Red Bridge

When Once Destroyed, a local history creative non fiction memoir in the form of a letter to my grandson, will be published 2025 by Wise Ink Media, Minneapolis. To stay updated hit the newsletter subscribe button at the top of. this page.

from When Once Destroyed

This is an excerpt from chapter in a “Flood” segment of When Once Destroyed called “Roush.” A small town called Red Bridge was on the brink of its destruction for the Mississinewa Reservoir in late 1963 when Congressman Ed Roush stepped in to help the people there be compensated fairly for their loss. 

When removal became imminent, the people of Red Bridge formed a group they called the Red Bridge Group shepherded by a man who’d complained before about the Army (financial) settlements with Congressman Roush, a man named L. Ferol Bussert. Roush had intervened on Ferol’s behalf in 1962.

“Before this project was started,” Bussert wrote Roush again November 26, 1963, “properties in Red Bridge sold higher than similar properties in Somerset. Now the situation is reversed” (Bussert).

That’s the dispute in a nutshell. It had come up when the Red Bridge Group met November 7, 1963 at the Conservation Club building in Red Bridge. After Charles Hudson complained about the offer for his property that he was getting from the Army, a general discussion ensued and according to the meeting minutes that Bussert submitted, “Many comparisons were made of prices paid in Somerset and prices offered or paid here so far, for homes of comparable age, condition, or accommodations. Finding little favorable comparison, (Bussert),” that’s when the group agreed to write Roush. 

…… According to the minutes at the Red Bridge Group meeting, “Mr. Charles Hudson handed the chairman a letter of condemnation he had received after three sessions with his negotiator.” That would be the Army Corps of Engineers Real Estate Office negotiator headquartered at their office in Wabash. 

The minutes continue, “Several asked questions. He disclosed that he had gotten the letter of condemnation ten days after first meeting with his negotiator. That first offer was $3,800. Final offer was $4,300. He contends the price offered is too low. Also, he admitted swearing some about it.”

In a P.S. added to his minutes that he created after the Red Bridge Group adjourned at 9:45 that night, Bussert noted that the Wabash office “agreed to reopen negotiations with Mr. Charles Hudson, if he so desires. Speaking for the group, Bussert added that upon his return to the negotiations, they would suggest to Mr. Hudson that he “swear less and talk more turkey.”  In addition, “We have consulted two local carpenters about his house and compared his final offer quoted in this report with prices paid for comparable properties in Somerset.”

Roush followed up with a note to Colonel W. Roper, district engineer in the Corps Louisville office, who replied that the Red Bridge Group investigation “fails to reveal any discrepancies in price for similar properties” (Roper). He added that the Army was willing to keep talking, though, to Mr. Hudson. 

That was followed by Roush agreeing to attend a Red Bridge Group meeting on the Sunday after Christmas at their Conservation Clubhouse and telling Roper to send an Army representative. Roush wrote Bussert, for future reference, “If you have any specific instances where unfair pressure or other malpractice was indicated, please let me know and the matter will be investigated” (Roush).

“Time and time again I caused the (Army Corps of) engineers to hold meetings in our area and explain what was happening,” Roush told Kathleen McKinzie in her 1969 (Indiana University oral history)  interview. “They have a tendency not to have too much compassion,” he said, “nor do they display too much concern for people who might be adversely affected by such projects, for individual or small groups. They’re overly objective… calculating; they are engineers; they live by the slide rule. When the slide rule says something should be done or not done, that is what is either done or not done” (McKinzie).

I haven’t been the most favorably disposed person toward Roush, Vern, going back to his ass-kissing meet with Ralph Roessler in the run-up to the 1958 election and what Cliff Funderburg had to say about him in 1955. But we should both recognize the congressman’s work, happening pretty privately, here. There’s no political advantage in this. It speaks to the Congressman’s character that he’d gained the credibility required to make the Red Bridge people believe he would help them. And, he did. It speaks to my own memory’s sense of the time’s Kennedy-esque idealism that doing right is the right thing to do. It wasn’t a political calculation.

When Once Destroyed will be published by Wise Ink Media, Minneapolis, in 2025.