On Tuesday, December 2, 1975, the skies opened up, and the rains poured down, precipitating catastrophic flooding of the Cedar River throughout lower Maple Valley. Bill Ziegner, editor of the Voice of the Valley, described the disaster on the newspaper’s front page. “The beautiful, gentle summer Cedar River turned into an ugly, roaring, vicious giant last week as it wrought millions of dollars of devastation to homes and properties along its banks.”
“Once beautiful laws were now rutted with gulleys, flanked by great sand dunes like an ocean beach. Masses of huge fallen trees, brush, and trash were jumbled across rhododendrons and flower borders carefully tended by proud owners.”
In fact, the VOICE of the Valley office, located at 23207 Lower Dorre Don Road, was ravaged by floodwater. The entire first floor of the home office of Bill and Ruby Ziegner, owners of the VOICE, was inundated. The Ziegners published the first edition of the VOICE of the Valley on Aug. 21, 1969. They were teachers in the Tahoma School District and produced the newspaper from their residence. The VOICE is Maple Valley’s longest operating tabloid paper.
To put out the following week’s newspaper, Bill Ziegner borrowed typewriters and equipment from Tahoma High School, while Ted Bell of the school board set up temporary living quarters for VOICE personnel. A 16-page issue was duly published on Dec. 10, 1975, from which facts for this article were derived.
On that week’s Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, volunteer boys from Tahoma High School were released to the Maple Valley Fire Department to provide flood relief. Over three days, 85, 100, and 150 young men, mostly juniors and seniors, served the community by moving sandbags and providing other assistance. Brian Miller was a Tahoma senior who remembers consecutive days devoted to filling and placing sandbags to stem the rushing water from doing even more damage. Tahoma girls in Home Ec. cooked meals each day adding to the school’s efforts. Other students added their names to volunteer work lists available to anyone who needed help.
Throughout the devastation, community leaders and ordinary folks stepped up to assist. A relief fund was organized by Wilderness Village merchants, Gael Reedy, Joe Flynn, Gary Morgan, Stan Johnson, and Louise Duett. The Red Cross served 7,600 meals at the Grange Hall in one week, while nearly half of the residents displaced from their homes slept in the Grange over several nights. Terry Beckler, an agent for Grange Insurance, offered help to homeowners filing claims. The Northwest Steelheader’s local president, Chuck Judkins led his club’s members in transporting 120,000 fish eggs, incubated in holding ponds at Arcadia, and temporarily relocated them to the Issaquah hatchery.
Mrs. William H. Gates, the first woman president of United Way of King County, issued a statement offering aid when needs arise. She proclaimed, “People helping people is the United Way slogan. It’s the old American idea of neighbors pitching in to help each other.” That same year, Mary Gates’ son, Bill Gates, and Paul Allen created the first computer language program for a personal computer. A month later, their company, Micro-soft, reported year-end 1975 sales of $16,005. Bill Gates offered Microsoft employees stock option, so that by 2005 an estimated 12,000 rank-and-file employees were millionaires.
In addition to the hundreds of individuals and organizations named and lionized in that week’s Voice, Bill Ziegner added this commentary about the citizens of Maple Valley. “At the same time [the Cedar River flooded], it released some of the finest qualities that human beings possess, as armies of volunteers throughout the entire area and surrounding communities united in incredibly heroic and magnanimous efforts to save the stranded, to shore up crumbling dikes, and to sandbag threatened homes. The war between the workers and the river went on incessantly day and night from 3 o’clock Tuesday morning [Dec. 2, 1975] to the following Saturday night, the river winning some battles but the workers victorious in others.”
This Dec. 4, 1975, photo by Vic Condiotty, appeared in the Seattle Times, and was taken along S.E. Bain Road with Highway 169 in the background. Photo colorization was provided by Boomer Burhnam, a Tahoma High School photo instructor, and an assistant wrestling coach. The image was provided by JoAnne Matsumura, an Issaquah historian and collector.
