Thomas Lenart, Sr. of Derby posted this video to YouTube on Sunday and sent the link to the Valley Indy.
The video features the late Clarence Douglass narrating images shot during the devastating floods of August and October 1955.
Last week was the 56th anniversary of the August flood.
Thank you to Tom Lenart for the video.
Here is the 40-minute audio documentary we posted last week. It is the ‘Flood of ‘55’ LP loaned to us by Chad and Derek Jansen of Shelton.
Voices heard on the record from New Haven’s WAVZ include:
- Tiny Markle, the program director and disc jockey
- George Lezotte, a radio reporter who did interviews from the emergency room at St. Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury
- Daniel W. Kops, the station’s vice-president and general manager who wrote the script
- George Phillips, the station’s news editor, who related information from the field to the public. Phone service during the flood was virtually non-existent.
Shelton’s Chad Jansen and the Valley Indy staff react to the recordings after hearing them for the first time:
Joseph Brady of Ansonia brought old photo albums from the flood to the Ansonia Senior Center to share with us. His photos can be seen below:
Here are some links to Flood of ’55 information online:
- The Electronic Valley
- The Hartford Courant 50th anniversary package.
- The Connecticut State Library Flood of 1955 page.
- ‘The Lost‘ — a list of casualties from the Flood, as compiled by Jeanne LeBlanc while she was at the Hartford Courant.
- National Weather Service Flood of 1955 page.
- Waterbury Time Machine, a website about Waterbury history includes a page dedicated to flood memories, photos and videos.
- “Even The Dead Were Torn From Their Graves“ — a Sunday Herald article in a Flood of 1955 supplement.
- The Connecticut Flood Recovery Committee Report, also inserted at the end of this article.
