By MARK MILLER
Part 3 of a series
How much do you remember about a summer day when you were 8 years old? Damon Kuhlenbeck remembers quite a bit of one particular July morning 20 years ago.
“It was mom’s idea,” he says now. She, Damon, and his older brother Travis joined a group of volunteers filling and hauling sandbags to hold off the rising floodwaters from the nearby Wabash River. Later that day, there he was on the front page of his local newspaper, tongue slightly protruding as he struggled to move a sandbag about half his size.
“I wasn’t into weightlifting and fitness yet,” he says. “Maybe that’s where it started.”
News-Banner reporter Justin Peeper, who took the picture, recalls that this picture “told the story (of the community pitching in) better that any article I could have written.”
After graduating from Bluffton High School in 2013, the son of Eric and Teri Kuhlenbeck joined the Army — but not just any Army. He signed up for the 82nd Airborne. He made his mark early, winning the “Iron Soldier Award” for the best fitness score in basic training.
His four-year stint did not include any foreign deployments, although he went through a jungle warfare training program in Gabon, Africa, alongside others from that nation’s army and some British soldiers. There were a couple other 82nd Airborne fitness awards he would garner while training and serving at Fort Bragg, N.C.
It became clear, however, that army life is not conducive to having a family, something he wants to do. So in 2017, he returned home, reconnected with Brittany Barger, a high school classmate and began taking classes at the University of St. Francis while working “various jobs,” he recalls.
He and Brittany would soon marry and Kuhlenbeck earned his degree in business administration in 2021.
It was during a senior-year internship at MedPro in Fort Wayne that a recruiter from State Farm Insurance reached out to him.
“He liked my background, and the more I looked into State Farm, the more I liked them,” he says. Hence, after graduation, Kuhlenbeck worked with Bluffton-based State Farm agent Erin Daugherty for training and in November of that year, he took over a retiring agent’s business in Huntington. About a year and a half later, he’s “doing well.”
“State Farm’s a good company and this is a great opportunity,” he says in his office on West Park Drive. He and Brittany have moved into Huntington County, but not too far for her to drive to her job as a physician’s assistant in Ossian.
He does not recall exactly where they went to fill the sandbags. “It was either in that parking lot behind Hardee’s or at the sewage plant,” he says. “Just not sure.” There were some other guys working that he enjoyed talking to. It was only later that he would learn they were inmates at the Wells County Jail.
“They were nice guys,” he says.
Looking back, Kuhlenbeck recalls that he enjoyed getting the recognition. Many people would comment on his picture.
“And I did learn the lesson about volunteering and helping out,” he says. “It was good experience.”
And mom will get the credit for that.
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Exhibit, forum at library
“The 2003 Flood: A 20-year Perspective” exhibit is available for viewing at the main branch of the Wells County Public Library in Bluffton. It includes two 20-minute videos of photos and data.
A “town hall” style forum is scheduled for Tuesday, July 25 at 6 p.m. at which residents will have an opportunity to “share their piece of history and provide their perspectives” of the flood, organizer Doug Sundling said.
miller@news-banner.com
