A significant portion of South Dakota Magazine’s May/June 2022 issue is devoted to commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Rapid City Flood, which arrives on June 9. On that evening in 1972, torrential rains overwhelmed Rapid Creek and the surrounding areas, sending people into trees, onto rooftops or wherever they could clamber to escape the rising and violent waters. The flood killed 238 people, damaged 1,335 homes and resulted in $165 million in property losses.

The memories we’ve gathered in this issue are heartbreaking. Don Barnett, the 29-year-old mayor of Rapid City at the time, recently wrote a memoir called Thorns and Roses that is excerpted. He writes of the anguish he felt as he accompanied police officers, fire fighters and National Guard troops as they tried to pull people from the angry waters — sometimes successfully and other times not. Black Hills journalists Seth Tupper and Johnny Sundby collaborated on a book of stories from men and women who lived through it called Survivors of the ’72 Flood: Eyewitness Accounts from One of the Nation’s Deadliest Disasters. Accounts excerpted in this issue include a funeral director describing the difficult task of caring for the dead and a son remembering the last words he ever spoke to his mother.

I’ve come to view our third story as a continuation of a piece I wrote 10 years ago as we marked the flood’s 40th anniversary. In 2012, I interviewed Ron and LaVonne Masters. At the time of the flood, both were ordained ministers serving Rapid City’s First Assembly of God Church. When it became clear they needed to get to higher ground, they loaded their five children into their vehicle and left their home on Jackson Boulevard. Just as they crossed the bridge over Rapid Creek, an enormous wave of water swept their International Scout away and lodged it under a cottonwood tree. Ron, LaVonne and daughter Karen clung to cottonwood trees until they were rescued at dawn. Their three boys — ages 12, 8 and 2 — were killed. They presumed their daughter JoAnn was also gone, but she miraculously survived in a small air pocket inside the submerged Scout.

Such a tragedy could have broken the family, but the Masterses relied on their faith. In 1992, they published a memoir about their painful night and spent six years traveling through the western United States and Canada sharing their story and offering comfort to others in seemingly hopeless situations.

After that story was published, we often wondered what became of the Masters daughters, Karen and JoAnn. We reached out to Ron and LaVonne through their church and they were kind enough to put us in touch with Karen, now a church music and education coordinator living in Washington state, and JoAnn, a teacher and former missionary living in Florida. Both were open and honest about their experiences and the emotions they navigated in the aftermath. But like their parents, they’ve relied on their faith.

“The scars are always there, and that’s not always a bad thing,” JoAnn said. “What happened is a tragedy. I miss my brothers to this day, and the hurt and the missing will never go away. But you also need to live for today. You need to have your heart right with God because eternity is real. I often tell people that we get blindsided in life. Life is tough. It’s not easy for anybody. Everyone has that thing in their life that they need to work through. Some people get rebellious and blame God for everything. I realized that in my hardest moments, that’s when I need to draw the closest to the Lord.”

Faith guided the Masters family through tragedy 50 years ago, and it sustains them still.

John Andrews is the editor of South Dakota Magazine, a bi-monthly publication that explores the people and places of our great state. For more information, visit www.southdakotamagazine.com.