He said, Now, we are here to help you with anything we can do. He helped carry out everything that I could arrange, got in boxes and so forth, that I could put in the car. HF: DeWayne, let me interrupt. The statement by Alma Teuscher, did it suggest emphatic knowledge that the dam had burst, or the way he stated it was there any wonderment or question in your mind whether that was a true fact? DW: No, he said it was washing out when he come over. HF: So there was no doubt in your mind that it was gone? DW: It was going, yeah. I knew that when I come downtown. After we loaded everything we could think of, then we kept getting reports on the radio (we had the radio going in the shop) we kept getting reports, Expect three feet of water. Expect two feet of water in Rexburg. And these sorts of things. So I had a firearms collection, antique firearms, about 190 of them. This had been one of my hobbies all my life, but I had them up on a high rack. I didn t use them in my work, I just had them on display. But I took all the other firearms, the repair firearms. Well, not quite all of them, you always miss a few, especially when you are in a hurry and a little bit excited, you don t know exactly what to do. I took everything I could and put it on this high rack, and then we moved the ammunition up and got it up as high as we could. We just as well have left it alone because the water went clear over the top of it even after we did move it. HF: How high were these places where you were storing? DW: We had fifty-five inches of water in the store after the basement was full. We measured the waterline after the water had receded, it was fifty-five inches deep. HF: And your thought, of course, was that you would put them up at this level and that would take care of any

6 6 DW: Well, no we didn t know what the level was going to be. We got them up to about half that distance and we thought we had put them up high enough. But we got one load of stuff out. There was someone with me that needed a ride to the college, I don t remember who it was, so I went toward the college, up College Avenue, straight towards the college. I took, I don t remember who the person was, but I let him off up in front of the college, and as I went past one of these apartment houses there was a bunch of college girls in there and they had a whole bunch of their belongings in boxes and bundles and piled on the porch. They hollered, Give us a ride. I went and let this man, I can t remember who it was, but I came back and got these girls. I didn t have enough room to haul the girls, except one, and there was about five of them, I think. I did take their belongings and I took them up to the Manwaring Center and piled them out on the lawn there and then left this one girl with them to guard them. We told the other girls to walk up there and told them where she would be. Then I went on home with that load. I did have time, but I didn t know it at that time and guess neither did anyone else, but if I had hurried and unloaded it and gone back I could have got some more stuff out. HF: Did you leave your wife down there? DW: No, no, I took her with me. She was with me all the time, we stayed together. We made up our minds that we would stay together all the time. After going to the house, then we thought about going back down, we could have taken the other car and gotten some more merchandise out, but the police were telling us to stay out and not come back downtown. So we stayed up there. It wasn t long til the reports kept coming that the flood was coming, Stay away, don t come down in the town at all. Pretty soon we saw the flood coming through Smith Park. HF: What was going through your mind immediately after you heard it? Did you have a type of feeling like, I told you so. I m not surprised. Were you shocked? What was going through your mind when Mr. Teuscher told you? DW: Mostly shock, I think, looking at it now. I have always opposed the Teton Dam from the beginning. I never did want to see anything like this. Even though I had been opposed to it, I certainly didn t want to see it wash out like it did. It was just a kind of sickening shock feeling. It was hard to realize that this was actually happening. I didn t feel any blame, or have any feelings toward anyone about it. It was just that it was a shock and a real hard thing to realize that this was actually happening here. HF: Did you think in terms of what a calamity it would be to the community, or were you thinking in terms of maybe what it would do to your business, or to the historical society? DW: Well, I don t think anyone realized ahead of time what destruction that flood really did. I had never been in a flood before, in high water, a little bit of high water. Yes, we had a flood or two here in town, when one or two homes were flooded, never a flood that caused such complete disaster as it wrecked everything it hit. I don t think anyone had any conception of what it was going to do when they found out I know I didn t.

