Published: July 19, 2007 11:52 pm            

Faces of the Flood: Mother lost husband, two young sons

Final story in a monthlong series on the 1977 Johnstown Flood

A few of their toys remained, stuck in the thick mud left behind by raging floodwaters.

But Beverly Platt’s two young boys were gone, as was her husband and most of her home – all swept away in a deluge that left the family no chance to escape from their Dale Borough home.

Three decades later, Platt has made her peace with Johnstown’s 1977 flood.

But her memories are as indelible as her boys’ names, etched into her back by a tattooing needle.

“Life goes on, and you’ve got to move on,” Platt said. “They’re still in my heart. They’ll always be in my heart.”

The fierce storms that struck the evening of July 19, 1977, did not alarm Platt. She recalls standing on her porch, talking to a neighbor, “Just watching the rain.”

But when one of her children woke up sometime after midnight, she looked outside and realized that disaster literally was on her doorstep. Platt, whose surname was Smith at the time, alerted her husband Jim that his car had just floated away.

The family huddled together in an upstairs bedroom.

“We just heard the water coming up, and you could hear things crashing down on the first floor,” Platt said.

They watched as the roof above them broke apart.

Then, she said, “We were gone.”

Platt instinctively grabbed her youngest son, Todd. But the current ripped him from her hands.

“I could swim,” she said. “But not in that water.”

Knocked unconscious by debris, Platt was carried into the city’s Hornerstown section. There, a still-unidentified man wrapped a garden hose around his waist and went into the water to rescue her.

Though exhausted, dazed and covered in mud, Platt was safe. She recalls a reunion with her father and brother the morning after the storm, then a trip to the hospital.

She could get no firm answers on her family’s whereabouts. People drifted into her room, asking what her children had been wearing.

Then the worst possible news arrived, a series of emotional blows landing in quick succession. Platt’s father was called to identify the body of her 8-year-old, Troy.

“Then they gave me a wallet, which was Jim’s,” she said.

Seven-year-old Todd was dead, too. Platt’s wounds had been stitched, but there was nothing at the hospital that could salve her grief.

“They wanted to give me pills, and I refused to take anything,” she said. “I guess you are numb. I don’t know.”

Platt had a simple request: She wanted to go home and make funeral arrangements for her husband and children. But she had suffered a concussion and was forced to stay in the hospital overnight.

When Platt was able to return to the site of her Messenger Street house, only ghostly reminders of her family remained: A single kitchen wall still standing, a stove with a ceramic teapot on top, a roll of paper towels that somehow were not wet, utensils her boys had used for a snack the night of the flood.

In the days and weeks that followed, Platt did her best to maintain her composure and get on with the business of living.

She buried her children side-by-side in their baseball uniforms. She moved in with her parents. She even took a trip to Florida.

“You can’t run,” Platt said. “When you come back, it’s still there.”

And the flood of 1977 did signal not the end of Platt’s troubles.

Though she remarried, her second husband was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1984. He died in 2004, and the couple did not have any children.

These days, Platt lives and works in Maryland. She still thinks about the flood, usually around the time of each anniversary.

But a strong will to survive is evident in her voice, even as she reminisces. It is clear that, though the flood pulled her under once, it will not happen again.

“You can’t dwell on the past,” Platt said. “It will drag you down.”

        

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