John "Tucker" Brown, born on July 25, 1938, is a lifelong resident of Avenue, Maryland, a small fishing village. He comes from a lineage of watermen, with both his father, Frank Brown, and grandfather, Sam Brown, being watermen. Brown began earning his own money at the age of eight, crabbing in the creek. He worked with his father until his father fell ill, after which he briefly worked for American Airlines before returning home to care for his family. Brown took over his father's fishing crew and has spent his life oystering and clamming up and down the bay.

subject: Flood control--Virginia; Flood damage prevention—Virginia; Buchanan County (Va.)--History; Grundy (Va.)--Social life and customs; Levisa Fork Basin (Ky. and Va.); Big Sandy River Valley (Ky. and Va.); United States. Army. Corps of Engineers.

Interview with Dr. John Mattox, owner and curator of the Underground Railroad Museum

Julie Archer was born on January 31, 1971, and is a native of West Virginia. She grew up near Parkersburg, in a suburb called Vienna. Her father, Gary Archer, worked in a heating and insulating plant and was involved in union organizing, which influenced Julie's early exposure to activism. Her mother, Karen Carpenter Archer, originally from Iowa, met Gary while working at the Pentagon during the Vietnam War. Julie pursued a degree in biology and developed an interest in environmental issues during college.

Michael Kline interviewed Kathleen Hall on April 10, 1986, for the Tucker County, West Virginia Flood Audio Recordings project. Kathleen Hall, born in 1912, grew up in a family deeply rooted in the Methodist Protestant tradition, with her grandfather serving as a preacher. In this interview, Hall recounts her family's history, including her grandfather's various preaching assignments and her father's work as a deputy sheriff. She describes the hardships her family faced, such as the murder of her grandmother during a robbery, which led to her grandmother moving in with Hall's family.

Interview with Linda, Charles & Savannah Rhodes

Lodge Compton is a long-standing figure in the world of journalism in Grundy, Virginia. He has been the editor and publisher of the Virginia Mountaineer, a weekly newspaper, for over twenty-five years. Compton was born and raised in Buchanan County, specifically in the headwaters of Dismal River, where his father, a writer, photographer, and occasional politician, also resided. Despite his father's brief stint as the editor of the Virginia Mountaineer, Compton insists there was no direct connection between his father's role and his own eventual position at the newspaper.

On July 20, 1989, Beverly McBride interviewed Mary Litman for the Tucker County, West Virginia Flood Audio Recordings project. Mary Litman is a former resident of Parsons, West Virginia. At the time of the flood, Mary was living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 

Mary Ridgeway is a lifelong resident of Tompkinsville, a location situated between Newburg and Rock Point. She is the daughter of Emma M. Jackson and Sankston Walter Jackson, and she grew up in a family of six children, with three brothers and two sisters. Her father was a farmer and a skilled carpenter who also worked the river, while her mother was a homemaker. Ridgeway graduated from high school at the age of sixteen and soon after began working at an oyster house at Rock Point, which was established by Mr. Coulby.

Interview with Mick Luber, an organic farmer on Bluebird Farm in Cadiz Ohio and co-founder of the Organic Ecological Food and Farm Association (OEFFA)