Skin Care Inspiration
Cedar Rapids flood no match for determined esthetician
By Rebecca Jones
Originally published in Skin Deep, September/October 2009. Copyright 2009. Associated Skin Care Professionals. All right reserved.
As the water lapped at Sheree Ramm's feet, she tried to remain calm. It wouldn't be that bad, she told herself. After all, her skin care studio was on the sixth floor. A few inches of flood water wasn't going to do her any real harm.
Still, just as a precaution, she raced to her studio and stuffed a few tote bags full of retail products, just in case she had to be closed for more than a few days. As she dashed out of the building, totes in hand, she saw the water come rushing down the street.
It was June 12, 2008. And Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was about to face devastation on a scale that was previously unimaginable. Two days later, the Cedar River crested at more than 31 feet high (a record), leaving 1,300 city blocks, including most of downtown, under water.
"No one expected the floodwaters to go as high as they did," recalls Ramm, a lifelong resident of Cedar Rapids. "They gave us a few days warning that the flood would come. Still, my building was three or four blocks from the river. It all just happened so quickly. The water had gotten high before, but it had never gotten over the bridges. By the time it ended, there was no longer a downtown. Everything was under water. It was catastrophically high." Throughout Iowa, flooding wrought devastation, though Cedar Rapids was the hardest hit. People began referring to "Iowa's Katrina."
A Toxic Mess
It was weeks before Ramm could resume work. And even then, she couldn't return to her former place of business. The destruction was overwhelming. Structural damage made many buildings unsafe, and sewage and other pollution in the floodwater had left the city a toxic mess.
Ramm, who's been working since she was 14 years old and has owned her own business since 2002, had a big decision to make: Should she just abandon her business and move on with her life? And if she decided to fight to keep her business open, should she stay in a devastated Cedar Rapids or go elsewhere where conditions were less onerous?
Ramm opted to stay in her hometown and fight. Ultimately, her commitment to her customers, to her community, and especially to her business was too great. "It's my baby," she says.
"I could have quit," she says. "I could have said enough's enough. It's been six years and this would have been my chance to call it done. But I didn't. Ultimately, I'm just not a quitter. I never have been. If there's something I start, I have to finish it."
Hurdles and the Hospital
Indeed, the years leading up to the Cedar Rapids flood had well prepared Ramm to deal with adversity. She'd already been tested in ways few adults ever are. But for Ramm, the test came when she was just a teenager.
It was Super Bowl Sunday 1996, and the then 16-year-old was on her way home from a football party. She was driving through a blizzard. On a back-country road, she ran headlong into a pickup truck. Ramm has no memory of crawling out of her crumpled car and into a ravine, but she does recall hallucinating. She thought she saw a house in the distance and that's what she was crawling toward.
When authorities arrived, a state patrolman found her unconscious in a snowbank. "He told me that crawling into the snow probably saved my life because it stopped the bleeding," she said. "But had I not been found when I was, I could have died from exposure."
She recalls sitting in the trooper's patrol car awaiting the arrival of the ambulance. The trooper had turned all the mirrors away so she wouldn't see herself.
"They pretty much had to sew up the front of my head, from my right eyeball through the middle of my forehead to the left side of my hairline," she says. "I have a unique scar, about eight or nine inches long."
She was hospitalized for weeks, recovering not only from the gash in her face but also from a broken collarbone and other injuries. But getting out of the hospital was just the first hurdle. Then, she had to go back to school and face life as a teenage girl with a very obvious scar on her face.
An Early Interest
"I have definitely developed a different sense of beauty since then," Ramm says. "I was very self-conscious to begin with. I had some people make fun of me, calling me scarface and stuff like that.
"But you get to a point where you know it will always be a part of you," she says. "There are so many other things about you that are beautiful, you see that a scar just doesn't matter. Now, without it, I would be missing the lessons that I learned from that time." Caring for her scar also set Ramm on the path toward becoming an esthetician.
"I always had an interest in beauty and makeup as a girl, but the plastic surgery that followed my accident definitely stirred my interest in working with skin," she says. "Everything that was involved in that, I found interesting: the daily care of the scar, how it healed. I followed the care instructions very well. Now, from a distance, my scar isn't even that noticeable. I'm definitely not self-conscious about it any more."
