Plaintiff Eleanor Elliott's daughter, Robin Sears, was asked to read and critique these biographies. She, too, has wonderful memories of great times revolving around the Fawn River. Her comments were particularly poignant. In her critique, she comments on the autobiography of Sharon Lewis as follows:

When you say, "She looked forward to the potential for more time to enjoy the river," why not include some adjectives to help people get your picture of the "river" and not their picture of a river. Most people have never had the opportunity to see a river this beautiful and inviting. When they hear "river" they think: muddy, dirty, smelly, yuck, because that is all they have ever seen. Why don't you say, "She looked forward to the potential for more time to enjoy the beauty of the sparkling, clear, rock-bottomed river, edged by springs from which you could drink handfuls of fresh, icy water and then fall playfully backward into the shallow stream which washes gently over you like a therapeutic whirlpool." -- I know that isn't what you wanted to say, I was just trying to give you an idea of what I meant. They MUST visit the river through your words and fall in love with it just as we have. They need to hear the sweet songs of the birds or a beaver smack his tail, see and hear a deer bound across the water and the fish flip. They need to feel the serenity created by the softly murmuring stream and the birds calling and singing, a symphony enhanced by the visual stimuli of the surrounding beauty-sunlight streaming through the trees, cutting the clear water into bright panes of glass through which you view colorful stones, shells and inquisitive fish; banks smothered with lush greenery, touched at times by bright red Cardinal Flower, pale pink wild roses and creamy white wild morning glories. All this blanketed in the strong, pleasant aroma of the woods and water is a feast for the senses; peace.

And then you need to kill this river in front of their eyes as the IDNR did to us.

Individual Biographies of the Plaintiffs pursuing lawsuits against the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and others to require the IDNR to pay for restoration of Fawn River.

Greenfield Mills, Inc. (party to the lawsuits in its own right as a current business)

In 1993 Greenfield Mills was designated a LaGrange County historical site, and on April 27, 1999 the Rinkel family was presented the Heritage Tourism award for Preservation. This most certainly would have pleased Henry Rinkel who had bought the mill in 1904 with a little cash and an $800 mortgage. Henry was annoyed with the continuing gossip regarding the mill's history of failures and his lack of success with previous mill enterprises, and he had vowed, "This mill will still be going after I'm gone!"

Born in Ohio in 1864, Henry joined the land rush to South Dakota. Unable to make a go of the land claim he had staked out, he took a menial job in a flour mill in Aberdeen and rose to second miller. He moved to Minneapolis as a millwright and miller, then to Duluth as a troubleshooter for Allis-Chalmers (machinery company) as a millwright and miller. Because he spoke German, he was once pressed into service by the company as an interpreter for Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany.

When Henry and Jennie Rinkel bought the Greenfield mill in 1904, Henry had already failed in two attempts to fulfill his dream of owning his own mill. The Greenfield mill had been started in 1834 by one man, completed by another in 1836 and owned rather unsuccessfully by several others. Because the wooden dam had broken and the millpond was dry, the French granite millstones had been still for six months when the Rinkels took possession.

At that time, the building was being used only as a dance hall-the installation of a maple floor on the mill's second level had earned the site the title of "Northern Indiana's best dance hall." Henry and Jennie converted the second floor dance hall into a temporary community church, and neighboring farmers gathered to help Henry build a new wooden dam. In 1906 the community raised a church building (still standing) built with concrete blocks hand-cast in the churchyard.

Doing odd jobs and day labor on the side to support the family and mill expenses, it took Henry two years to put the mill machinery in good working order. Then the wooden dam went out again. In November of 1908 a community "bee" rebuilt the dam, this time using concrete. This is the dam that with a few minor repairs over the years is still impounding the water of the Greenfield mill reservoir.

Their son, George, met his wife, Helen Rector, while they were both attending South Bend Business College. They started married life at Nevada Mills in the Jimmerson Lake/Lake James area where the family bought an all-purpose mill and installed hydro-electric generators. George and Helen crawled through attics together wiring homes in the lake area. The demand for power simply exploded, and their small plant couldn't keep up. They sold their operation to Northern Indiana Public Service, and George worked for NIPSCO for about two years until they wanted to transfer him.

