Grief Over Daughter Drives Mother to Suicide : Disaster: Friends say Janet Polivka threw herself into recovery work after last year’s flood in Shadyside, Ohio. No one could see the depth of her inner pain.

The water is wide, I can’t cross o’er,

And neither have I wings to fly.

Build me a boat that can carry two,

And both shall go, my love and I.

--Traditional

Friends say Janet Polivka began her slow walk toward death the night of June 14, 1990, in the torrents that uprooted utility poles, wrested homes from their foundations and flattened cars and trucks.

Twenty-six people died that night. Kerri Polivka, 12, was among them.

Sixteen months later, on the very spot where her daughter’s body was found, Janet Polivka committed suicide. In her coat were some of Kerri’s trinkets--toys, pictures, a teddy bear.

“She was struggling,” said a friend, Kay Zacharias. “We all saw the struggle of trying to go on. But I don’t think we understood the fullest implication of just how deep her struggles were.”

On the night of the floods, massive thunderstorms dumped 5 1/2 inches of rain on the hills and valleys around this eastern Ohio village. The Pipe and Wegee creeks--placid, ankle-deep streams that meander through the valleys south of Shadyside proper--rose steadily in the night.

The creeks were trapped behind dams that formed when brush and debris carried down from the hillsides lodged beneath bridges and driveway culverts. When the dams began to give way about 9 p.m., a wall of water tore through Shadyside’s outskirts.

Kerri was playing with 9-year-old Amber Colvin. When the floodwaters came, the girls first sought refuge in a bathtub. But as the Colvins’ mobile home began to disintegrate around them, they clambered out of the tub and were separated. The bathtub shattered, and a piece of the tub apparently struck Kerri, Amber has said.

Amber clung to debris as she was swept into the Ohio River. Several hours later, she was rescued. Kerri was not; her body was found four days later.

“She was so wrapped up in this kid that I don’t think she ever, ever really came out of it and ever was able to handle the heartbreak of that happening,” Ray Ponzo, instrumental music teacher in the Shadyside schools, said of Janet Polivka.

Kerri Polivka--a friendly tomboy, a sixth-grader who made mostly A’s and Bs--had played drums in Ponzo’s school band.

Ponzo and his wife waited for word of Kerri with Janet Polivka and her husband, Frank. But when word came, Janet Polivka did not withdraw; like hundreds of others in the surrounding communities, she pitched in to help with the cleanup.

The damage almost defied description. The stench of decay and drying mud hung in the air. Personal belongings were scattered for miles.

Perhaps, those around Polivka hoped, work would ease the burden of her daughter’s death.

“I can tell you this, I tried to keep Janet busy,” said Greg Boyd, a leader of the recovery effort. “She helped out with planning and serving some meals; she went out and talked to people who lost their children.

“She was a lot of help to me and the disaster recovery center as a whole. She was like an inspiration. I mean, holy cow, here’s a lady who lost everything and lost her only child, and still was involved in trying to help others.”

Boyd was honored by the townspeople in December for his efforts. It was Polivka who put together the surprise testimonial. Boyd said she threw herself into recovery work wholeheartedly.

“I’d see her and think sometimes: ‘Boy, life’s tough, and sometimes you get a bad break, but there’s somebody out there who’s a heck of a lot worse off than you,’ ” he said.

Kay Zacharias met Polivka through the disaster relief center. “Once you met Janet, you couldn’t help but be her friend,” she said.

The cleanup brought them close, and shared experiences brought them closer. Zacharias’ son is in the Navy, aboard the Saratoga. When the Haifa ferry capsized off the coast of Israel on Dec. 21, 1990, killing 23 sailors, Zacharias waited for days to find out if her son had been killed. Polivka waited with her until the news came: He was safe. But Polivka was not so lucky.

Zacharias believes her friend’s grief was amplified by the staggering loss of her home and all her possessions.

“People who lose a child can go home to their child’s room, pick up their child’s favorite toys, the mementos,” she said. “You can find that first paper your child did at school, the baby shoes, the first tooth, the baby book. Janet had nothing. She lost it all in the flood.”

A few days before her Oct. 21 death, Polivka, 50, placed personal ads in local newspapers to mark what would have been Kerri’s 14th birthday. She also stopped at the school.

“She didn’t want a big to-do about it, but she had brought a whole bundle of book covers . . . and said: ‘Would you mind giving these out to the kids?’ ” Ponzo said. “She didn’t get specific--’These are on behalf of my daughter’--no, no, she just quietly brought them in and said: ‘You just tell the kids if they want them, they can have them.’

“But I think this is like an inner thing with her. She got a satisfaction out of that. In her mind, she probably thought: ‘Well, that’s still making a contact with where she would have be”

Boyd said he never saw signs of mental instability in Polivka. But he wonders if the grief caused by the death of a child can ever truly be borne.

“I can only give you a conjecture here; I can’t tell how she felt,” he said. “But I don’t know how you could ever get over something like that. I know what this little girl meant to Janet.”

Asked if her death was inevitable, he said: “I don’t really know. Let me answer it this way: This suicide, once she had made up her mind to do it, if it hadn’t worked, I think she would have tried it again.”

The homes around Pipe and Wegee creeks show little of the damage now. But in some places--the spot where the Three K’s nightclub once stood, the land where a barn sat on the curve of the road--weeds obscure the remains of concrete foundations. Not everything has been rebuilt.

A granite memorial has been erected near where workers once sorted through the worst of the destruction. It is called “The Flood of Tears.”

The flood destroyed more than homes and lives. The Colvins and the Polivkas, once friends and neighbors, are no longer close.

Amber’s mother, Karen Colvin, said she was told that her family was not welcome at Janet Polivka’s funeral.

“It’s hard to explain to Amber,” she said. “I just told her the truth--that she’s not welcome and couldn’t go. I would have liked to have gone just to pay my respects, and I would have gone. It would have been hard for me, but I would have liked to have gone.

“It’s cruel is what it is. It just boils down to the fact that one child died and one child survived. I just hate to have the blame put on my family.”

The echoes of Shadyside’s tragedy may never stop ringing in the Appalachian foothills.

“Naturally, events like this tend to dig up people’s own feelings about what has happened,” said Nancy Olexick, who works in the flood-relief counseling center in Shadyside. “They’ll deal with it as they have dealt with everything in the past--they’ll either seek help or deal with it in their own private ways.”

For ethical reasons, Olexick cannot talk about Polivka’s case. But she has seen the village struggle to come to terms with the flood, and she has a feel for the mood of the community. She doesn’t view Polivka’s death as a setback for Shadyside’s recovery.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “The people who have experienced this--this is a part of their life, an integral part of their life. . . . Different incidents throughout their lifetime will bring them back to recall what’s happened to them and how it impacted them and how much strengthened they are from it.

“If you can get through this,” she said, “you can get through anything.”

None of Polivka’s friends foresaw her suicide. And even though investigators attribute her death to an overdose of drugs, Zacharias said she can’t help feeling that there is more to it than that.

“God played a part in it,” she said. “God took her home to be with her daughter. He knew that’s where she wanted to be.”