PORTSMOUTH, Ohio--Portsmouth's historic 1937 Ohio River Flood was not only a destructive force but also a unifying one, bringing a community together for rescue, cleanup, and rebuilding.  Sixty-five years later the flood is still bringing the community together as River Voices, John and Nathan Lorentz's film documentary about the '37 flood, links a number of Portsmouth projects and organizations together with the river and flood as unifying themes.

            The 60-minute documentary, scheduled to premiere at Shawnee State University (SSU) October 5, 2002, chronicles Portsmouth's battle with the flood that covered nearly two-thirds of the town and took the life of one Portsmouth resident.  Taking nearly two and a half years to complete, it has found itself connected with community members, area businesses, Noah Adams of National Public Radio, musical score writer Mikael Jacobson, local schools, Shawnee State University, and countless civic groups. 

Indeed, the massive undertaking of gathering the stories and artifacts of the flood, producing the video, and finding a place for the documentary once it is complete has involved countless contacts and ultimately brought people together. 

John Lorentz, Ph.D., director of the Center for International Programs and Activities, professor of history at SSU, and co-producer of River Voices, explained, "I had no idea how great an interest there was.  We really tapped into something here." 

John Lorentz said he was always interested in the flood since his parents lost their Fourth Street home to the flood and he grew up with stories of the fateful event.  Years later he recognized that the survivors of the historic event, which had very little documentation, were dying and soon it would be too late to record the stories.

"I realized that if someone didn't do something soon, it would be too late," John Lorentz said. 

In what John Lorentz described as a "fortuitous moment" his son, Nathan, was graduating from a master's program in film and video production at the American University in Washington D.C., and at the graduation party, John Lorentz proposed a collaborative effort to produce a documentary using Nathan's technical and his humanities expertise.  Nathan liked the idea and thus began what has turned into a project much larger than either Lorentz had expected, spawning enormous interest locally, statewide, and nationally with notable collaborative efforts.

That teamwork began in the fall of 1999 when John and Nathan Lorentz began collaborating with Jerry Holt, Ph.D., dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at SSU.  Holt was teaching a class free to the community on River Studies focusing on a number of themes such as the river and literature, film, disease, archeology, art, music, and other areas.  Each week of the 10-week course Holt would bring in an expert to address the class comprised of approximately 150 community members.  One night, though, Holt made the community members the experts, the night they discussed the 1937 flood.  That night something extraordinary happened.  Survivors, many of whom were children during the flood, revealed a historical treasure trove.  Unaware that their diaries, logs, photos, and home film were anything more than family keepsakes, many historically valuable artifacts and testimonies were brought to light, including four films, a couple that were previously unknown.  People didn't realize that anyone else might be interested in their experiences and mementos.  Many of these stories were used in River Voices and the videos provided footage for the documentary, making the River Studies class instrumental in the documentary process.   

"That was one of the most interesting things that I've been involved in since I've been at SSU," Holt said.

Strangely, because many of the class members were children during the flood, unless they lost everything, they had happy memories of the event, because they had time away from school.  However, Holt noted that this was an experience of only one section of the community, the white community.  Once the subject of the sole fatality of the flood, that of Bessie Tomlin, was discussed by Tomlin's child, Alberta Parker, whom she saved before her death, it became apparent the black community had a much different experience. 

"She [Parker] told some amazing kinds of stories about the way the story was known in the black community as opposed to the white community," Holt recalled.

Parker also shared that she felt her mother would have liked to be remembered by being portrayed on the murals of the floodwall, which is a direct result of the '37 flood, protecting Portsmouth from another such disaster. 

Holt said that he had two realizations as a result of the discussion of Bessie Tomlin. 

"One of them is how significant those murals have become to us,” he said. “They are our collective history.  And the other thing I got was how emblematic that story is because until it was told, in our recorded history there was no African-American experience here of the '37 flood….That wasn't anybody's fault.  That was America 1937.”

That mural did in fact become a reality with artist Robert Dafford sealing the history of the flood and Bessie Tomlin's sacrifice on a panel of the wall that protects the city from the waters of the Ohio River.  The mural project is currently being completed with the final dedication ceremony planned in conjunction with the premiere of River Voices on October 5. 

The final touch to the murals will be realized if the goal of the Southern Ohio Growth Partnership, Portsmouth Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, Greater Portsmouth Growth Corporation, Retail Merchants, and Chamber of Commerce is achieved.  According to Brenda Marth, executive director for the Portsmouth Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, the group has submitted a grant proposal to the National Scenic Byway committee to fund a project to turn the Kendrick's building into a welcome center, where mural tours can meet, local artists can display work, a portion of the Native American Indian art can be exhibited, a gift shop can be set up, and information provided on Ohio and the Portsmouth area.  In addition, River Voices will have a home and can be shown to groups touring the murals and the area.  Marth sees the welcome center as a way to expand tourism to Portsmouth.

"It's a way to bring in more people to the area," she said.

 The welcome center will also be an asset to local schools, which will be able to bring students to the center for field trips.  Already there has been work with area schools to incorporate River Voices into the classroom.  In fact, this past academic year, a group of SSU teacher education students prepared curriculum modules to introduce the documentary and 1937 flood to students.  The effort was so successful that the six students presented their work to the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSA) Great Lakes Regional Conference in Indianapolis. 

In addition, the curriculum modules have been made available to local schools.  Of course, with districts just beginning classes, teachers have not had the opportunity to implement the modules.  However, according to Kay Freeman, curriculum coordinator for the South Central Ohio Education Service Center, there is a real possibility that educators will be interested in using them.  She hopes to introduce the option to teachers as curriculum committees meet early on this school year.  Thus, another generation may have the opportunities to learn of Portsmouth's historical disaster that united people to rebuild their city.

The film premiere of River Voices is scheduled for October 5 at 7:30 p.m. in the Vern Riffe Center for the Arts at Shawnee State University, and is free and open to the public.  For more information call (740) 351-3223.