In 1927 George and Helen with their daughter, Frances, came home to Greenfield Mills where their son, Howard, was born that fall. They invested the money from the Nevada Mills sale in the installation of a 100-kilowatt hydro-electric generator. The family added another 80-kilowatt generator in 1934, which allowed them not only to run the mill but also to electrify the surrounding area and sell excess power to NIPSCO. Both generators are still in service, although the larger one was refurbished in '77-'78. It's interesting to note that before the hydro-generators were installed, Henry had produced electricity using a belt-driven generator hooked to the mill shaft. This was highly unsatisfactory, because the delivery of electricity was interrupted whenever the mill wasn't grinding

Henry and George continued to upgrade their mill, buying bits and pieces of machinery from other smaller mills forced by economics to close. At one time, in Indiana alone, there were about 280 small wheat flour mills operating; now the number would be in single digits nationally, and Greenfield Mills is the last commercial water-powered mill in the state of Indiana.

Howard and Helen Rinkel

George and Helen's (Rector) son, Howard, was involved in the Greenfield Mills mill at a young age. He recalls needing to stand on a box to package flour. After high school he spent two years at Purdue University and then earned his degree in Milling at Kansas State College (now

University) in 1949. It was while he was at Kansas State that he met and, after graduation, married his Kansas sunflower, Helen Lee Stricklin-known to all as "Helen Lee" to distinguish her from her mother-in-law.

Howard joined his father at the Greenfield Mills mill which his grandfather, Henry, had named H. G. Rinkel & Son. Howard and Helen led a busy life with the mill and delivery route, church and other community activities, while also coping with the needs of a growing family. Hal, Dan, David and Joyce were born in the years 1950 thorough 1958.

George and Howard continued to expand their business, the families took on "pancake bakes" which often involved weekends away from home. They had as high as 52 bakes a year with Howard's children going along and helping as soon as they were old enough. The families quit their participation in the pancake bakes in 1967 when Howard had a heart attack. They still rent out the big grills.

The millpond and the river are simply part of who the Rinkels are. Their family history and their livelihood are inextricably entwined with the mill at Greenfield Mills. Howard , his mother and two of his sons, Hal and Dan, were baptized in Fawn River. Howard recalls with a smile, that when his children were small, they would be waiting for him to get home from work to take them swimming at their swimmin' hole in Fawn River below the spillway. They didn't think of this as special; it was just something they did most days every summer. Howard remembers when the stream was so clear that from the top of the silos they could watch fish swimming in the river below the spillway. "No way," he says, "can you see anything now."

The silting in of the millpond is of great concern to the Rinkels. Their business is at risk. Water is the "fuel" for their mill. The sediment that was powered down the Fawn River by IDNR's actions on May 18, 1998 is filling their millpond, rapidly reducing the impoundment's water-holding capacity to a dangerous level for their milling operation. The explosive growth of marsh plants in the changing habitat of the increasingly shallow millpond became so obvious in the summer of 2000 that people unaware of IDNR's actions, but familiar with the area, were asking, "What happened to the millpond?"

Remember when Howard's grandfather, Henry Rinkel, made that promise to himself so many years ago, "This mill will still be going after I'm gone"? He could never have imagined that it would be actions of IDNR, a government agency established to protect the environment, that would threaten the existence of the business he and his family had built and maintained until it achieved status as a historical monument.

Dan and Marilyn Rinkel

Dan Rinkel and his wife, Marilyn live in the home that his great-grandparents, Henry and Jennie Rinkel had renovated and enlarged during the years they were establishing their mill. Until he was injured in late 1998, Dan worked with his father, Howard, in the flour mill. He and Marilyn continue to operate an outdoor photography studio at their home, with the mill and river figuring prominently as a backdrop in their photos.

Other than for the years during college, Dan has lived at Greenfield Mills, moving only from his parents' home on one side of Fawn River to his and Marilyn's home on the other side of the river. His three children spent summers swimming in the same spot where their dad had swum as a child. Their church group came for river parties of tubing and swimming.

Much has changed for them since May of 1998 when the IDNR released the onslaught of muddy sediment into the river. The river was no longer a place they wanted their children playing. Marilyn says the dog even smells bad after being in the water.