7 7 HF: Were you persuaded one way or another when they said there might be one foot, two foot, or three foot on Main Street? Did that influence you in any way? DW: No, I didn t spend much time considering how many feet, with a flood like that all you can do is guess. Someone is estimating. See, they were estimating a maximum of three feet of water and we had almost six in our store actually. It was all guess work. HF: Then you and your wife were in your home and you first noticed the water in Smith Park. DW: Well, what I did when I knew it was coming, I got by binoculars out. I m just a block straight south of Smith Park; that s where I live and I am up on the hill, so I had a grandstand seat for it. I d just got my binoculars out and watched as it come through. I walked out on Third East on the east side of my house. There was a crowd of people. There was people and cars everywhere. People who had gotten away from the flood, people who had gotten on high ground, people were everywhere up there, but I just stood there and watched the flood from there. HF: Relate what you saw first, as you best recall. Be as detailed as you can as you saw this water coming. Was it rolling, what was it doing? Now don t let me interfere when I used the term rolling, maybe it was doing something else. You describe the best you can what you observed. DW: At that point I would estimate it at seven to seven and a half feet. That would be on the northwest corner of Smith Park. The thing that was so surprising or gripping about the whole thing was the debris and animals and everything that came down. Bales of straw, bales of hay, logs and trees, and barrels, these fifty-five gallon steel barrels, painted green, there must have been a storage yard from upstream somewhere because they come through there by the dozens, all floating and going down. Picnic tables went out of the park, floated across the street. Then here would come an automobile rolling along, or floating along. Then here would come a trailer house would go across and then here would come a big propane gas tank that had just broken loose, it hadn t gone far, I don t suppose because it was still spurting. When it would roll, it would blow bubbles and then it would come out and squirt up in the air, the gas was still leaking out of the tank as it came across the street. Then this house come right through Smith Park and on the Main Street, it started down Main Street. But then it veered off to the south and then it hit those big trees and stopped right there at the professional plaza. The main thing that we saw were cattle. They would swim out or wade out, they would be pretty close to the edge when we would see them, and they would wade out and they seemed to be, to me, they seemed to be in a state of shock like the people that were watching them. They didn t seem belligerent or anything, they would get out of the water and then they would just stand there. One cow came out down here, right by the professional plaza. Just barely got out and laid down and she died right there. Others would come and would just stand and look. They didn t seem to know what to do, of course, they didn t unless someone would take care of them. Many mobile homes, we could see them as they crossed the street. And the terrific amount of trees and logs and timber and stuff that

8 8 come down was certainly surprising. Course, after the flood and going back over the country it didn t surprise me because it took about all of the trees in it path and rolled them along and floated the[m] along, and all the debris that was in the reservoir come down. Then when it hit the sawmill down there, I guess it really picked up a lot more and went on down the country with it. As I watched it until it was about two blocks of the street that I could see, it was just amazing the amount of stuff that floated across that street. HF: As you stood there with your wife and many others, did you see evidence of shock in their faces, emotionalism, any crying? DW: Yes, you bet. There was quite a few people crying. Shock, everyone showed shock. Disbelief I think, more than anything. They just couldn t believe what was going on, is the way that it seemed to strike me. I know that was the way I felt, I just couldn t believe that it was actually happening. Did[n t] think that it would ever happen. It was complete destruction. HF: Now, DeWayne, any further comment about the evidence of emotionalism that you observed? DW: Yes, there was many people standing around up there and, of course, they had nothing. There was no place, it was getting along after dinner time, everyone had forgotten about dinner, but some of them were getting hungry. My wife had just been to the store and she usually lays in a pretty good store of meat. It just happened that she had bought a big bunch of hamburger so she started to frying hamburgers and set them up in the table there and had buns to go with them and everything and invited anyone to come in that was hungry and help themselves. Quite a lot of people come in and had a hamburger with us. Then as I had mentioned, Doug Siepert, they went down and got a bunch of their stuff out and then they come back up to our place. So they were there and some of their relations who had operated a business downtown, had a service station down on the highway, they come up and they had no place to store their money or take care of anything. So they asked it they could store it at our house and we said, yes. So they brought in their money and they put it in a drawer there and we asked them to leave their wife. There were two young men running it, married men. One of the wives stayed with us and she was really upset. She cried and cried and you just couldn t pacify her. We did everything we could to try and help her, but she just wouldn t quit crying because then she knew everything was wrecked and she couldn t do anything about it. She just stayed there. That was her instructions and the other men were down trying to see if they could salvage anything as the flood went through. Of course, everyone had to move out until the flood moved on and then we could go back downtown. But there was a lot of people up there that now Roland Hubbard and his wife, their home was in the flood. Lee Hubbard works with me in the gun shop, so they were up at our place for dinner. We just had kind of a center there for a little while til the thing kind of passed. Then people began to disperse a little, go to the college where they were taking care over there.

