Mrs. Boulden: 'Nobody was a stranger to him' By David Lias Charles Boulden will be remembered as man who loved conversation and was very close to his wife, Billie, and other family members.
�He liked to talk. Nobody was a stranger to him. He was a church-going man, and he loved his family. We were married 55 years on May 15,� Mrs. Boulden said.
On Sunday morning, June 5, Mr. Boulden, 76, was driving south on University Road on his way to Sioux City, IA, to visit family members.
�He loved his great-grandchild � that�s who he wanted to visit,� Mrs. Boulden said. �My granddaughter, and my daughter and son also live in Sioux City.�
Mr. Boulden�s car was swept off of University Road by flood water. He exited the vehicle, which was found underwater in a ditch along the road.
After a massive search that lasted nearly three days, a fisherman spotted the Viborg man�s body in the Vermillion River, three quarters of a mile from where it empties into the Missouri River.
Authorities recovered the body June 14 in the Missouri River.
Mr. Boulden was �a jack of all trades,� working at jobs ranging from welding to meat-cutting, his wife said.
Mr. and Mrs. Boulden were both born and raised in Sioux City. She went to East High School; he went to Woodrow Wilson High School. The two met at a skating rink.
�And he�d like to tell everybody, we went around and around ever since,� Mrs. Boulden said.
She said the first day of his disappearance �was the worst day I went through.� By the second day, she and her family were convinced that the chances of Mr. Boulden surviving Sunday�s incident were very small.
�The car door was open, and he had taken the keys out of the car,� she said.
His vehicle was impounded in Beresford. Family members discovered that he had left his eyeglasses in the car.
�He may have taken them off because he thought he had to swim,� Mrs. Boulden. �He probably thought he could swim, but the current was too strong, and it was five to six feet deep.�
She is grateful for the efforts of the search and rescue teams, and especially thankful that a fisherman spotted her husband.
His funeral was held Saturday, June 11, in Sioux City.
�We had a lot of people come down from Hurley,� where Mr. Boulden was a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Mrs. Boulden said. �Of course, we had quite a few friends and family members at the funeral, too.�
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