The river, mill and millpond, often chosen by their clients for a backdrop to their poses, have always been integral to their photography business. The deterioration of river and millpond quality since the IDNR sediment release can be seen in the chronology of their photos. And last summer, even their clients were asking, "What happened to the millpond?" When the accumulating sediments sent down river by IDNR changed the deeper water habitat to a shallow habitat more conducive to the growth of marsh plants, they lost their "blue water" backdrop. Marilyn's words for this new vista is, "It's disgusting!"

Judi Medlock

In the early l980's, Judi and Wendell Medlock with their four year old daughter Shauna acquired and moved into an unfinished dwelling on property bounded by the Fawn River. Eighteen years later Shauna Medlock lives with her husband and two sons in that home on Fawn River.

Shauna says "the river was everything" to her dad. He appreciated every aspect of living near the river, not just the hunting, fishing and swimming but also the wild environment and the solitude that their isolated off-the-road location provided. She laughed and said, "You know, they (friends and family) called us the River Rats!" Her father, Wendell, died in December of 1996 at age 45. Shauna and her mother honored Wendell's request that his ashes be scattered along the Fawn River.

Shauna's own love of the river is obvious. She grew up fishing and, most especially, swimming here at her home. There is regret and sadness in her voice when she talks about what the river was like before the1998 discharge by the IDNR. Wendell's widow, Judi--who lived in the home until her recent remarriage--retains ownership of the property and is committed to restoring and preserving the environmental integrity of the river for her family.

Gene and Sharon Lewis

After growing up in the small community of Orland on a farm where his life centered around Fawn River--swimming with the "townies" in the river in what is a part of the IDNR , fishing, trapping, hunting and exploring the river, often alone, absorbing knowledge about the interaction of the land and aquatic life, Gene's adult life took him away to college and employment out of the area. Marriage, children, his regular occupation as a physics and chemistry teacher and his lifelong penchant for additional projects kept him very busy with only a once-in-a-while opportunity to spend time in the wild, either at home on the Fawn or on the trout streams of Michigan with which his father had earlier acquainted him.

In 1964, he and Sharon bought a home back in the Orland area and gradually acquired by purchase most of what had been his home farm along the river. Gene says that one of the hardest things he ever did emotionally was forcing himself to get physically reacquainted with his boyhood haunts along the Fawn River below the IDNR Fish Hatchery. After years of accumulating knowledge and scars on the way to learning a lot about humans and their environmentally destructive behavior, he had a whole truckload of anxieties, all very hard to explain. Perhaps it was the subconscious fear that the river of his memory was just that-only a memory.

However, when pushed back into intimacy with Fawn River by his children and grandchildren, he found it to be a place of fascination for them, a renewal for him. Their interest re-involved him. Visiting various spots along the river, remembering himself as a dumb kid experiencing some eye-opening events, still gave him a bit of a problem just under the sternum. He gradually began to accept that what he had once enjoyed about the river was still pretty much there, perhaps not with the same intensity of wildlife--but it was still a wild place.

In recent years his environmental interests have involved him in extensive study and research. From this, and coupled with personal observations from the chunks of his lifetime spent on small streams, he concludes that it's surprisingly simple. If the environment is right-the geology, the chemistry, the biology-it will be a healthy river producing a continuing supply of wildlife.

So on May 18, 1998 when he caught the IDNR dumping tons of black mud down the throat of Fawn River below the hatchery dam, he grasped instantly the potential for an ecological catastrophe in the making. It was a very, very difficult moment for him. And even for him, the ultimate magnitude of the destruction was shocking. In a very short period of time, Fawn River became ugly and desolate--a result in his opinion, of a series of bad environmental decisions by IDNR management, beginning with the destruction of plants in the reservoir above IDNR's dam and culminating in the release of massive amounts of sediment when they opened the dam gates in 1998.

Sharon grew up east of Orland on a farm also on the bank of Fawn River. The farm, purchased on the eve of Pearl Harbor, was in an isolated area without electricity. There was an immediate moratorium on extending the installation of electric service to previously non-serviced area until World War II ended. A battery-powered radio and newspapers were the connection to the world outside.

Sharon's dad was often away working as a painter on construction, and she and her mother were pretty much responsible for a big yard and garden as well as the pigs, cows and chickens on the farm. An only child until she was eleven years old, her companions were the family dog, Mike, and the Fawn River.

