Title |
Excerpt from Craig Owensby Oral History Interview, 2011 March 18 |
Personal name |
Owensby, Craig--Interviews |
Corporate name |
Metropolitan Government--Davidson County (Tenn.) |
Topical entry |
Community Response Natural disasters--Nashville (Tenn.) Storytelling--Nashville (Tenn.) Oral history--Sources Oral history--Library resources Volunteer response--Nashville (Tenn.) Floods--Social aspects |
Geographic entry |
Nashville (Tenn.)--Floods Nashville (Tenn.)--History--21st century Nashville (Tenn.)--History--Sources |
Description |
Excerpt from an oral history interview with Craig Owensby, Public Information Officer of the Metropolitan Nashville Planning Department, conducted on March 18, 2011 by Susannah Gibbons and Harvey Bennett as part of the Flood 2010 Digital History Project. Owensby’s home in Bellevue was flooded during the May 2010 flood. The complete interview and transcript is available in the Special Collections Division. |
Transcript |
OWENSBY: There was a church, Harpeth Heights Baptist, that put up a tent at the end of our street. After the first few days when everybody, all the restaurants, quit bringing food and that kind of thing, they were still there. And it became the community discussion and news and find-out-what’s-going-on point and also you could get something to eat. They stayed for months—I mean, they stayed until August or September, they stayed all summer. They didn’t know us, we don’t belong to their church, they just were there. The level of stuff that total strangers did was amazing. One of my friends showed up driving somebody else’s truck and said, “This belongs to so-and-so and he lives nearby, let’s put some of your stuff over there.” So we loaded the truck up with clothes that had been hanging in the closet—the water was about high enough that if you had clothing hanging in the closet, it would be about chest high, so it all had to be washed. So we loaded a full size pick up, as full as it would go with clothes on hangers, just stacking and dumping them in there, and dropped it in this guy’s garage. And we came back with the second load and his wife had already started washing them. There were clothing hanging all over, she must have done 20 loads of wash for us. Never met them in our lives. But it’s just amazing, people show up and do stuff for you. |
Creator |
Owensby, Craig (Interviewee); Gibbons, Susannah (Interviewer); Bennett, Harvey (Interviewer) |
Publisher |
Special Collections Division of the Nashville Public Library, 615 Church Street, Nashville, Tennessee, 37219 |
Contributors |
Warkentin, Bettina (Transcriber) |
Date |
2011-03-18 |
Type |
Sound; Oral histories |
Format |
audio/mp3 (12.7 MB; 01min., 25sec.) |
Identifier |
FDHOwensbyCClip001 |
Source |
Excerpted from: Craig Owensby Oral History Interview. Born-digital recording(s) converted to mp3 format for online access in 2012 from 16bit 44.1khz WAV file archival master recording. |
Language |
English |
Relation |
Flood 2010 Digital History Project |
Coverage |
2010-2019 |
Rights |
U.S. and international copyright laws protect this digital content, which is provided for educational purposes only and may not be downloaded, reproduced, or distributed for any other purpose without written permission. Please contact the Special Collections Division of the Nashville Public Library, 615 Church Street, Nashville, Tennessee, 37219. Telephone (615) 862-5782. |
Location |
Closed Stacks-Special Collections Division |
Geographic Data |
36.055379 -86.941423 |