50th anniversary, 1964 flood

[Ptah]

http://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/local/2014/05/25/50th-anniversary-1964-flood/9563135/


Memories of the 1964 flood and the people who were lost.

BROWNING – Phillip Rattler, also called Papoose, inspects gravestones beneath white crosses
at a Catholic cemetery 14 miles south of here off of U.S. Highway 89, where the Rocky Mountains,
still holding snow, look sugar glazed.

"This is '64 here," says Rattler, pausing and noting the death date carved into one.

"'64 here,'" he says at another grave, as he recites the year again and again while walking down rows.

The 1964 flood in Montana claimed 31 lives, many of them children and all but one on the Blackfeet Reservation.
Its 50th anniversary is June 7 and June 8.

[Delmette]

1. I remember that flood.

I was eleven years old and lived in a town amazingly spared. So much around us was flooded. I saved a book put out by the Tribune. One picture that stands out is of a boy from Browning being rescued by helicopter. It's so sad that the Blackfoot Reservation suffered so many losses. My thoughts are with the families.