She spent hours in the river as well as on it in one of the two rowboats the family maintained on the river for daily rentals to fishermen. Taking the rowboat upriver to many of the reed-lined channels and cul-de-sacs of this small stream was a mini-adventure--enhanced by embellishments of the imagination--that never palled.

With no interest in fishing, but drawn to all other aspects of the river experience, her enjoyment of the river was solitary, whether boating; swimming or floating face-down examining the river bottom, especially the clams and the rocks; or even for a short period, spending hours of many days examining pebbles in an adolescent's hope of finding precious stones from the glacial periods. This personal relationship with river ecology forged a link that was never broken.

For Sharon also, the responsibilities of adult life--marriage, children, employment, and Gene's and her involvement in additional projects-for a number of years seemed to leave little time for personal recreation. As the pace slowed however, in the years prior to retirement, she, too, found a nostalgic joy in the revival of her river interests, particularly in swimming there almost every afternoon in the summer. Gene would get home from work, throw some snacks and drinks in a cooler and pick her up after work to go to the river.

She looked forward to the potential for more time to enjoy the river, in particular the special area where she swam--the area where holding reunion-like family parties each summer had become tradition.

Sharon retired in the fall of 1992. In May of 1998 IDNR raised the fish hatchery dam gates, releasing a torrent of sediment into the river reach below, bringing death to its aquatic inhabitants and polluting with mud the wild place she so enjoyed. She rarely goes to the river now, because it makes her so sad-and angry.

Eleanor Elliott

Even when her husband's employment took the family to Alabama for four years, Eleanor and the children spent the summers at their home in Orland, Indiana, the town where she was born. So you might say Eleanor Elliott has spent 78 years as a small town girl in the town where her father owned a Gulf gas station and her mother, after the death of her father, was the postmaster.

In the 1930's, Fawn River became the center of her summers when, at about age eleven, she was allowed to go to the river. She says with certitude, "I went swimming every day all summer long." Her mother had one rule; she had to be home by 6 p.m. for supper.

She will tell you there weren't any girls to play with in her end of town, so she mostly ran around with her brother and his buddies. Her brother found a sunken abandoned rowboat and fixed it up good enough to float. Eleanor remembers it being great fun to laze up and down the river in that old boat.

She couldn't go swimming with the boys, however, unless she could find a girlfriend to go with her. If at least two girls showed up, then the boys would refrain from their regular routine of "skinny dipping." Eleanor has an unusually large collection of photos documenting the history of this small town, many of them depicting the good times in connection with Fawn River. Her collection includes one exceptionally good picture of those early "skinny dippers."

Over time the "townies" used two or three different sites on the Fawn as their swimmin' hole, but, interestingly enough, in Eleanor's pictures the access to them is almost always from property belonging to the fish hatchery. Both she and Gene Lewis, in reminiscing about these river swimming holes of their youth, used expressions such as "a kinder and gentler age" when recalling those times and some of the people in charge of the fish hatchery.

Some of her pictures are of swimmers in and around the IDNR dam area where children, including Eleanor's oldest four, learned to swim in the hatchery impoundment. A local teacher's wife gave swimming lessons there.

Both Eleanor and Gene Lewis recall a friendly interaction of the community with the folks at the hatchery. In the winter, hatchery personnel allowed the IDNR fish propagation pond closest to the river on the east side of SR 327 to be used as a community ice rink. The hatchery personnel were part of the community and hunted, fished and socialized with other community members in those days.

When she married into the Elliott family, another area on the Fawn River, familiarly called Elliott's Landing, became a place for her family to play on warm summer days. Fishing, swimming, canoeing, tubing, wading, picnics beside the river-all were opportunities for enjoyment that they took for granted.

Eleanor, who was in the forefront of the fight to prevent the siting of two sewage lagoons on the bank of Fawn River near the spots where she swam as a child, has difficulty understanding how the IDNR, who she thought protected rivers, could have destroyed the river she loved. She wants it restored.. Again with great conviction, she says, "It belongs to the people, and they (IDNR) have no right to ruin it!"

Marian Donley

In retirement, Marian Donley lives, as at one time did her retired mother and father before her, in the dwelling that some old-timers refer to as the "hired man's house" on the farm acquired in 1870 by her grandfather, James S. Larimer. (Jimmy Larimer, according to the oral history of the area was the first customer for electricity from Greenfield Mills.) The "hired man's house" in rural America has evolved, in some respects, into the equivalent of the English "dower house"--a smaller, cozier dwelling more for retirement than the working farmhouse.

