SEWARD, Pa. (AP) - Ann Harding-Mardo’s memories of her childhood hometown of Robindale are a mix of Mayberry and melancholy.
She smiles when she recalls days spent playing ball in the Indiana County community’s local diamond, sledding down Ray’s Hill and waving to pajama-clad neighbors who would regularly sip coffee on their porches on cool spring mornings.
But when she last set her eyes on Robindale, the town was unrecognizable.
The last of Johnstown’s great floods left the community mud-soaked and mangled.
For Harding-Mardo - and anyone else who called Robindale home in those days - memories are all that’s left of a village that was never reoccupied, but was quickly replaced by a power plant, after the 1977 flood’s waters receded.
Nearly 40 years later, she and more than 120 fellow former residents who spent their lives there will gather just two miles away - some of them for the first time in a generation - to reflect on life in Robindale.
“Particularly the good (memories),” said Harding-Mardo, who is organizing a Robindale reunion for April 22. “That was such a special place to grow up - and we want to focus on the good times.”
Quaint, company town
Robindale’s roots trace back to the early 1900s, when the company town was developed to support the Conemaugh Smokeless Coal Co.’s deep mine, historical records show.
As time passed and the Conemaugh Smokeless Coal Co.’s rights to the bituminous buried there was passed on to other companies the town grew.
Company row houses became family-owned homes.
And other dwellings - both single- and two-story houses - joined them.
By the 1970s, the village had at least 10 street lights, a church and, for a while, a general store, said Jeff Harding, Ann Harding-Mardo’s brother.
In the summer, the village hosted a small fair, and in the winter, neighborhood residents gathered near the heart of town to see the community Christmas tree glow.
By 1977, the community had nearly 100 homes, Harding said. All of them sat in the shadow of a series of bony piles and a small generating station at one side of the village.
Three sides of town were cradled by the Conemaugh River.
“If you were a kid back then, you spent your entire childhood outside.
“Everybody played together,” Harding-Mardo said, recalling days spent at the ballfield, playing games on quiet streets and walking from the neighborhood across a narrow suspension bridge to Seward for pizza.
Generations of families called the tiny town home. The Harding family lived in a row house and Harding-Mardo’s grandmother was their next-door neighbor.
“In Robindale,” she said, “nobody locked their doors.”
For Harding-Mardo, those cherished memories are frozen in time.
’Filled up like a bowl’
Everything changed on the night of July 20, 1977.
Heavy rains flooded the region, swelling streams and rivers such the Conemaugh - pouring 10 inches of water on the region in 12 hours. The National Weather Service called the storm a once-in-1,000-years occurrence.
Above Johnstown, small dams failed and surging streams sent currents of water toward the city. The storm claimed 84 lives across the Johnstown region.
Down-river in Robindale, all of that rising water had nowhere to go.
“It ran into the bony piles and headed back into town,” Harding-Mardo said.
“There was nowhere for it to drain.”
Harding, then 18, recalled seeing neighbors scrambling to pump water from their basements.
It was a sight he’d seen before in the low-lying community.
But up above, nature’s fury was like nothing he’s seen since, he said. Rain fell fiercely from a night sky lit by relentless bolts of lightning.
Before long, a rush of water turned Front Street into a river, Harding said - ankle-high, then knee-high in some areas.
“The town basically filled up like a bowl,” he said.
By then, a steady flow of families had already packed up and left town.
But as a second wave of people began motoring toward what is now Plant Road, a car at the front of the pack stalled out and became a roadblock, and there wasn’t time to move it, Harding recalled.
He wrapped his arm around his mother and waded through nearly waist-deep water to the edge of town - and safety.
Destroyed by water
Harding-Mardo was working at Altoona Hospital that night.
Rain fell so hard outside her Altoona apartment “that I couldn’t sleep,” she recalled.
But she had no idea what was happening in Robindale.
Telephone service had been wiped out by the weather by the time she woke the next morning.
“It was a nightmare,” Harding-Mardo said, remembering driving frantically back to her hometown and catching a glimpse of her sister’s Seward-area trailer home flooded by water.
That tiny Westmoreland County neighborhood was among the hardest hit by the 1977 flood, with seven people killed.
Harding-Mardo’s sister’s family survived, despite fears for the worst because no one was able to track her down that morning, Harding-Mardo said.
“I’ll never forget the moment I heard her voice …. yelling ’I’m OK,’ ” she said, tearing up at the memory.
But Robindale wasn’t OK.
The neighborhood’s church was destroyed. Part of the union hall that served as a community center had been washed away.
Homes were battered and blanketed by mud.
Neighbors tried to save what they could, she said.
But in the end, it wasn’t much.
Water filled most of the homes to their first-floor ceilings.
Harding-Mardo recalled a neighbor carrying items one-by-one into his front yard and later hosing them off only to realize that those belongings were now worthless.
Finding new homes
Community members soon learned their homes were unsalvageable, too.
Harding said several feet of soft, silty wet soil covered everything and carried with it an unmistakeable stench of the mines that also flooded.
“All you could smell was this strange smell of hydraulic fluid permeating through the air,” he said.
Soon, the federal government arrived and delivered news - and an order, Harding said.
” ’No one is going to live here anymore,’ they said to us. ’This is a flood plain.’ “
Through an agreement that involved a list of entities, including the government and Penelec, residents were paid for their properties and many moved to a brand-new development called Robindale Heights a few years later.
The development was constructed through low-interest state housing loans.
Residents were given trailers and many, including Harding, would later replace them with permanent homes.
Penelec reimbursed much of the Robindale Heights’ development’s cost in 1980 and, in turn, inherited the remains of Robindale - by then, a sprawling tract of land and Front Street.
Much of the property was elevated from the flood plain for what would become the Seward 7 generating station - a coal-fired power plant.
The plant’s name has changed names and owners in recent decades, but today burns waste coal under NRG Energy’s ownership and operation.
A 40-year reunion
Dozens of families relocated to Robindale Heights, but others found homes elsewhere, Harding-Mardo said.
And as years turned to decades, old friends and neighbors drifted apart, she said.
Robindale’s oldest generation passed on, and younger ones got busy with their new lives, she said.
In recent years, Facebook postings by Harding-Mardo and brother Gregg began stirring up memories of Robindale and reconnecting old ties, Harding said.
And that laid the groundwork for the planned April 22 “Old Robindale Reunion” at Seward fire hall, Harding said.
According to Harding-Mardo, the event will bring together old friends and former neighbors who likely haven’t seen one another in decades - some disconnected since the 1977 flood’s aftermath.
“Everyone I’ve talked to is so excited,” she said. “It’s going to be special to sit down again together and talk about the good times.”
One couple who responded are 94 and 88 years old, Harding-Mardo said.
Some will make the trip from other states.
For one day, at least, they’ll all sit side by side for an Italian dinner inside the hall and share stories and photos from those who didn’t lose them all in the flood, Harding-Mardo said.
“It’s going to be people getting together with long-lost friends,” she said.
“Hopefully, everyone will get a chance to mingle and linger into the evening.
“It’ll be nice.”
Old Robindale Reunion
What: Reunion of members of the onetime Robindale community in Indiana County that was destroyed by the 1977 flood; includes catered dinner.
When: April 22.
Where: Seward fire hall, 1230 10th St.
Cost: $8.
Details: “Old Robindale Reunion” page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/groups/126403164498427/).
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Online:
https://bit.ly/2o08lHz
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Information from: The Tribune-Democrat, https://www.tribune-democrat.com
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