Four years later, while she was at the cosmetics counter in a local spa, having some makeup applied, it occurred to her that putting makeup on other people might be a fun way to make a living.
"I love art and color, and I've always had a creative mind," Ramm says. "I asked the woman at the spa how she got her job. She said, 'I'm an esthetician.' That was the first time I'd heard that word before. And I thought that's what I wanted to do. When I found out there was skin care and other stuff involved besides just makeup, I knew it was for me."
Built Her Business
She enrolled in La' James International College in Iowa City, Iowa, and graduated in November 2002. She immediately set out to build her own business.
Her first studio was a 12' x 12' room in the lower level of a Cedar Rapids salon. She grew her business steadily, and after a few years, Ramm felt she had outgrown the space.
She decided to move into a historic building in downtown Cedar Rapids, the Guaranty Bank Building. For the first time, she had enough space to have a separate retail area apart from her treatment room.
"I researched and got some new product lines," Ramm says. "This was my chance to shine and to really cater to downtown people. I wanted better product lines, and I wanted everything to look more professional. When I moved downtown, my philosophy changed. Now I use just organic products. That's still my philosophy."
Ramm had been in her new space two years when the flood hit. When it was all over, she kept thinking it would only be a few days before she could get back to work. "You just don't think about what's involved when a flood happens," she says. "I kept calling my landlord, asking when I could come back. But he didn't know what would happen either."
As weeks passed, Ramm grew frantic. Not only was she not working, she had thousands of dollars worth of organic products still sitting in her studio. Those products were meant to be kept in climate-controlled conditions, and she could only imagine how stifling it would be on the sixth floor without air conditioning in the summer heat.
When the water receded enough, she got permission to go back to her studio to retrieve some of her products. "The electricity was out," she recalls. "It was pitch-black inside. It was dusty and moldy. It was absolutely terrible. That was worst thing I had to do, going in that building to get my stuff."
She did retrieve her products and, after consulting with the manufacturer on their safety, was relieved to see they weren't exhibiting any signs of going rancid. "I think I caught it at just the right time," she says. "Had they been in there any longer, I think I would have lost them all."
Beautiful New Space
She began hunting for a place to reopen her business, only to discover new hurdles. Hundreds of downtown businesses were also looking for new quarters, and few landlords were interested in renting out space to temporary tenants intending to stay only a few weeks or months.
Finally, she swallowed her pride and asked a friend, who owns a salon, if she could set up shop temporarily in his business. He agreed, and by early August, she was back in business, though again in cramped quarters with no place to display her retail goods. "I didn't have Internet hookup for credit card payments, or any of those amenities, but at least I was able to perform my services," she says. "I borrowed a massage table from a friend and the landlord let me borrow some furniture, a desk, and a cabinet."
In November, she finally located a permanent home for her studio. It's a space in a historic house in downtown Cedar Rapids. She moved December 1.
"It's a beautiful space, and everything about it expresses me and my business," Ramm says. "It's awesome. I'm in a location where I have more visibility than before, so it's easier to find me."
"This really was a blessing in disguise," she says of the turmoil of last summer. "It was tough to get through, but I'm now in a better space and I'm very happy with how things have turned out."
New Solutions
Ramm figures she's stronger for what she's gone through. "I realize that I can't be in control of everything," she says. "I couldn't control my car accident, and I couldn't control the flood. But you just have to take things like that and either go with the flow or sit there and sulk. And when you sulk, that's when negative things start happening."
She believes her experiences make her a better businesswoman. "You definitely want to have some savings available," she says. "You just never know when something will happen. It doesn't have to be a natural disaster. It could be something in your personal life that would cause you to need to have some money to keep your business going. Just having that little extra financial stability would have made a big difference."
"You can't dwell on the negative," she says. "You just have to keep finding solution after solution and forging ahead in a positive direction. That's what will make all the difference."
Rebecca Jones is a longtime newspaper reporter and freelance writer based in Denver, Colorado. Contact her at killarneyrose@comcast.net.
