Recent flooding in the crawlspace of his home brought out memorabilia unseen for years and brought back memories for William Musgrave.

There were packets of love letters Musgrave, 92, wrote to his late wife, Marie, while they were courting. letterman sweaters from high school and college attesting to his prowess in four sports, a 1938 edition of The Salt Lake City Tribune newspaper and a still-corked bottle of homemade chokecherry wine, vintage 1978.

“There’s a lot of memories there,” he said Thursday as he recounted how he discovered three inches of water in the crawl space. A gasket on a water line had popped.

“The water pressure in the sink dropped,” Musgrave said. “But I didn’t find the leak until two days later.”

He has written off much of the memorabilia as beyond redemption.

But Servpro, a water- and fire-damage repair company, fixed the leak and now is salvaging what can be saved.

“We have equipment and methods to bring things back to life,” owner Keith Harlan said.

Harlan said some of Musgrave’s correspondence, photographs from World War II, a letterman sweater and a trunk are among items he is trying to restore.

Musgrave, born and reared in Montrose, worked in agriculture as a young man. He was Montrose County assessor for a time, dropped out of Mesa State College after three years and was an Army Air Force flight instructor in Emporia, Kan., during World War II.

He and his wife moved to Durango in 1968 and bought a house on Riverview Drive for $28,500. He mused about changing times as he pointed across his patio to a pair of adjoining vacant lots with a view – asking price $900,000.

Musgrave ended his working life with an 18-year stint as a real estate appraiser for La Plata County.

He doesn’t miss one of his lost treasures more than another, he said as he displayed the intact bottle of chokecherry wine, which he usually bottled in one-gallon jugs.

“One of these days I’m going to see if it’s still good,” he said.