The Monday After: Canton family escapes rising water after vacation

The water was rising quickly in southeast Ohio 25 years ago.

Late in June 1998, a Canton family got caught in the worst of it. Driving home from a pleasant vacation in North Carolina, the Mills family drove into a storm that included tornadoes and flooding. Suddenly their trip turned harrowing.

Annette Mills was driving her 1996 Pontiac Bonneville north when they entered Ohio and encountered the storm. In the car were her mother Shairron Reed, her 16-year-old son Andrew Melott, her 15-year-old daughter Mindy Foy, her 4-year-old son Christopher Mills, and her toddler granddaughter Abbey Foy.

They left Marietta behind and headed north on Interstate Route 77 through Washington County into Noble County. A sign said that I-77 was closed ahead.

"There were no cars on the southbound lane," said Mills. "I had no idea how high the water was (on I-77)."

Soon, they were directed off the highway, recalled Andrew Melott. They got gas at a service station, one of the last cars to be able to fill up, as it turned out. Her mother went inside and bought water.

There was a Best Western motel near the gas station, but there were no vacancies. They and others gathering to wait out the storm were offered space in the lobby, but the large room was walled in by glass windows, not the place to be huddled during a threatened tornado.

Sheriff's deputies advised the family to head east on Route 147.

Water rises, mud flows

"We tried to navigate the back roads," Melott remembered.

Those roads were narrow and winding and hilly. Visibility at times was a few yards.

"We continued on," said Mills. "Basically, I just kept driving and the weather was getting worse. The water was coming up on the sides of the car. It was getting deeper."

At one point, when the car was crossing a causeway, with a lake on either side, water rose so high that the family opened the electric windows, so they wouldn't be trapped if the vehicle was swept into deeper water. They made plans for older children to hold younger ones if they had to hastily leave the car.

Mills recalls at one point seeing mud slide on a hill beside the road, something she later admitted frightened her worse than the rising water.

Melott doesn't recall being scared at any time during the ordeal.

"I've always had a sense of adventure," he explained. "And, I think we were a bit naive. We didn't realize how bad it was getting around us.

"Plus, I think we felt there was safety in numbers. There were other cars doing the same thing."

Indeed, a caravan of several cars had developed, all following Mills. It was the middle of the afternoon, but much of the sky looked like night.

Finding higher ground

"I saw a knoll on the right and it said 'Bait Shop,' said Mills. We drove to the highest point on that hill. Cars followed me. To be totally honest, I had no idea where I was going. I just looked for higher ground."

When they finally found that high ground, they met a woman living in a mobile home next to the water.

"She came out and told us that the road we came in on was totally under water," recalled Mills. "So, we were stuck."

Mills said they spent the night in their car, as did other travelers. It was "incredibly hot and humid," she recalled. Mosquitos swarmed. Mills said she never slept.

"We did run the car periodically to cool it off," said Mills.

Early the next morning, Mills managed to reach out to her husband, who had stayed at home.

"To my knowledge, I was the only one who had a cell phone," Mills explained. "It was a bag phone and it only would work down by the water. It sometimes did and sometimes not."

Her husband, David, first contacted the Noble County sheriff and then reached out to his brother, Mike, who lived in Zanesville and who rode horses on those back roads. His knowledge of the area would assist in an attempt to reach the family.

Man steps up to the rescue

But, before that reunion could occur, an unlikely rescuer showed up.

"In the daylight, we could see how many people were up there with us," said Mills.

They also could see the devastation flood water had caused. Farms were flooded. Boats and docks were submerged. And radio reports suggested that higher water was on its way.

"Then a gentleman came to the car," Mills remembered.

He identified himself by his disconcerting nickname.

"Hi, my name is Rotten Randy and I'm a biker and I've done a lot of bad things in the past, but today's your lucky day."

The bearded and burly man, a little scruffy and appearing rough around the edges, moved Mills' family and another family, along with a woman with a bad heart, across the water on his pontoon boat.

Rotten Randy initially took his passengers to a biker lodge, Mills said.

"They were very nice," said Mills. "Then they took us in vans to a gymnasium in a local school, where we could use phones and take showers and they had beds set up."

The emergency shelter was an elementary school, said her son. And it's where David and Mike Mills caught up with them.

"They came to get us in a pickup with an extended cab and they took everybody back to Mike's place in Zanesville," said Mills

About a month later, she was able to pick up her Bonneville. Mills said crews fixed the roads during the intervening time.

"My car started right up. I couldn't believe it," she said. "I drove it back home."

Mills said the story of the weather-plagued trip has become a bit of a "standard story when we're all together as a family." It's been told often. And what is her favorite part of the tale?

Rotten Randy, of course.

She called him "a gift from God."

"He was a blessing," Mills said. "Never judge someone by the way they look."

Reach Gary at gary.brown.rep@gmail.com. On Twitter: @gbrownREP.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: The Monday After: Canton family escapes rising water after vacation