On One Street In Waverly, Residents Take Stock Of The Loss

When Gary Bowman saw what was coming down Daniel Street, it was already too late to get out.

“​​I was standing on this porch when the water started coming down,” he recalls. “It didn’t come a little at the time. It came in a wall — starting about like that…”

He holds his hand up just under chest high.

“…and just kept getting bigger and bigger.”

In his 70s, Bowman stood on a post on his porch and held on to the roof for over an hour. His boots filled with water, but he made it through.

Now his house, like every other one on the street, is muddy—and empty.

Residents of the flood-ravaged neighborhoods in Waverly are now sorting through what’s left of their belongings, salvaging what they can while waiting for insurance companies and FEMA to hear if they’ll be able to rebuild or not. They’re feeling the scope of the loss, but also lending each other a hand in the cleanup.

“The whole house, everything is gone,” says Gary’s sister, Lisa. She’s just one of several family members who have come to help in any way they can.

“He lost everything,” she says. “He’s lost his truck. He’s lost his home. And we’re just here to support him.”

Tasha Lemley WPLN News

Gary Bowman sits outside his home.

Bowman’s neighborhood alongside Trace Creek is filled with gutted properties. Piles of soggy furniture, clothing, books and photographs are in every yard. The whole area smells like ruin and looks like a mass eviction.

Still, people are there to help sort, clean and support — saving anything they can. Others swing by to hand out food and Gatorade.

“I’ve never experienced this before,” says Ted Rice. He lives just a couple houses down from Bowman, on the corner with Maple Street. He says he’s more used to being the one doing the helping, and this role reversal is challenging for him.

“I’ve always tried to help everybody else,” he says. “Now, it’s me. I’ve never gone through this.”

Rice is a florist, and he was out delivering flowers when the flood came.

“I came back down here and the water was over the front yard,” he says. “The waves were just like, you see it, the ocean … when the high tide comes in.”

It’s the third flood since he’s lived there. The other times, he just had to clean ductwork under the house and replace his HVAC unit. This time, his house filled with water to the halfway point and rearranged the furniture.

“Nothing broke, it just like floated and just sat back down on the floor in a different place,” he says. “Isn’t that amazing?”

Rice is also the president of the Humphreys County Museum, so he’s professionally sentimental. Much of what he lost had some historical value: books signed by President Carter and other politicians, family heirlooms passed on to him because of his archival tendencies, recipe cards handwritten by famed Tennessee chef Phila Hach.

“Before Ms. Phila died, she said, ‘Now you need to take this recipe down.’ And I said, ‘Well, you’re going to have put it in your handwriting.'”

He recalls Hach asking why. “I said, ‘So later on, I know that you did it,'” he says. “And so I had a lot of people do that. All the recipes are gone and that’s the sad part.”

The good news for Rice, is what was lost — even if they can’t be replaced — were just things.

“At least I got the pleasure of having it at one time,” he says. “Because you know, really we’re just stewards of this stuff, and it’s stuff.”

Tasha Lemley WPLN News

Damaged items lie on Maple Street.

Correction: A earlier version of a photo caption in this story misidentified where a pile of damaged items was located. It was on Maple Street, not Daniel Street.