Confederate Compassion

Chris: “Any chance I could hire you to board up my windows,” I asked my neighbor who was boarding up his house.
I am a lawyer.

That isn’t one of my skillsets. I had spent the day before the hurricane filling 40 sandbags. We thought the storm surge was going to be our biggest problem. It wasn’t until I saw my neighbor’s preparation that I might need to consider the damage the wind could cause.

My wife and I were playing UNO with my 75-year-old mother and our 7-year-old daughter when the power went out. Once the winds picked up, we moved into the master bedroom closet. Three adults, two dogs and one child. It was close quarters. To pass the time we turned on some music and belted Bohemian Rhapsody at the top of our lungs.

Then we could start to feel the pressure change. I stood by the bedroom door and watched our entire home get destroyed. One upstairs window blew out and then it was like a vacuum that sucked the rest of the house with it. Then the eye passed over and everything got incredibly quiet.”

Michele: “My wife took my face in her hands and said, “When you go out there, I need you to remember these are just material things. You wanted to remodel anyway. We will be ok.”

When I walked out and saw the destruction, I almost lost it. Tears filled my eyes.

We didn’t have much time to wander around. It was lunch time and I needed to hurry to the kitchen to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. My hands were shaking and I was having a hard time spreading the jelly onto the bread.

I found my daughters walkie-talkie radio and scrolled through the channels until we heard a man’s voice. He gave his street address. He was one house away. We looked out across the street and we could see our neighbor talking into his radio. “Are you all ok,” he asked. We told him we were.

This was the first time we had ever spoken to our neighbor. The Confederate Flag he flew outside his home every day led us to believe that we wouldn’t see eye to eye on a lot of issues. We waved to him one last time before we headed back into our closet for the back half of the storm.”

Chris: “My mother spent the better part of the storm praying in Spanish. Hurricane Maria devastated her home in Puerto Rico in 2017. Now she was watching Hurricane Michael do the same to her home in Panama City.

After the storm had passed and it was safe to leave the closet, I knew we had to prepare our daughter for what she was about to see. “Remember the movie SING? When the theater crashed down and the Koala was sad and depressed?” It clicked with her. You could see it on her 7-year-old face. She walked out and said, “Yup, this is just like SING.” It helped that her room, the garage and our room were intact. The other side of the house was destroyed, but could be replaced.

That night my wife cooked a hot meal using tea lights and a grill screen. The canned spaghetti was the best meal I have ever had. We slept that night in the two bedrooms that were not destroyed. The silence was deafening. The silence and all the beeping fire alarms.”

Michele: “The next morning we sat outside and ate cereal in the back of our SUV so that we could listen to the radio. A Discovery Channel television crew came walking through our neighborhood. One man, from the Cajun Navy, had a cell phone that worked. We literally called everyone we could think of but no one was answering the phone. We finally got a hold of a friend who was able to let everyone else know we were safe.

With a 7-year-old and a 75-year-old we knew we couldn’t stay. We decided to go to Tallahassee.

Our Confederate Flag neighbors across the street helped us pull off the garage door that had blown in so we could get our second car out of the garage. We offered them all the food that was in our home. After we left, they kept a watch over our house. Even pulled a gun on a would-be looter. It was reassuring to know our possessions were being looked after. Especially by such an unlikely source. Despite our differences. We are taking care of each other. I wish it didn’t take a hurricane to stop us in our tracks and redefine what is important in life.”