9 9 HF: DeWayne, when would you estimate that the crest, the water crest, what time the water crested? DW: Well, I would estimate the crest would have probably been four o clock in the afternoon through our area, the area I was watching up there. HF: How high did it get on let s say First East? DW: Well, it just barely come in from Main Street, right there at the intersection of Third East and Main Street was where the water stopped. No, First South. I watched a pickup float past your house here, there was a nice stream growing through here, I ll tell you. It got up to just to Reed Squire s place up there in the next block was the waterline. That is as far as the water went up that way, but you see there is quite a little difference in the elevation and what we have here. HF: About four feet, I would guess. Now, DeWayne, did you observe persons going down to the flooded area trying to get into their buildings, or trying to rescue anything, in the course of when the flood was still very much in progress? DW: Not too much. One fellow, I don t know who he was, got his boat in on College Avenue and tried to go down said that was the roughest boat ride he had ever had. He had to get back out of there, he never rescued anything, he just started out and turned around and went back. There were a few around in boats trying to help and trying mostly, I think, they were interested in people, not property, they were trying to get people out. HF: Did you observe anyone on top of their homes? DW: No, I didn t see any people involved in the flood, like the cattle and the other debris, I didn t see any people at all. I guess there were a few that were involved in it. I understand Bob Barrington [Purrington] stayed right in his store all through the flood, it must have been quite an experience. We come back downtown, we watched it, of course, we knew I d have to come protect what I had. It was almost dark before we could get back. We drove down College Avenue and the water was way up. We could just barely get through then and we had boots on and I had a bunch of plywood and when I got to the store it had broken four big plate glass windows out of the front. I knew I had to close it up someway. I had been doing some construction up home and I had quite a lot of plywood, so we come down and boarded the whole front of the store up. I don t think there was any vandalism in my place at all. One of the police did go in and got a rifle and took it out, he had to kill an animal, but he brought it right back to me after a day or so after the flood. I don t think I lost a thing to vandalism. HF: When you entered the store, can you detail what you saw, anything that might appear just a little bit humorous that I think is significant.

10 10 DW: Yes, it was a mess. It looked as though all the big front windows had let go about the same time with the water. It just picked up everything and put it in a big pile in the back. Now, we had a showcase in the front, right in the front that we had been selling the historical books, the showcase, loaded with books belonged to the Historical Society. This was a two-piece showcase, it was a showcase set on some legs. I don t know what happened to the legs, but the top part of it floated and it was about eight feet high, right up on the top of a big pile of stuff. The books in it weren t even wet, not even a spot on them. We were talking about it the next day when we were trying to clean it out, trying to salvage what we could. I told the fellow when they said, What will we do about that? I said, That is a right good place for it, leave it right there. Those books are alright, we ll get to those later. Well, that was a mistake, we went down the next morning and the moisture from wetting that showcase the glue loosened up and the whole thing fell apart and all our books were in about a foot of mud on the floor. So we lost the whole works anyway. I did have a chance to salvage those, but you would just stand and wonder and look at it and wonder how in the world things could be messed up so bad. I was real fortunate in that my grandson and his wife and one of his friends and his wife, they were two young couples and they had both just got out of the Marines, and they were out on vacation, see. They happened to be in Idaho Falls when the flood hit, so my grandson called me and asked if they could come up and help me. I said, Sure. Well, here come four of them. HF: How did he call you? We didn t have a telephone. DW: Well, he called through the radio, the police, up at the college. The military police were controlling traffic coming in and he got them to get me and for me to get permission for them to come through. You see the police were controlling the people coming in because of vandalism. He had to get permission from me so he could come in. That s the way they got me through our local police and they come in and helped me. Boy, that was the best thing that ever happened to me. Those four young people worked like beavers for about a week. They stayed with us at the home and they really helped us to get everything going. Like I stated before I had had surgery recently and was kind of weak myself. But those four young people were really lifesavers. HF: What procedure and process did you follow in having them help you? Explain just how you cleaned this gun shop up and the Historical Society. DW: They had a pickup and I had my car. We moved our stuff as much as I could of the gun shop equipment into their pickup and my car and hauled it up. I have a two-car garage on my house and we stored everything in there. We did at least have a place to store it, and put it out of the way for the time being. We moved, with those four young people, and some other volunteer help, some of my relations from down Idaho Falls, we got most of the gun shop stuff moved. But man I had firearms in every room of the house. The place was clear full of stuff. We did get by a lot better than a lot of people because even if they did salvage something they had no place to store it. With us we were fortunate in that we did have a place to take it. We were up above the mud, we could get whatever we were trying to salvage and haul it up there and wash it out and get