Editor's Note: Associated Skin Care Professionals offers Business Personal Property insurance for cases such as this. Visit www.ascpskincare.com and click on Learn About Membership.
As the water lapped at Sheree Ramm's feet, she tried to remain calm. It wouldn't be that bad, she told herself. After all, her skin care studio was on the sixth floor. A few inches of flood water wasn't going to do her any real harm.
Still, just as a precaution, she raced to her studio and stuffed a few tote bags full of retail products, just in case she had to be closed for more than a few days. As she dashed out of the building, totes in hand, she saw the water come rushing down the street.
It was June 12, 2008. And Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was about to face devastation on a scale that was previously unimaginable. Two days later, the Cedar River crested at more than 31 feet high (a record), leaving 1,300 city blocks, including most of downtown, under water.
"No one expected the floodwaters to go as high as they did," recalls Ramm, a lifelong resident of Cedar Rapids. "They gave us a few days warning that the flood would come. Still, my building was three or four blocks from the river. It all just happened so quickly. The water had gotten high before, but it had never gotten over the bridges. By the time it ended, there was no longer a downtown. Everything was under water. It was catastrophically high." Throughout Iowa, flooding wrought devastation, though Cedar Rapids was the hardest hit. People began referring to "Iowa's Katrina."
A Toxic Mess
It was weeks before Ramm could resume work. And even then, she couldn't return to her former place of business. The destruction was overwhelming. Structural damage made many buildings unsafe, and sewage and other pollution in the floodwater had left the city a toxic mess.
Ramm, who's been working since she was 14 years old and has owned her own business since 2002, had a big decision to make: Should she just abandon her business and move on with her life? And if she decided to fight to keep her business open, should she stay in a devastated Cedar Rapids or go elsewhere where conditions were less onerous?
Ramm opted to stay in her hometown and fight. Ultimately, her commitment to her customers, to her community, and especially to her business was too great. "It's my baby," she says.
"I could have quit," she says. "I could have said enough's enough. It's been six years and this would have been my chance to call it done. But I didn't. Ultimately, I'm just not a quitter. I never have been. If there's something I start, I have to finish it."
Hurdles and the Hospital
Indeed, the years leading up to the Cedar Rapids flood had well prepared Ramm to deal with adversity. She'd already been tested in ways few adults ever are. But for Ramm, the test came when she was just a teenager.
It was Super Bowl Sunday 1996, and the then 16-year-old was on her way home from a football party. She was driving through a blizzard. On a back-country road, she ran headlong into a pickup truck. Ramm has no memory of crawling out of her crumpled car and into a ravine, but she does recall hallucinating. She thought she saw a house in the distance and that's what she was crawling toward.
When authorities arrived, a state patrolman found her unconscious in a snowbank. "He told me that crawling into the snow probably saved my life because it stopped the bleeding," she said. "But had I not been found when I was, I could have died from exposure."
She recalls sitting in the trooper's patrol car awaiting the arrival of the ambulance. The trooper had turned all the mirrors away so she wouldn't see herself.
"They pretty much had to sew up the front of my head, from my right eyeball through the middle of my forehead to the left side of my hairline," she says. "I have a unique scar, about eight or nine inches long."
She was hospitalized for weeks, recovering not only from the gash in her face but also from a broken collarbone and other injuries. But getting out of the hospital was just the first hurdle. Then, she had to go back to school and face life as a teenage girl with a very obvious scar on her face.
An Early Interest
"I have definitely developed a different sense of beauty since then," Ramm says. "I was very self-conscious to begin with. I had some people make fun of me, calling me scarface and stuff like that.
"But you get to a point where you know it will always be a part of you," she says. "There are so many other things about you that are beautiful, you see that a scar just doesn't matter. Now, without it, I would be missing the lessons that I learned from that time." Caring for her scar also set Ramm on the path toward becoming an esthetician.
"I always had an interest in beauty and makeup as a girl, but the plastic surgery that followed my accident definitely stirred my interest in working with skin," she says. "Everything that was involved in that, I found interesting: the daily care of the scar, how it healed. I followed the care instructions very well. Now, from a distance, my scar isn't even that noticeable. I'm definitely not self-conscious about it any more."
