Lee High School - Huntsville Alabama Alumni

The Generals

Face the Storms

by Tommy Towery

Class of '64

I woke up this morning thinking I must be a little strange. Okay, so I’m a 58-year-old high school newspaper editor which means that I am a lot strange. This strange feeling this time is special. I have been glued to the TV for the past few days watching The Weather Channel and trying to keep up with Hurricane Frances. I find that strange, because it has been a long time since we were hit with a hurricane in Memphis, Tennessee. I also find it strange because in the last 30 days we have had some major TV coverage of some very important events, such as the Democratic Convention, the Olympics, and the Republican Convention, which I barely watched. My analysis of this strangeness finally brought me to accept that the reason that I am so interested in the hurricane is that I have friends in harm’s way. Not only do I have Air Force friends, I also have many Lee classmates.

I called Bob Walker, Class of ’64, on Friday morning to see if he had been forced to evacuate his home in Ormond Beach, Florida, because of Hurricane Frances. Bob told me that he had evacuated, and that he was moving inland. Ormond Beach is right next to Daytona Beach and they are both in the danger zone of the incoming storm. He also told me that he had sold his condo, and bought a double-wide modular home (Is that really a smart move Bob?) which lost one-fourth of the roof when Charlie came ashore. By the time most of you read this, the impact will be over, but as of this moment as I write, I know we have classmates in the predicted storm path.

As a matter of fact, Lee’s Traveller probably has as many on-the-scene reporters as many of the major newspapers and The Weather Channel. We’ve stationed Eddie Sykes, Class of ’66, who lives in Lake Mary / Bradenton, Florida, there and he has just sent us his first report.

Eddie sends in this information:

Hello from Florida. Just a short note hoping all Lee class members living in Florida made it through the Hurricanes safely. We drove from Orlando to Bradenton to secure our place on the intercostal waterway south of Tampa in Bradenton.

We expected the worst from Charlie, but the storm turned right early and missed Bradenton. However, Orlando got hit hard with 75mph winds. As I write, we are waiting for Frances to hit Orlando again just three weeks later.

Please send a note to let us know how you faired the storm if you live in the coastal areas of Florida.

Providing us coverage on the Florida/Alabama coast side is Collins Wynn, Class of ’64, and we expect a follow-on report from him for next week’s issue if there is a report that needs to be made and if everyone still has power.

I’ll make contact with Bob after he’s been allowed to return to his house and see what he has to say.

We have many classmates in the Atlanta region, which should not be bothered but will probably get rain.

If the storm happens to turn and move northward, we would like to hear from Sally Dawley Stroud, Class of ’65, who currently resides in Charleston, SC.

Judy Hubbard, Class of ’65, has set up shop in Anderson, SC, and should escape this one, but may still be effected by the rain if the storm path changes.

Farther up the coast are Ed and Barbara Wilkerson Donnelly, Classes of ’65 and ‘64, in the Charlotte, NC, area, in almost the same situation as Judy.

That’s the Lee’s Traveller weather spotters as of this moment. If any of the rest of you are involved with the storm, please let us hear from you. I know there are others that live in the predicted path.

Although I have never lived in a hurricane threat area, I do own part of a vacation property in Hilton Head, SC. Perhaps that is why I am so concerned. I also vacation at the Disney Resort at Vero Beach on special occasions as well as Orlando.

In thinking back, I also have some personal memories of riding out a major hurricane soon after I graduated from Lee. Although Bob claims that I make stuff up and that he doesn’t remember half the stuff I write about him, I am not making this one up, Bob.

In 1965 I had a few weeks off between my summer camp job and the start of classes at Memphis State. I had driven down to visit my grandmother who was still living in Huntsville, and somehow while there I talked to Bob on phone and he convinced me to come down and pay him a visit. At that time Bob was living in Gulfport, MS, and was attending a junior college near there. I don’t know why but I accepted his offer. I think it was because I wanted to go back to school in the fall with a great “what I did on my summer vacation story.” I already had my stuff packed, since I was visiting in Huntsville, so I bought a round-trip ticket to Gulfport on the train. I had never taken a train trip before, and it just sounded like a great adventure. It turned out to be a bigger adventure than I had ever planned.

