Central High School Students
Interviewed by Frances Ford

Frances Ford chatted with Central High School students on February 8, 1998.

Grand Forks Central High Student #1, February, 1998
I sandbagged for two weeks straight and most of that was around my grandpa's house cause he lived a block off the dike. I was sandbagging Thursday night and they told us to leave so we left. Then my mom wanted to go to my uncle's house in Thief River so we went to Thief River. Then we went to Minneapolis because my mom wanted to be far away from the flood. All that was on the news every night was The Flood. We also saw East Grand Forks and at that time I had worked in East Grand and saw my workplace had water up to the roof, so I worried about that too. We were lucky, we only had six feet of water in the basement, but the basement was mine. I was the only one who really lost anything.

Grand Forks Central High Student #2, February, 1998
For a couple of days friends and I would go house to house and we'd sandbag if people needed it, and then when more people would come we'd figure, hey we're not really needed here, and we would go to the next house. At each house they had some kind of refreshment, pizza, candy bars, sandwiches. At one house, can you believe it, they had these huge boxes of candy bars and sandwiches, and before everything went wild, all these people were bringing their kids, and their kids were just munching away while everyone else was sandbagging. And I saw people with hundreds of dollars come to Sandbag central just for free food and they wouldn't work. A lot of people got really selfish during the flood, and it got really sad.

Grand Forks Central High Student #3, February, 1998
Kids wrote most of Keep the Faith. It was fun the first time we performed it, the second time was okay, but the third time it was work. It was a fun show but it was also very emotional for people who came to see it. I saw people crying when they came to the end. It was the absolute perfect show because it sent you to the bottom and brought you back up. When you were on stage you could tell you made a difference in people's lives just by seeing them. It was group therapy for 800 people.

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