Hurricane Katrina, in 2005, made refugees out of my in-laws. The forecasters were calling it the second coming of Hurricane Camille, the 1969 cataclysm that destroyed much of the Mississippi coast. My relatives live inland, far enough inland that they routinely rode out even the larger storms. McHenry, in Stone County, might suffer, but no one was hurt that far north. I called my relatives, something I rarely did. I told them Hurricane Katrina was out there, heading right for them, and I wanted them up in Knoxville, Tennessee, waiting it out with us. I grew up in Jackson. My dad was in the National Guard and involved with the relief and cleanup after Camille. The stories he told were of incredible destruction and deprivation, and my in-laws were headed in that direction if they didn’t leave. I offered, I pleaded, my wife got on the phone and cried. They stayed. What worried me was the idea that the power and water infrastructure would be down for so long.
Why would you stay and subject yourself to “Little House on the Prairie” kind of conditions?
For days after the storm, there was no contact with them whatsoever. The in-laws weren’t on the coast itself; they were 25 miles inland, but that didn’t mean that their house had not collapsed or a hurricane-spawned tornado had not sucked them up. My wife grew up down there and knew that it wasn’t completely safe, we couldn’t assume they were OK. We fretted as we ran up our cellular bills calling them. Nothing worked. Eventually, my wife’s sister managed a few text messages, an idea we hadn’t considered since texting was such a new thing at the time that the in-laws didn’t know how it worked and didn’t know how to read what was incoming, much less respond. They had rode it out safely, but it was a week without power that finally drove them out.
My idea was simple — supplies in a large van. No one but me liked this idea. My wife worried that I would be shot or hit over the head, the van and its contents stolen, and I would be just another refugee in need of rescue. I wasn’t talked out of it and continued planning the trip, adding my shotgun and a box of shells to my list. My wife made an end run around me, asking the preacher of our small church for another solution that didn’t involve her husband on the road alone with a van full of desperately needed supplies. So, he modified the plan with the church bus, filled with donated relief supplies on the way there, and families that needed a ride out on the way back, including the preacher’s family, who had also stayed against advice. Since I wasn’t licensed for the church bus, I was out of the driver’s seat, to my wife’s relief. A few days after it left, it returned to a joyous reception, full of sheepish relatives who should have known better in the first place.
The day after they arrived was my day off. My wife rolled me out early. “Go take Grammie and Granny down to FEMA and register them as refugees. They’re giving them debit cards and other stuff. Take Brooke with you.” Brooke was my 3-year-old daughter, who would be better off with me and two grandmothers rather than underfoot in a house full of refugees. I threw on some clothes and a hat and did as I was told. I didn’t worry about what I was wearing or what I looked like; it was my day off, and I was the taxi driver. I didn’t know what would happen, maybe long bouts of whining and short bursts of tears, maybe even from the 3-year-old.
We found the church and were pointed to the gym, where FEMA and the church were set up. Several families were there, south Mississippi and Louisiana residents, easily spotted in their USM and LSU clothing. We plunged into the bureaucracy, and I held Brooke, keeping her out of the way while the Grannies were interviewed. Church members were there, offering help and drinks, and we pointed them to the Grannies, saying that we were local. There were many long lines for the refugees, so we sat out of the way. While we were waiting, a child not much older than Brooke came up to us and offered her a stuffed animal, which I politely declined since Brooke wasn’t a refugee. After a while, my mother-in-law decided that Brooke should be with her, and I noticed that Brooke had not only the stuffed animal but also a bath-towel “blanky” as well. I wasn’t responsible for this behavior, and I would have stopped if I had seen it, but I was tired and not in the mood for a fight with the in-laws. If it made the church members feel good giving Brooke a stuffed animal and a towel, then more power to them. I didn’t think much about it. When they started making rounds with drinks, they kept approaching me and offering me a drink. I declined once again, telling the story that I was a local and not a refugee, that my refugees were over there in line, and I shouldn’t be drinking the refugees’ drinks. The drinks-and-candy person persisted, pointing out that there weren’t many people there and that it really didn’t matter if I was a refugee or the driver. I gave in and took a Coke in the hopes that they would leave me alone. The opposite happened — they surrounded me, in the nicest way, offering whatever I needed.
So, when I looked at myself, in my rumpled Ole Miss T-shirt and Ole Miss hat, tired and cranky, doing things I didn’t like on my rare day off, I realized what I looked like: another Katrina refugee. I looked like the next one in line but one who was far too proud for help. A person who needed the extra love and care that the people at the church were there for. The volunteers redoubled their efforts after I was seen with snacks, and I told them that I wasn’t a refugee, I lived in the city, even producing my Tennessee driver’s license at one point. They didn’t care. I was there, so I should be helped. Add my daughter back into my lap with the stuffed animal and bath towel, and we made a nice picture of refugees waiting for help.
That’s exactly what the photographer from the newspaper thought, too, when he started my way with his professional camera cocked and loaded. I could see my picture on the front page of tomorrow’s paper, “unidentified refugees from Mississippi wait for aid at local church.” I’d never hear the end of it at work; refugees Chris and Brooke taking aid that didn’t belong to them. I quickly got up and moved out of the photographer’s reach.
With my newfound realization of what I looked like, I could adjust my responses to what was being offered, saying, “I’ve been helped, thank you,” which was true, because the in-laws were being helped. We all understood now, or thought we did. Eventually, my in-laws, having been processed, logged, tagged, folded, spindled and mutilated, were taken into another room, this one filled with donated clothing and toiletries. They were handed a garbage bag apiece. I wasn’t so sure that my in-laws needed this, because part of the agreement that got them off the coast was that I would take them shopping for just this sort of stuff. My in-laws filled their bags, as ordered. When they were done, my mother-in-law asked for the car keys, and I hesitated. My wife’s car was a brand-new Lexus. What would these people think, stuffing donated stuff and refugees into my luxury car with local plates? I gave up the keys, sure that a problem would follow. When she returned, I asked her if the volunteer said anything while they were out by the car. “Yes,” she said. “They asked if I had a place to stay.”
To this day, I wonder if I could have done a good job explaining how I wound up there, dressed like that, eating their candy bars and drinking their drinks. I didn’t worry about it, though. We wound up joining that church. A lot of the people who were volunteering that day were in my Sunday school class.
- Christopher Reves is a retired pharmacist who lives in Greenwood.
