A look back: After devastating 1994 flood, Americus families find loss ‘unbelievable’

This article first appeared in the Ledger-Enquirer on July 3, 1995.

In a peach-colored house he bought with his wife, John A. Hurley Jr. sat in his living room trying to explain what his life has been like since the merciless waters of a flood pulled his family away from him forever.

When the Murphy’s Mill Dam broke early on the morning of July 6, 1994, it sent Town Creek gushing over its banks just as Hurley, his wife, Kathy Renea Hurley, 29, and the couple’s 2-year-old son, John A. Hurley III, were driving near the creek on Georgia Highway 19.

“We got to a low level on the street and the water started coming in the bottom of the door, so we decided to back up,” said Hurley, leaning his head on the back of the couch to stare at the ceiling. “When we backed up, the water had rose up and it hit the back of the car and spun it across the road. We sat there for a minute and the water started coming in the bottom of the door.”

Hurley decided to get out and go for help. But when he tried to crawl out the car window, the water “just took the car,” he remembers.

“I was hanging out of the window and when the car came to a stop, the water pulled me out of the car,” Hurley said. “I went under the water trying to go back to the car, but it just pushed me further away. When I came up, that’s when I saw the car go nose down in the water.”

Helpless to do anything, Hurley swam with the water’s current to the top of a building, where he was rescued by an emergency crew on a boat.

Immediately, he told Americus police Lt. Nelson Brown where the car was last seen and the search began. Brown was part of a rescue crew with the department.

“That was Wednesday and they found my wife on Saturday and my son on Sunday. He would have been 3 on (Saturday) July 9,” Hurley said.

Hurley’s wife and son were two of 15 people who died as a result of the flood in Americus and Sumter County. The death toll of the flood reached 31 in Georgia, but no where else in the state had a higher death toll than Americus.

Visibly trying to control his emotions, Hurley said the last year has been “real tough,” but his family and his wife’s family have gathered around him to support him.

“They helped a whole lot. Especially one brother, Sam, spent a whole lot of time with me,” said Hurley, who has three brothers and four sisters in Americus.

Hurley’s mother-in-law, Lucy Anderson, lives next door and his sister-in-law, Mary Anderson, lives nearby. Also, Mary’s 16-year-old son, Rontae Angry, moved in with Hurley shortly after the tragedy.

Hurley said his mother-in-law has been like a mother to him since his own mother’s death two years ago and having his sister-in-law and nephew with him is a blessing.

“I also take counseling and it has helped me,” said Hurley, who has been left angry and frustrated by his ordeal. “I learned to deal with a lot of things I never thought I’d be able to deal with.”

On both sides of a sofa in Hurley’s living room hang pictures of Renea Hurley and John III. A plaque on the wall bears the following words:

Our Hearts Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while and leave and we are never the same.

On Hurley’s coffee table is a coffee cup bearing the photos of Renea and John III, with “Always Remember” emblazoned on the top and “The Hurley Family” written below. The same saying decorates the back of the mug. Hurley also has their photos with the same words on a shirt and a cap.

Hurley said the saying is “about the only way” to describe how he feels about the loss of his family.

On June 26, Renea Hurley would have been 30. To commemorate her birthday, Hurley visited Jerusalem Cemetery in Americus where his wife and son are buried.

“Renea was always smiling, everybody liked her,” Hurley said with a tender smile. “I was talking about her today and I’ve never found anyone who ever said anything bad about her. She was just a real happy person.”

He and Renea Hurley met around 1985. They “more or less just ran into each other and started talking,” according to Hurley.

John Hurley finally asked Renea Hurley to marry him and the couple were married in 1988.

The couple had been married about three years when John III was born.

“He had a special toy he loved to play with — it was a little tricycle,” Hurley said, smiling through tears. “He’d mostly push it. His feet wouldn’t quite touch the pedals.”

Under the windows in the kitchen, beside a table, there are a couple of streaks made with a black marker where Hurley said his son “more or less left his mark.”

The scribbles are not the only thing Hurley cannot bring himself to part with.

“Some things help to have around, but some things I just don’t even want to see because they remind me of her so much,” Hurley said of his wife.

He has kept the house almost completely the same and has kept his family’s belongings.

“It’s hard to just get rid of it, but in a way I want to,” he said. “Everything is pretty well the same, except my bedroom. That’s not quite as clean as it used to be.”

Given the chance, Hurley would tell his wife and son one thing — “How much I love them,” he said, looking away.

In Americus, the only physical reminders of the 15 people who lost their lives are a plaque in front of the Public Safety Building on South Lee Street that bears their names and three small white crosses at the side of Georgia Highway 280 between Americus and Plains, marking the place where three victims were found.

But for Walter Stapleton Jr., there are reminders of his 17-year-old son Walter Davenport “Daven” Stapleton III at every turn.

On Thursday, Walter Stapleton Jr., his wife, Pam, and the couple’s son, Rich, were leaving for a trip to the mountains — a trip to escape the pain this week will bring back.

On July 6, 1994, Daven was helping a work crew from his grandfather’s company, Citizen’s Telephone Co., string a telephone fiber cable across the Lake Corinth bridge at Hooks Mill Road. Working with Daven was his cousin, Clint Ledger.

The boys were in a small boat near the bridge when a tremendous surge of water carrying trees and debris from the flood rushed under the bridge and struck the boat, breaking it in half.

Clint was able to cling to some debris and was pulled out of the water, but Daven was sucked under and drowned.

Now, almost a year later, Walter Stapleton said life has gone on, but he constantly recalls his son.

“Lots of things remind you as you go places and you think about old places you’ve been,” he said. “It crops up in my mind 10 or 12 times a day.”

Pam Stapleton, the teen’s stepmother, said it was hard this summer to see his friends moving on without him.

“He would have been graduating this year,” Pam Stapleton said. “It was hard to see his classmates this year and know he won’t be with them.”

Although Daven had lived with his mother, Claire Simmerson, for the last few years, Walter Stapleton said losing his son has changed his life profoundly.

“During that week (after Daven’s death) it was just like living in a daze. It was just unbelievable that this had happened. It had to be a dream,” Walter Stapleton said. “It really did something to me psychologically . . . you find yourself in a trance that it’s hard to get out of. It’s still that way sometimes.”

Pam Stapleton said she and her husband went through a long period during which they cried every day, but the initial grief has become bearable as time has gone on.

“We were able to cope with it more, but even now it is hard to see a movie or a scene or even a commercial that talks about people drowning — it’s almost unbearable,” she said. “It hits you right in the stomach.

“It seems unbelievable that something like that could happen to someone who was so strong and vibrant and who had so much going on in his life,” Pam Stapleton said of her stepson.

Daven was quarterback of the Southland Academy’s football team, a member of the Key Club, the Spanish Club, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and a Life Scout in the Boy Scouts.

Since the funeral, Pam Stapleton said the family has gone to many memorials for Daven and other victims killed as a result of the flood.

“None of them get any easier,” she said.

When the rains come, Walter Stapleton said his wife and younger son are more likely than he to become nervous, but he said the flood is something he will never forget because of what it took away from him.

“I just hope that’s the last time I’ll see something like that in my lifetime,” he said.