The Frances Slocum Trail originated as a segment of an Indigenous Peoples route from near what Europeans called Cincinnati to what is now called Lake Michigan. Winger had hoped to develop a series of parks along the SLT to accentuate its historical significance and scenic beauty. Red Bridge, a village northwest of Somerset was also obliterated by the Mississinewa Reservoir in the Upper Wabash Valley Flood Control Project.

It begins and ends with my grief for Dad’s death and with that naturally my regret at standing between him and his dream. Perhaps I’ve uncovered some regret at being one of the children for whom his dream was deferred for our benefit. I do think he was happy with the way the three of us turned out. “Legitimate”? Who decides what is a “legitimate historical lens?” Is the source of “legitimate historical lens” not similar to the perspective people who imposed this tragedy?

..responsibility and accountability are not contained within institutions but rather challenge them.

“Progress” sold as a panacea that turns out to be a curse.

I've decided that the place is not gone. My work has preserved the town.

What draws me back to my father's house

An excerpt from When Once Destroyed by Sid Shroyer In May 1955, after years of mysterious work and rumors, the Army Corps of Engineers let it slip that a massive three-pronged reservoir project in north central Indiana would ruin a rural community called Somerset in Wabash County. An “interim report” on the plan had been delayed several months. Seventy-Five Feet Above The Stream Bed Early in 1955, three-and-a-half months before the big Somerset-is-toast reveal, Congressman

“The Shroyer name in Somerset was pretty big,” Tom said. “They were neighbors and they were good ballplayers at Somerset High School and that was what Larry aspired to be.” In fact, Larry became Somerset’s all-time leading scorer by the time he graduated in 1956. He led Wabash County in scoring his junior year. It would be wrong, though, to say he eclipsed them. “When you grow up in the Shroyer family,” Larry told me, “You gotta play basketball.” In 2023, he told me,

I’ve poked around down there from time to time over the years, past the “no trespassing” sign where old State Road 513 bends west, walking north down the hill on a road that fades into tracks and then disappears into the water. I’m looking for the place where a kid learns not to stick his hand in a lawn mower. Just once, God, let me slip through a crack in the universe. If I could find that house I’m thinking that the people I remember would be there, too.

“Time and time again I caused the (Army Corps of) engineers to hold meetings in our area and explain what was happening,” Roush told Kathleen McKinzie in her 1969 (Indiana University oral history) interview. “They have a tendency not to have too much compassion,” he said, “nor do they display too much concern for people who might be adversely affected by such projects, for individual or small groups. They’re overly objective… calculating; they are engineers; they live by the

As a freshman, Dad scored four points in a 17-15 upset win over Wabash for the 1932 sectional title. Basketball was a big part of life around there. I heard Dad’s cousin Kay Peas tell 1950s Somerset High star Larry Knee, that she remembers her dad, Bob Shroyer, getting so upset watching a Somerset game that he lost his teeth. “He yelled so much, he blew out his false teeth, and they hit Guiniverre Garst on the way down.”

“Grandma’s grave was dug up with a backhoe,” Stan said. “The burial vault was brought up with chains. I don’t remember the coffin. I think the whole thing was loaded on a truck and transported to the new cemetery. We all just stood around and watched, not much to say. Then we took Grandpa back to his trailer in Windfall and we went home, on a summer day. “What I was told, beyond what I saw, I heard in the car, from Grandpa. He was telling Dad. Convicts." The day afte

I came across the phrase “brain drain” again in a book I’m reading about rural America. The book by Princeton professor Robert Wuthnow is called The Left Behind, Decline and Rage in Small-Town America. There’s a lot to talk about in the book and for me having grown up and then taught high school in rural communities, what he has to say makes a lot of sense. But, something about that phrase “brain drain” made me stop and think beyond his analysis. Wuthnow notes, as many

All of them lived modestly in a place where their contributions were highly valued by the people among whom they lived. Their generous spirit enlivened their communities. What happens to their spirit when their place disappears? There is no room for that now.

Vern wanted those draught horses to pull his plow because he wanted to live in the world where draught horses pull a plow. I stood in the way. Now I’m sorry that I wasn’t ready to read what he had to say until after he was gone. This letter to you is an expression of that sorrow. When you are ready to read it, Vern will wrap his arms around you.