ANSONIA – When Kathy Johnson woke up seventy years ago on Aug. 19, she said it was raining cats and dogs.
Johnson, who was 8 years old at the time, said she didn’t think much of it. Nor did her younger brother, until they both saw helicopters whizzing by their home.
“We were up there on the top floor, it was a Victorian house, watching everything go by. Watching the furniture store, all the furniture floating by, caskets going by. The water was running dirty brown,” she said.
Johnson – a former First Selectwoman of Oxford who was raised in Ansonia – gave her account as part of Ansonia’s 70-year remembrance ceremony for the Flood of 1955. Held at Vartelas Park on Maple Street, the ceremony drew in about 50 people to remember the tragic flood which devastated the Valley.
After two back-to-back hurricanes poured down on Connecticut that August, rivers across the state overflowed their banks. The tragedy took 91 lives, including four in the Valley, and caused over $46 million in damages in the Valley alone, according to The Electronic Valley.
Those damages included the Vartelas family grocery store, which was washed away, and Spector Furniture, whose inventory was carried by the rushing waters through the streets.
But tragedy wasn’t the theme of the remembrance ceremony.
Rather, speakers including attorney and flood survivor Gregory Stamos, Ansonia Mayor David Cassetti, Seymour First Selectwoman Annmarie Drugonis, and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, spoke about the resilience the Valley demonstrated in its darkest days.
Stamos remembered how Peter Waniga ferried people across the bridge on Maple Street until the bridge collapsed – with his station wagon still on it. He remembered how Edward Cotter, the founder of Derby Storms and a photographer for The Evening Sentinel, worked through the storm while also documenting the disaster for future generations.
He said Ansonia became stronger after that day, pointing as an example to the still-standing flood walls which were built by the Army Corps of Engineers after the disaster. And he remembered how his own grandmother, Paraskeve Vartelas, looked downhill as the family’s livelihood was being swept downstream. She blessed herself, Stamos said, turned away, and walked home.
“The Valley knows how to take a blow and continue on,” Stamos said.
Cassetti, whose father worked as a police officer through the storm, said the flood was a starting point for the identity of both Ansonia and the Valley as a whole.
“In many ways, the modern Ansonia we know today was built from that moment forward. As mayor, I believe it’s our responsibility not just to honor the hardships of that time, but to honor the perseverance of those who came before us: their determination, their faith, and their commitment,” Cassetti said.
The ceremony also reflected on last year’s floods which once again devastated the Valley. Although Ansonia was spared the worst of the damage this time, the stormwaters killed two women in Oxford and destroyed large swathes of Seymour.
U.S. Sen. Blumenthal said the state learned from the tenacity the Valley showed in 1955, and that it could stand to learn again from the Valley after Aug. 18, 2024.
“I will always admire and love the Valley because of that human quality which can never be captured by those numbers. It is something in your DNA, and Connecticut could learn a lot of lessons from it,” Blumenthal said. “And I think these walls that now line the river are an example of what we need to do as a state to prepare for that 100-year storm, which unfortunately is becoming more and more the new normal.”
Seymour First Selectwoman Drugonis, whose town commemorated the 2024 flood recently, agreed that Connecticut could learn from the Valley. She called the Naugatuck Valley “a small part of Connecticut with a big heart.”
She said that in 2024, just like in 1955, the borders between the cities and towns of the Valley ceased to matter.
“You would never know we were separate towns,” Drugonis said. “The Valley comes together as one.”
A new addition to the ceremony was a table set up by Derby Public Library, where photos of the flood taken by Harold B. Yudkin were on display. Those images are also on exhibit at the library until September, according to library local history coordinator Christine Boulay.
A video of U.S. Sen. Blumenthal’s remarks is embedded below.