Declaration of Independents: Ashley Brady

“This is home,” Brady says. “I’m not going anywhere.”

We just try to help everybody out. We got 20 inches of rain and 60-mph winds—oak trees down everywhere. A 100-year-old oak fell on an elderly client’s house. It was raining just as much inside the dining room as outside, so we cleaned the table off and unloaded the hutch. We saved the furniture.

The river rose to 17 feet—normal flood state is nine feet. A friend helped me get both agency offices running, and then we went on the river with kayaks. The river makes a hard 90-degree turn, and we saw these docks that were rafted up on each other because they didn’t make the turn. We pulled as many docks as we could and took them where they needed to be. That little development has 50 or 60 houses, and everyone’s house was four to six feet underwater. I had a majority of them insured with homeowners and flood insurance.

My neighbors are my clients. I want to go the extra effort to be sure I do it right. Most people in this town have known me all my life, so they’ve got high expectations. I’ve got several clients where I cut their grass in high school and college, and now I’m their agent and they’re calling me for advice.

There’s always room to grow. I’m not one to sit around. Opportunity pops up, I’ll look at that. And I might still be the mayor. We’ll see.