11 11 it really salvaged. I really feel sorry for those people who had to work right in the mud. Even it they did get something cleaned up they had no place to put it even after they got it cleaned. HF: Were a lot of your guns fallen into the mud, or were some of them still DW: No, I was very fortunate. I have this big collection of antique firearms and there wasn t a one of them, that is the long ones I had some antique pistols stored in the showcase and they were flooded, but we didn t lose any of them, we got them out and cleaned them. It usually meant complete disassembly and cleaning and oiling to prevent rust, and reassemble but I was real fortunate in that I didn t lose any firearms. We did have a few customers firearms that I missed because they were in gun cases stored under the counter. Of course, when you have that pressure on you you don t think too clearly and I didn t get them out. I had time if I could of thought of them. One other kind of humorous thing, I was taking everything out that I had and I stood right over these two commemorative pistols. They were brand new; they were expensive guns, they sold for about $250 apiece and I had two of them in showcases. They were Colorado commemorative pistols and I completely forgot them. All I had to do was pick up the little box, all I had to do was take them with me. They were kind of behind some other stuff and I hadn t noticed them so I completely missed them and left them there. They got flooded, but we got them out soon enough so that it didn t hurt them. We cleaned them up. The only thing was that the display box would go to pieces. All of the display boxes went to pieces. HF: Now, when were you able to get down into the basement part and start doing something with the artifacts that were stored down there? When were you able to get the water out of there? DW: Well, this was another place where we were a little fortunate, I don t know how you would put it. In the basement of most of those stores they had complete cement floors. In our basement we had about a fourth or a third of the floor was cement, the rest was gravel. This provided a way for the water to get away. It drained out on its own accord. We didn t have to pump any water out of the basement. But, of course, in filtering itself out like that it left about eighteen inches of silt in there. And then, of course, the gravel floor, that all became mud after we began tromping through it. We had one terrific time getting things out of there. When it come to the salvage see, I got my own people in there and got most of my stuff out, except the big machinery, the lathe and the milling machine and some of those things that we couldn t move. Then after the church started bringing in volunteer help, then we got a lot of help. The LDS people, mostly, they come in there by the dozens. And here again, President Grant was watching out for me and sent me so much help that it just about worked me to death keeping them busy. HF: How readily did these people become available, within the following week? DW: Oh, yes, yes within just a few days they were available. All we had to do was go over to our ward chapel there, it was the Fourth Ward, and tell the brethren that were

12 12 distributing the help there how many men you needed, how many men or women or whatever was needed. Then they would send them to you. HF: Do you recall specifically how many would usually come? How many you actually put to work? DW: Oh, I imagine we had as high as twenty at one time. The most we had. Usually we d get them in groups of ten and then we work ten at a time. HF: What would you assign them to do? DW: Well, we just had to go through and clean the muck and mud out and salvage any article that we figured we could salvage. I told them if there was any question on it to save it, we could throw it away later if it wasn t any good. We had a lot of ladies that worked hard that tried to help salvage the pictures and stuff, but this was really kind of a losing battle. We do have some of them that we may be able to copy and get pictures off of them now. Most of them, after they dried, just curled up. HF: And so the persons who were there, did some of them use shovels, hoses? DW: Shovels, mostly, and buckets to carry the stuff out. Wheelbarrows to wheel it out. It was wheeled out behind the parking lot there. We dumped it there and big scoops picked it up and hauled it away from there. HF: Now that was the Bureau of Engineers? DW: I guess the BOR was managing that but while there was so many, many people that donated equipment, too. Backhoes, front-end loaders, trucks everything. There was just people everywhere and there were no questions asked if you wanted something moved they would move it. You didn t know who they were or where they come from, or who was paying them, or anything of that sort. It was just everyone working. HF: In the course of the cleanup, DeWayne, did you personally come to know anything that had been taken from your premises? DW: I don t know of a thing. I don t think if we did, I don t know of losing any, not a thing. The people were interested in helping us. They weren t interested in themselves. I had ladies come in there and wade into that muck half-way to their knees and work through that with their hands to try and find small artifacts. We had a lot of small Indian arrowheads in one big showcase and we couldn t find any of them. I don t know what happened to them. The ladies, I had six or seven ladies, went through that stuff. Most of them had rubber gloves on because we encouraged them to do that so as not to get infections from scratching themselves in that muck and so on. They found a lot of the larger Indian rocks, the stuff that was in the showcase, but they never did find the arrowheads. I don t know what happened to them.

