Fargo's fortitude not at all surprising

I've been preoccupied with the flooding in Fargo, N.D. the past couple of weeks. As many of you know, I grew up just down the road on the Minnesota side of Fargo and I've got plenty of relatives still living in the Fargo-Moorhead area. These are my people.

And while I didn't get in on the massive sandbagging effort, I was there in spirit, hoping and praying those manmade levees would hold.

In the worst peril of my family members was my youngest brother Wayne and his wife, who live in an older Fargo neighborhood not far from the river. They and other neighbors built a dike within a dike and had sump pumps running around the clock. They moved their dogs to an out-of-town shelter and stashed their vehicles at our farm near Hawley, Minn. Then it was a lot of waiting and watching.

Their efforts paid off. My brother e-mailed me this week to say the dike held and "we are no longer locked in a 'bathtub' waiting to fill."

My Aunt Virgie was evacuated from her Moorhead home and a cousin with a new home near Moorhead State was on standby to leave at a moment's notice.

News reporters nationwide marveled at the fortitude of Fargo-Moorhead people and the cohesiveness of the sandbagging effort.

There were all kinds of goodwill stories coming out of Fargo last week: people giving out their phone numbers on radio talk shows, offering shelter to strangers in need; people bringing quilts and chicken dinners to evacuees holed up in hotels.

And I know that there must have been hundreds of church ladies cranking out hot dishes (known to the rest of the world as casseroles), Jell-O salads and pies for the weary sandbaggers.

I would expect nothing less of the folks back home.

Maybe you have to have lived in the Fargo area to fully understand the tenacity of a people who, faced with two blizzards during the course of record flooding, still shrug and say, "It could always be worse."

Winters are brutal in that part of the country, and this isn't the first time the Red River has spilled over onto the flatlands of the Red River Valley. Neighbors watching out for one another is part of the fabric of life there.

The kind of camaraderie shown during the flood isn't an anomaly, and I'm proud to come from a place that still today has such a sense of community.

A Fargo pastor summed it up well: "This will be one of those markers that we will all talk about for the rest of our lives - how people helped each other out."

As of Friday, the Red River had fallen to 35.64 feet, down from the historic 40.82-foot crest that broke a 112-year-old flood record.

The water is still high, though, the ground frozen and snow banks still languishing as the long, arduous cleanup begins.

God bless Fargo and Moorhead, and all of the struggling communities along the swollen Red River. You've always had my heart; now you have the nation's heart as well.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com