In the early 1800's this particular dwelling was a blacksmith shop in a little village of homes, grocery and mill at Greenfield Mills. Today it is a comfortable home on the bank of the Greenfield Mills reservoir--the home that was to allow Marian to continue her enjoyment of those seasonal vistas of the millpond and Fawn River so intertwined with her family's history. For Marian, whose father died in 1980 and husband in 1982 in a farm accident, this wild area of water and marsh was a priceless living memory and daily enjoyment.

Marian's granddaughter, Terri Ellis, lives just across the road with her family in the "big house" where Marian and her husband had lived when they were actively farming and where she was hostess to those large on-the-farm family Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings so remembered by her own children and her nieces and nephews.

For a time, this farm of her grandfather's was owned by her father's brother, and then Marian's father, Russell, was offered the chance to acquire the property, a wonderful opportunity for the family. This farm, centered around Fawn River and the millpond, had been the lodestone of enjoyable memories--a place her father loved and to which he returned at every opportunity. She recalled that her father had referred to the millpond as "a solace."

Family albums filled with photos that Marian has taken over the years are testimony to the integral part of the Donleys' history that this river and reservoir represent--the summer sports of boating, tubing, canoeing and fishing; family gatherings and the beauty of this wild area and its water birds are preserved in her photos. In the winter, there was skating, sledding and family enjoyment of the area's winter scenes.

Marian's daughter, Connie, and granddaughter, Terri, also have been dedicated advocates for the preservation of this unique area. Although Marian's son, Roger, now lives in Tallahassee, Florida, he shares his family's strong feelings of protection for this beautiful wild area where he grew up. His family keeps him informed on the continuing developments in what they perceive as an environmental disaster to the river and millpond.

To hear Connie describe canoeing the Fawn when the water was so clear that one could see the clams and distinguish the color of the pebbles is to understand what Marian and her family have lost by IDNR's degradation of the Fawn River and the siltation of the Greenfield Mills reservoir-their millpond.

Howard Elliott

Sort of like Davy Crockett growing up in the woods is how Howard Elliott remembers growing up on the river. His recollection is that he spent at least half his childhood hours on his grandfather's farm-read that as, in or on the Fawn River. For him the river was a magical place where in memory the sun always shone, beautiful days lasted forever and time didn't exist. He was fascinated by the river flora and fauna and exploration of the river's mysterious eddies and little whirlpools occupied his free time.

In the summer he would leave the house right after breakfast, head for the farm and river and not come home again until he got really hungry. This was the late 40's/early 50's, a time in rural small towns such as Orland when it wasn't as worrisome to have a child disappear for the day and not know where he was until he showed up for supper. Howard laughs when he recalls that, not only did his mother not know where he was, but also he couldn't swim when he first started haunting the river area. A few dunkings and scary moments are efficient teachers, and he soon learned.

One of his more vivid memories is of being very small, lying on his belly on an old wood plank bridge over the river behind his grandfather's house, snagging suckers with a hook and line after his grandfather had shown him how to do it. The water was so clear he could guide the hook right up to the fish and then, by giving the line a jerk, set the hook. His grandfather would be just down river from him in a fishing spot that remained prime until after May 18, 1998 when the IDNR opened its dam gates and flooded sediment into the river below.

Howard's singular preoccupation with the river continued, he said, until he got his hands on an automobile. He was gone from the Orland area from 1960 to 1970, in the air force and in other employment. But home was drawing him. He says if he had been asked then what it was that made him want to go home, he would have answered, "Oh, I want to get back to my parents and grandparents." But in retrospect, he thinks what brought him back was also a homesickness for the area, the magnetic pull of his grandparents' farm and the river. Howard and his family moved into his grandparents' home after the death of his grandfather and acquired the home and some acreage upon the death of his own father.

Howard thinks the river touched the lives of every member of his family. When his sister Suzy, her husband and kids came to visit from New Jersey, Howard's dad would load up the whole family to go back to what is called Elliott's Landing and play in Fawn River. Howard took his own children, Colleen and John, there to swim instead of to the local beach at Wall Lake. He says, "It was pretty, private and safe-not to mention clean."