13 13 HF: Where were the salvageable artifacts that you were able to get out of the place, where were those taken? DW: Well, the things from the museum we moved some out on the street. We moved some in the place next door to us. It had a cement floor in it and it was washed out and it was clean. Mr. Catmull told us that we could use that to dry our pictures in and things like that. We put some in there and then Ricks College said we could use some of the storage area in the Hart Building up there. We stored the entire museum in there right after the flood everything we salvaged. Then, of course, when school got started they got going, we had to move out of there because they needed the space so we took about five truck loads down to Hibbard, and about four truck loads down to the dump even after we had sorted for a long time. We stored the rest of the material is now stored down in Hibbard at Kendall Ballard s home. He has a big barn out in the back there and we have it stored in there. HF: Now DeWayne, to be responsible to this other question or questions maybe you will have to be rather specific as it applied to you, yourself, and your business and the historical society. You mentioned that you received a lot of assistance through volunteers. Did you receive any aid through other, say the LDS Church Welfare storage program? DW: No, no we didn t apply for any. We didn t need it. See, our home wasn t hurt. People who lost their home and everything, they needed those supplies and that support, but we didn t, we had our food supply and everything else, our home and a place to work and a place to live, so we didn t need to apply for any of those. HF: Did the interfaith groups, in any way, assist you in your business or in the Historical Society? DW: As far as I know, no. The Red Cross give us, at the dispersing place there in the Hart Building, they gave us shovels and buckets and disinfectants and things of that kind. HF: Now, in the course of recovering from the disaster, have you employed the aid of any government agency, whether it is on a state, county, or federal level? DW: No, no. I am working now with the BOR on the museum claim, but it seems we have to break everything down individually. Now, we had the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, their materials was displayed with ours and I had their material in with the historical society when we filed the claim. Then I had to take it out and separate it from the Upper Snake River Valley so there it had to be two separate claims. Then I have got to make a separate claim on myself. So actually I am working on three different claims now. So far I have received nothing. The only thing I have received by way of federal help is they did give us five weeks unemployment for Lee and me and my wife. HF: Now these claims, that is the claim in behalf of the Upper Snake River Valley Historical Society has been presented to the BOR and it hadn t been paid as yet?

14 14 DW: No, it hasn t been paid yet. HF: You intend to put in your own private claim, or course? DW: Yes. HF: Now, in the course of the disaster and its recovery, did you have occasion to call upon any law enforcement officer? DW: No. HF: For help or to give aid? DW: Only for getting vehicles down through the roadblock below Thornton. My daughter and my son-in-law from Idaho Falls come and helped us quite a bit. We just had to get permits for them to come through and that was the only assistance that we had to ask for. HF: Do you feel that the law enforcement officers of Rexburg and the Sheriff s Office of Madison County performed efficient service? DW: I had nothing to do with either one of them either the City Police or the county. The only ones we dealt with were the ones up at the military headquarters there in coming through the roadblock. Those were the only things we had anything to do with. HF: From your observations, or from what people have told you, do you feel, would your evaluation be a pretty good one of what they did? DW: Yes, I think all of them were quite efficient. I was real impressed with the way military government handled it Gray Clawson was in charge up there and gee, I got anything I ever asked for right now! I didn t have any trouble. I guess there was some real vandalism going on around the valley and they had a little trouble controlling that. HF: Have you heard of anyone being vandalized? Without mentioning any names, do you know of anyone who were vandalized by outsiders? DW: Oh, yes there were a few of them. Not a lot of them. HF: Do you know of any instances where persons presented false claims to the BOR, without mentioning any names? DW: No, I don t know of any, I ve heard rumors, but to know of it, no, no, I don t. HF: Mr. Wilding as we come and draw to the conclusion of this interview, let me just go back a moment, you mentioned that in the course of the construction and the preparation