Four years later, while she was at the cosmetics counter in a local spa, having some makeup applied, it occurred to her that putting makeup on other people might be a fun way to make a living.
"I love art and color, and I've always had a creative mind," Ramm says. "I asked the woman at the spa how she got her job. She said, 'I'm an esthetician.' That was the first time I'd heard that word before. And I thought that's what I wanted to do. When I found out there was skin care and other stuff involved besides just makeup, I knew it was for me."
Built Her Business
She enrolled in La' James International College in Iowa City, Iowa, and graduated in November 2002. She immediately set out to build her own business.
Her first studio was a 12' x 12' room in the lower level of a Cedar Rapids salon. She grew her business steadily, and after a few years, Ramm felt she had outgrown the space.
She decided to move into a historic building in downtown Cedar Rapids, the Guaranty Bank Building. For the first time, she had enough space to have a separate retail area apart from her treatment room.
"I researched and got some new product lines," Ramm says. "This was my chance to shine and to really cater to downtown people. I wanted better product lines, and I wanted everything to look more professional. When I moved downtown, my philosophy changed. Now I use just organic products. That's still my philosophy."
Ramm had been in her new space two years when the flood hit. When it was all over, she kept thinking it would only be a few days before she could get back to work. "You just don't think about what's involved when a flood happens," she says. "I kept calling my landlord, asking when I could come back. But he didn't know what would happen either."
As weeks passed, Ramm grew frantic. Not only was she not working, she had thousands of dollars worth of organic products still sitting in her studio. Those products were meant to be kept in climate-controlled conditions, and she could only imagine how stifling it would be on the sixth floor without air conditioning in the summer heat.
When the water receded enough, she got permission to go back to her studio to retrieve some of her products. "The electricity was out," she recalls. "It was pitch-black inside. It was dusty and moldy. It was absolutely terrible. That was worst thing I had to do, going in that building to get my stuff."
She did retrieve her products and, after consulting with the manufacturer on their safety, was relieved to see they weren't exhibiting any signs of going rancid. "I think I caught it at just the right time," she says. "Had they been in there any longer, I think I would have lost them all."
Beautiful New Space
She began hunting for a place to reopen her business, only to discover new hurdles. Hundreds of downtown businesses were also looking for new quarters, and few landlords were interested in renting out space to temporary tenants intending to stay only a few weeks or months.
Finally, she swallowed her pride and asked a friend, who owns a salon, if she could set up shop temporarily in his business. He agreed, and by early August, she was back in business, though again in cramped quarters with no place to display her retail goods. "I didn't have Internet hookup for credit card payments, or any of those amenities, but at least I was able to perform my services," she says. "I borrowed a massage table from a friend and the landlord let me borrow some furniture, a desk, and a cabinet."
In November, she finally located a permanent home for her studio. It's a space in a historic house in downtown Cedar Rapids. She moved December 1.
"It's a beautiful space, and everything about it expresses me and my business," Ramm says. "It's awesome. I'm in a location where I have more visibility than before, so it's easier to find me."
"This really was a blessing in disguise," she says of the turmoil of last summer. "It was tough to get through, but I'm now in a better space and I'm very happy with how things have turned out."
New Solutions
Ramm figures she's stronger for what she's gone through. "I realize that I can't be in control of everything," she says. "I couldn't control my car accident, and I couldn't control the flood. But you just have to take things like that and either go with the flow or sit there and sulk. And when you sulk, that's when negative things start happening."
She believes her experiences make her a better businesswoman. "You definitely want to have some savings available," she says. "You just never know when something will happen. It doesn't have to be a natural disaster. It could be something in your personal life that would cause you to need to have some money to keep your business going. Just having that little extra financial stability would have made a big difference."
"You can't dwell on the negative," she says. "You just have to keep finding solution after solution and forging ahead in a positive direction. That's what will make all the difference."
Rebecca Jones is a longtime newspaper reporter and freelance writer based in Denver, Colorado. Contact her at killarneyrose@comcast.net.
Editor's Note: Associated Skin Care Professionals offers Business Personal Property insurance for cases such as this. Visit www.ascpskincare.com and click on Learn About Membership.
