Summer's arrival often evokes feelings of exuberance, but for one family in Utah, the season is also tinged with melancholy.
It was 25 years ago Saturday that seven vacationers - a couple, their three children and two nephews - were washed away in a flash flood near the Flaming Gorge recreation area in the Uinta Mountains. The details are still vivid in the minds of their relatives.Keith and LaVon Woodruff of Salt Lake City had left for a week of fishing and camping with their children, Jerry, 3; David, 2; and Karen, 1. They had invited the teenage sons of Keith's sister, Maureen Swenson and her husband, Ken, also of Salt Lake City.
"They were delighted," their mother recalled in an interview this week. "They both loved the outdoors and both loved fishing. Randy was 15 and had graduated from junior high just a couple of days before they left. Paul was excited because his birthday was coming up, and he had always wanted to be a teenager. He turned 13 on June 8, the day before he was reported missing."
The morning of June 9, 1965, Wilford E. Woodruff of Sandy received a telephone call from the Utah Highway Patrol. A road construction worker had seen a station wagon overturned in flood waters at the Palisades Campground in Sheep Creek Canyon near Flaming Gorge. From the license plates, it had been determined that the car belonged to Woodruff's brother, Keith. The occupants had not been seen.
"There had been extremely heavy snowpack that year," Woodruff recalled this week. "There was a little reservoir way up above Sheep Creek, on the plateau level above the canyon. The snowpack and heavy rainfall in a short period of time caused the dam on this little reservoir to give way. As far as we could determine, a 15-foot wall of water, rocks and trees washed down the canyon and through the campground."
That evening the family got together for a prayer, Maureen Swenson related, and the following day, Woodruff and a cousin went to the site of the flooding. The treacherous flow had prevented searchers from getting to the vehicle, and by then it had disappeared.
The flooding was the lead story on the Deseret News front page that day, with a picture of the Keith Woodruff family and several shots of the devastation.
The Swensons came to the flood site that evening and were joined the next day by two sisters of Woodruff and Maureen Swenson, Carol and Lorna, and their husbands.
"The river sounded like thunder because of all the big rocks that were flowing underneath," Maureen Swenson said.
Risking their lives, the men in the party tried to dig through the debris with picks and shovels to find the car but were not successful. State highway department equipment also was of no use because the floodwaters killed the engines.
Eventually, with the aid of a mine detector, the car was found buried upside down under four feet of mud, Woodruff said. No bodies were inside.
Maureen Swenson recalled that someone found an article of clothing she identified as her son's best sweater. It was riddled with holes.
On June 11, Randall Swenson's body was located, and a funeral was held June 21.
Over the next seven weeks, four more funerals were held as bodies were found.
The Swensons' youngest son, Paul, was never located. Later, a daughter was born to them, and they named her Paula in honor of their lost son. The Swensons also have two other daughters and another son.
In one of those strange circumstances that occasionally attend a tragedy, a friend told the Swensons of a conversation he had with Keith Woodruff before the family had departed. According to Maureen Swenson, the friend, who had recently succeeded Keith as clerk of his LDS Ward, said Keith told of a dream in which he and his family had died in a flood. They discussed the unlikelihood of that happening in Utah; maybe if they lived near the Mississippi River there might be something to the dream, they supposed.
"He said Keith didn't seem upset about the dream, just kind of matter-of-fact," Maureen Swenson said. "He did indicate that he felt his mission on earth was drawing to a close."
The family obtained permission from the U.S. Forest Service to erect a marker about a mile below the flood site to memorialize the victims. Woodruff said the contractor who was building a road in the area hauled in a limestone rock, and a bronze plaque was placed on it listing the name and age of each victim and describing what happened. On Dec. 4, 1965, the family held a service dedicating the marker.