15 15 of the dam you opposed its construction. Would you like to comment why you opposed the construction of the Teton Dam? DW: I guess I can be called an environmentalist. I think that any American that can t be called an environmentalist should be ashamed of himself. But the values of the Teton Dam were completely exaggerated. I think the benefits in irrigation would go to about one hundred people in all and the benefits were so exaggerated in proportion to the costs the things that we would lose by the construction of the Teton Dam, I think were completely out of proportion. I ve lived on that river now for about sixty-five years, so I know a little bit about it from experience. Now we have had some floods in Rexburg. We do have high water floods in good snow years, but in my lifetime, every flood that we ve had in Rexburg or in Sugar City, we have caused it ourselves. Now, this is a little hard to explain. But the construction that the highway and the railroad had gone through through this valley now you know the highway and the railroad runs diagonally through the valley it runs from southwest to northeast and the rivers run west. We never have, the engineers have never made ample room for the water to go under these highways or the railroad. So when the river is full under the highway then it s got to flood over. And these highways are built in such a way, the highway north of Sugar City and the railroad north of Sugar City, serve as a dike and turn all surplus water right through the city of Sugar City. The same thing is exactly true right here in Rexburg. When I was young there was two bridges out here to let the Teton River through and we didn t have water get into town then, not near as much as we have had recently since they started construction out there. But if they would make more room for the water to go under the highways and under the railroads they could solve this whole problem. They could solve the flood problem of the Teton River for one cent on the dollar of what they have spent now on the Teton Dam. If they could dike the river a minimum of a block and a maximum of two blocks and leave the inside of the river for the river to live in the river has got to have a place to live and people have turned in the dry season and built a home or barn right in the river bottom and then they get made [mad] when it floods in the spring. It is natural to flood, it has been flooding there since history, since white people have been here and even before that. And when people go there and build I think they should expect the flood, unless they dike around it or something of that sort. We are quite dam oriented in this northwest because dams have been a terrific benefit and I am not opposed to dams because they have the lifeblood of our civilization here in the west. There are other ways of controlling these streams and things other than dams. Now all the water in the Teton River is decreed water anyway. The only way to get water in the Teton Dam anyway is to pump water to replace it down here in the valley. Why not pump that water into non-irrigated lands in the first place. The whole Teton Dam history was for supplemental water, it wasn t for original water or to water arid land, it was just supplemental water on land that was already being farmed. So I don t think the Teton Dam should ever be rebuilt. I, of course, don t think I ll ever live long enough to see it if they do rebuild it, but it is a very poor project from start to finish and it proved itself in the way, in what things happened. HF: Mr. Wilding, there is a question here that you may wish to respond to. Do you feel that the flood came as divine punishment to the people of this area?

16 16 DW: No, definitely not! Now you know for yourself, and of course, you and I are both LDS and by far the majority of this area are LDS people. Now you know when the LDS people start on any kind of a project of any kind, I don t care whether it is a dam, whether it is a church house, whether it is a stake center, whether it is a temple, whether it is a storehouse, or what it is, the first thing we do, we dedicate the land to that purpose. Then we are always in continual prayer and ask for help from our Heavenly Father in the construction and in wise planning and in all this kind of stuff and then the people who build our LDS buildings, most of them pay tithing on their salaries, well, I ll bet there wasn t one-tenth of one percent of tithing paid on wages on the Teton Dam. I don t think the Lord did this as punishment, but when we go off on our own, we don t ask the Lord for His help, so he doesn t help us and we can sure make a mess of things without His help. And I think that is just what happened here. I think it is time where the LDS people where we are as strong as we are in this community put a stop to that kind of stuff and see that it is done our way and then it will be a permanent thing. The way it went this time, I am well acquainted with a lot of men who worked on that dam and I can only point out one or two who would pay tithing on their salaries, so I don t think the Lord s help was asked in that dam at all. So I think He let us go on our own, what else can He do if we won t ask for His help? I think we ve got the result of our own labor. A manmade disaster from start to finish. HF: Now, as we come to the last inquiry, Mr. Wilding, I would like to inquire how has the bursting of the Teton Dam changed or effected your life and what it might be in the future? DW: Well, it has put me out of business, that s all. Of course, I ve had a lot of my friends say, Well, you are ready to retire, so stay out of business now. I can t be idle, I m not the kind of person that can do that, I have to have something to do. I[ d] like to start to get my gun shop together again and get it operating. Even to sell out I have to do that.