I stepped off the train in Gulfport about the time the merchants started boarding up the windows getting ready for a storm and the natives were making runs for food and toilet paper. A web search turned up the following information on the storm that was coming:

Hurricane Betsy - September 8-9, 1965: Betsy developed from a tropical depression on August 26 east of the Windward Islands and intensified as it moved west. Betsy moved south through the Bahamas, then west over the Florida Keys. Damage from winds, high tides and wave action was confined to an area from Ft. Lauderdale, FL southward. Flooding over the upper Keys was extensive.

Betsy turned to the northwest upon entering the Gulf of Mexico and its forward speed increased to 22 mph. The eye arrived at Grand Isle, LA, the evening of September 9th. The eye was 40 miles in diameter on the Louisiana coast.

Great devastation was caused by high water on the central Gulf Coast from the point where the center made landfall to Mobile, Alabama. Evacuation advice prompted 300,000 people in Louisiana to seek safe shelter. However, 58 people lost their lives because of winds and floods in that state. There were four deaths in Florida; other lives were lost in the adjacent waters of the Gulf and the Atlantic. The total of 75 deaths in Betsy was the greatest loss of life along the Gulf coast since Audrey in 1957. Highest sustained winds of 136 mph were recorded at Port Sulphur, LA, with gusts to 160 mph reported along the Gulf Coast. Betsy's damages in 1990 dollars, amount to $6.5 billion, the third costliest U.S. hurricane of the 20th Century. Only the Atlantic coast's Hugo (1989) and Andrew (1992), with more than $7 billion, and $25 billion respectively, exceed Betsy's devastation.

In Huntsville I’d been through thunderstorms and hail and even tornado warnings, but never a hurricane, so I had no idea what to expect. The first day I was there Bob and I were busy just running around and catching up on what had happened in the year since we had graduated. We never expected what was about to descend upon us.

The next day, the winds started picking up and the rain started moving in. At first it was just like any other rainstorm except that it never stopped. As the evening came, Bob and I sat in the dining room of his house and played cards with his mom and dad and his brother I think. The rain and wind continued and increased in intensity. Ever so often we’d go stick our heads out the door and see what was going on. About 10pm the card game was over and the hurricane was in full force. That’s when Bob, his brother, and I decided to walk the four blocks to the beach and see what the waves were doing. I now reflect that such an idea was not a smart one.

We started toward the beach and the rain was blowing horizontal. In my memory, that walk reminds me of the weather that we normally see Jim Cantore do his live reports in on The Weather Channel. Bob or his brother flipped a cigarette into the air and it blew for a block before it disappeared from sight. As we got closer to the beach and away from the protection of the houses, the storm felt like it was at full force. Waves appeared to crash ashore and splash up to the height of the streetlights.

That was the moment that we noticed things flying around, like tree limbs, plywood, small cars…well, it seemed that way. We also noticed a crackling sound and flashes like lightning. There was not supposed to be lightning in a hurricane. We turned around and I thought “Oh, good, it’s not really lightning.” No it wasn’t! It was power lines being snapped from the poles and arcing as they snaked together and to the ground like a water hose turned lose at full force. That make us think it was time to leave the beach.

We walked and ran back to the house, still with power lines, trees, plywood, and small cars that had been joined by small boats by then. I swear I saw a house with a little girl and funny dog in it go by. No we didn’t have cows; but if there had been any around we would have seen them fly by.

We returned to the safety of the house, and rode out the rest of the storm there. I don’t remember us losing any power or any parts of the small house, but the next day there were boats in grocery store parking lots and all the beach beer joints had disappeared. One other thing had disappeared as well – all the rail bridges between Gulfport and Mobile were gone, taken by the swell. Since I was relying on the train to get me back home, that posed a problem for me. It was then that Bob’s older brother volunteered to drive me to Mobile and I was able to board the train there and head back north.

It was a memorable trip, and a memorable visit, and I did have something special to talk about when school started back. That was the only hurricane I have ever experienced as a coastal visitor. Someday when I need something to fill another issue I’ll tell you my stories about dealing with typhoons in the Pacific.

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