![](https://levees.org/2/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Rosenthal-at-Flood-House-300x200.jpg)
Sandy Rosenthal at soon-to-open Flooded House Relic at London Avenue Canal breach site. Photo credit/Cheryl Gerber
Founder Sandy Rosenthal is nearing completion of her book. The 12-chapter non-fiction book is about how and why she founded Levees.org with her son Stanford, and what the group accomplished. The following excerpt is the final paragraphs of Chapter 10.
“…In 2010, while driving a rental car from Mount Holyoke College in western Massachusetts to my family’s home on the eastern side of the state, I listened to NPR. I marvelled over how the news station had a very distinctive ‘voice’ or cadence in telling its stories. And there, on the Mass Pike, I fantasized about how the name Levees.org would sound, spoken in that cadence, coming from the radio in a nationally aired story.
“Five years later, back at Mount Holyoke, I told this story with its happy ending. I was an invited guest speaker at a conference, “Women Leading in Public Service Summit” in November 2015 and I spoke on the importance of thinking big and what can happen if you do. Six weeks earlier – I said to the packed audience of eager-faced women of all ages – Debbie Elliott with NPR’s Morning Edition had done a marvelous story, aired nationwide, about a plaque-unveiling that Levees.org had organized for the tenth anniversary of the levee breaches. Think big, I said to the ladies, and it can happen. And of course, just as in my fantasy, Elliott’s voice had that distinct sound, the soft sure cadence of NPR reporters as spoken through the decades.”
Saying “Thank You” for all you’ve done just seems inadequate.
It was always important to hold responsible the government entities we all rely on. More now than ever before, from my perspective.
It makes me proud to try and heed your words, to, “Think Big”.
….and maybe, someone in their spare time, can look for our absent ethics. It’s gotten to the point that when someone does behave in an ethical manner they are considered ‘chumps’, ‘someone easy to get over on’. Hopeful that tide is changing.