I was a senior at then-Hollins College, when, on Nov. 4, 1985, Hurricane Juan brought relentless rain to the Roanoke Valley and to other parts of Virginia. Carvins Creek, in northern Roanoke County, was usually so quiet and wadeable, but that morning it became a torrent of vicious brown water that poured down out of the mountains over the Carvin’s Cove Reservoir dam and turned the lower side of campus upside down.
I had just finished lunch when the rushing water’s power mocked reinforced glass windows and dead-bolted steel doors, and overtook the snack bar and the Rathskeller, with its arcade games and oaken tables, in lower-level Moody Dining Hall and the bookstore which stocked 35 shades of L’Oreal fingernail polish and a wall-long section of publications by alumnae. The lower two levels of Fishburn Library, along with the college archives, also fell to Carvin’s onslaught, as well as the basement of Dana Science Building, where only two weeks before, I had played with some of the psychology lab rats.
The call was given to the maintenance crew to “kill the lights.” Students scrambled in the downpours to the far parking lot, called “Siberia,” to rescue their cars and move them to higher ground. There were rumors that some of the students were “hanging from trees” so they could save themselves from the rapidly rising water. The campus was hemmed in by Carvin’s Creek on the west and Tinker Creek on the east. The dining hall and the food service managers held black umbrellas and helplessly watched the rain lighten up then drum down again, over and over, flooding the parking lot of the student center. The sewers started backing up.
Some of the campus workers had to stay the night. I and my hallmates on the third floor of Main Dorm had to make do with a supper of potato chips, pretzel sticks, fruit and sodas that had been scrounged together by the resident assistant. We huddled in the darkened dorm hallway, and played Trivial Pursuit in the fading daylight. With only flashlights and camp lanterns that bleakly illuminated the high ceiling, we talked awhile in the quietness. Afterwards, there was nothing else to do but to go to bed.
The next morning, there was brilliant sunshine. My dormmates and I were ordered to move to another building, most of us still in our nightclothes, for fear of a possible gas explosion. After several hours of being “held prisoner,” we were allowed to go back to our dorm, collect what we needed, and leave campus. However, for those of us who were driving and going north, we were told to get on Interstate 81, as U.S. 11 was washed out in some places and the James River was well over the road at Buchanan. It was also announced by the college president, Paula Brownlee, that Hollins would be closed for three weeks in order for a massive cleanup, so that the rest of the semester might be salvaged.
I came back to an intensive, accelerated schedule -- blocks of 3-hour classes, some lasting until 10 o’clock at night, six days a week and with boot-camp reading and writing papers into the wee hours of morning Angela Watkins Natural Bridge Station