In late afternoon Howard liked to drop into the river just below the hatchery dam and float or wade the river, sometimes fishing and other times just enjoying the trip seeing, among other things, fish and clams through the crystal-clear water. In the fall of 1997 he had waded this stretch of river; it was teeming with life. Since the sediment release by the IDNR in May of 1998, he has been down the river only twice, in a canoe. He says he saw no fish either time until he got down river just upstream of the county line dam. Going on down, he saw two or three carp.

For Howard, the area surrounding Fawn River from the Orland IDNR fish hatchery to Greenfield Mills has always been his special place, perhaps partly because of his grandparents and their farm on the riverbank that is now his home, but mostly because of the river. "I grew up in that river," he says.

Most of all, Howard wants the IDNR employees responsible for the May 18, 1998 river disaster identified and brought to justice. He is disillusioned with the IDNR. He had always respected and looked up to IDNR personnel, trusting that the agency was looking after environmental concerns, seeking out polluters and instituting programs for restitution. Now IDNR personnel have ruined something very important to him, and they refuse to take responsibility for their actions or even to acknowledge the destruction.

Jeff and Stacey Dunfee

The Fawn River below the IDNR fish hatchery was also Jeff Dunfee's special place. His first memory of the river was of being in the middle seat of a canoe, shooting the slot at the rock dam with his dad and uncle. This was probably in 1977 when he was ten years old.

Recreation on the Fawn was a family thing. His dad's cousin, a guidance counselor in Fort Wayne, used to bring groups of boy scouts for outings on this river. Following the river by road is how this family from the New Haven area found what came to be their regular camping spot at Round Lake just over the line in Michigan.

As soon as he was old enough to drive, Jeff came to the river whenever he could; he loved to catch fish--not to eat them, but to "catch and release;" he loved the Fawn. In fact, in 1992 he chose the river as the romantic setting for his proposal to his wife, Stacey. He planned to propose at the rock dam site, but he couldn't get the members of their party in the other canoe to go on ahead and give them privacy. He didn't get the proposal accomplished until they got to the County line dam. He really wanted to put the ring on her fishhook, but decided the odds of losing the ring made that a little risky.

Stacey wasn't much of a fisherman when Jeff started bringing her to the river, but as some of their photos show, she took to the sport. They used to come up in an old Celebrity with the canoe on top and a dilapidated bicycle in the back. They'd unload Stacey and the canoe below the dam in back of the IDNR. Then Jeff would drive the car down river to park at the bridge on 1100 E in LaGrange County and ride the bicycle back to the IDNR. They'd canoe and fish down the river, load the canoe on the car and drive back to the IDNR to get the bicycle.

A friend in the Angola area heard about the sediment released when IDNR raised the dam on May 18, 1998 and let Jeff know. It was a couple of weeks after May 18 before Jeff could get up to the river and check it out. He had heard a weather report for the week in which he planned to come up on Saturday. There were predictions for heavy rains in the area for a couple of days prior to that Saturday, so he thought that probably, by the time he would get there, a lot of the mud that his friend was telling him about would have been washed away by the rain.

He was shocked by the scene. The river corridor smelled like death. There seemed to him to be about 3 to 4 inches of mud all along the bank. About a third of a mile below the IDNR dam he came to the pool of slow water where on all his trips to the river he would first begin to fish-the place where he superstitiously thought his luck for the day would be determined. When he got there, he found that the sand bar on which he had always stood to fish was covered with black, gooey mud. On the rest of the trip down river he basically could see nothing in or through the water that had always been so clear.

Today, reminiscing about the river life he used to see, he says, "The shiners, the fish swimming in shallow water-Don't see 'em now." He had talked about the straight stretch that he had called the clam area. When asked about seeing clams now, he replied, "They're pretty much gone."

Jeff and Stacey have two sons, three and six. They would have probably introduced their oldest to the river this summer. Hearing Jeff explain the outrage he felt in 1995 when there was an attempt to site a lagoon sewer system to discharge in the Fawn River just below the IDNR dam is to understand the strength of the emotional tie Jeff feels to the Fawn River.

At that time, he thought about having a T-shirt made with the message Fawn River on the front, and on the back, The water that flows through these shallow banks is no less but equal to the blood that runs through my veins. His dedication to the river and his outrage for the devastation wreaked on it by the IDNR in 1998 are just as strong today.

