On his Wednesday morning drive to Wayne State College, Exercise Science grad student Matt Melcher saw a flooded Willow Bowl and make a quick decision.
"I noticed the Willow Bowl was full of water so I thought it'd be a good idea to get some friends and inner tubes and take a picture," Melcher said.
Later that day, Wayne State College posted a photo from 1971 featuring students in a canoe during a bout of flooding. Instead of getting inner tubes Melcher decided to call around to find a boat for his photo op and as luck would have it, he found one. Next, he enlisted his friend and fellow Papillion-native Isaac Baker to take a quality photo.
"That was the hardest thing to wait for, I was excited," Baker, who has his own photography business, said.
Right as Melcher and seven others were picking up the boat, the sun came out and the photo was snapped. Not quite "Washington Crossing the Delaware," but probably as close as can be with a jon boat in the Willow Bowl.
Despite all the work, with news pouring in of the increasingly drastic circumstances created by state-wide flooding, Melcher had to think about posting the photo on social media. He then decided, if it gave someone a break from the tragedy and a brief second to smile, all the better.
"At first I kind of felt bad because I felt like we were making light of a very serious situation, but then I started to think about that it was something people needed because the whole state was underwater," Melcher said.
Melcher posted the photo and told friends and family to check it out because he thought he could get at least 100 likes from Facebook.
He was wrong.
By the time he woke up Thursday morning the photo had been liked and shared over 1,000 times. At the time of print, the photo has 1,666 likes. Melcher and Baker said they were particularly pleased with one of the comments.
"Wayne State commented on it, that was the funniest to me," Baker said.
With his photo going viral, shared from one end of Nebraska to the other and beyond, Melcher said he's been getting some extra attention on campus whether it be from the football players he works with asking him questions or workers in the cafeteria.
Melcher and company have given people a moment of levity during an otherwise trying time, and have perhaps made boating in the Willow Bowl an official tradition at WSC.