Ben and Debra Johnson

In January of 1998 Debra and Ben Johnson, 45 years old, in their second marriage, and each with older children were living in the home Debra had owned prior to their marriage. They had been talking about wanting to find a smaller place that was neither "his" nor "hers," but was "theirs."

Ben had been familiar with the Fawn River-Greenfield Mills area for over thirty years. His recreational interests were in the outdoors. A hunter and fisherman, he had permission from several landowners in the area to hunt or fish on their property. Debra just loved the outdoors and, particularly, water.

They were taking a drive in the area on what she says was a bleak, wintery January day when she saw a realty sign pointing into an off-the-main-road cul-de-sac. From the main road, Debra could see that the house was on river property. She prevailed on Ben to stop in front of the house, so she could just look. The owner was in the yard, so she asked if they could walk around and look at the yard and the river. The owner also invited them to come inside and see the house. She laughs when she recalls, "people don't normally 'buy water' in the winter, but we never stepped in the house!" They went home, talked it over, and made the first move in the process of buying their river property by calling the realtor that same day. They moved in on April 13, l998.

They went fishing on the river almost every day, even in the rain, predominately catching small-mouth bass and walleye. Their children often went fishing with them and, even as amateurs, were catching fish and enjoying the river. Debbie and Ben recall a day when she had caught a nice walleye, which he hooked onto the stringer and threw overboard. The fish kept on going down because the stringer wasn't fastened to the boat! Debra looked in the river and saw the stringer glimmering on the bottom with the walleye still hooked to it. She was so disgusted over losing her fish that she just went over the side and retrieved it!

On Monday, May 18, l998 they were both outdoors. Debra was working in her flowers when she looked up and then called to Ben to ask him what in the world was coming down the river. She said it really frightened her; it was like a brown cloud coming at them under water. Neither of them could figure out what it could be.

On Saturday, the man who owns a neighboring property, but who lives in Orland, told them that he had heard that the IDNR at the hatchery had put something in the river, and there was a big commotion about it. So, wanting to take a look, Ben and this neighbor took the boat upriver a little over a half-mile to just above the Steuben Co./LaGrange Co. dam (about 2.7 miles below the IDNR gates). In a few shallow places where swifter water had swept the mud aside, they could see dead fish lying on the bottom. They also saw a few dead fish floating, but the water was too muddy in most places to see the bottom.

Debra says she has a passion for this river, for the rare and unique place it once was. When she and Ben told about her diving in for the walleye on the stringer, it was in relation to telling how murky and opaque the river water is now that it is filled with sediment from the IDNR's actions. Prior to May 18, 1998, They could see the river bottom clearly from their bank, and now they can't. Every time it rains she says the sediment suspended in the water is worse than it is between rains. Her voice is filled with emotion as she expresses her belief that God gives us the honor, privilege and the responsibility to preserve the environment as we found it-to be stewards of the land and water.

This catastrophe has affected both Johnsons deeply. They are bitter about their previous naivety about the role of IDNR. Prior to the devastation of the river they had accepted and expected that the IDNR was the protector of the environment. Debra used to buy the environmental license plate, send money to environmental causes and really think she was helping to make a difference. Now she is very suspicious of all such entities. The IDNR's response to this terrible disaster has caused her to lose all faith in such governmental agencies.

When Debra speaks of Fawn River, it's in very personal terms, as our river. She describes it as "not a dead river but a sick one waiting to be healed." For the Johnsons' this description is particularly poignant, a comparison paralleling their personal lives. Ben is very ill, and they wait day to day for him to become eligible for a heart transplant.

The development of Ben's serious health problems precipitated many changes in the Johnsons' lives. One of their early decisions had been that they would have to sell this property and move nearer to one of his family members in another state. The Johnsons cleared out all their furniture, prepared the house for sale, moved in temporarily with her mother and saw the realty sign go up again.

A few weeks went by, and then Debra convinced Ben that, though the carpet had been cleaned just before they moved, they needed to go back to the house and vacuum it. While they were there, Ben found her in the bedroom looking out at the river, crying. He said, "You don't want to move do you?" They talked then, and concluded that neither one of them wanted to leave this special place. They moved back. The realtor's sign is down, and both say, with great conviction, that they are there to stay. They are trusting that both Ben and the river will be restored to health.