Florida's Great Hurricane/Chapter 3

SUCH disasters as the hurricane always bring to the surface the very best in mankind, and I wonder if this manifestation of universal brotherhood is not a part of the divine order.

I had lived in the northwest section of Miami, at Sixth Avenue and 43rd Street, since April and had not become acquainted with my neighbors until the hurricane huddled us together.

When I awoke at dawn of Friday, September 17, 1926, it was with a feeling akin to suffocation. Great beads of perspiration had exuded upon my brow and I felt a clammy sickness. I went into the kitchen to brew my morning coffee. Soon appeared Catherine Kelly, our faithful housekeeper, who had come to us from Chicago two years ago.

"Catherine," said I, "have you ever seen a hurricane?"

She replied in the negative.

"Then you are soon to see one, for this certainly is hurricane weather, " said I.

My words were prophetic, though at the time I had no sense of divination. My body was my barometer. All during the day I suf fered physical and mental depression. In the afternoon the newspapers carried storm warnings, and unusually early the streets were crowded with motor cars scurrying homeward.

One of my office associates had offered to take me home Thursday afternoon and as we rode toward the bay on Northeast Second street I invoked his attention to the unusual beauty of the sky and landscape—the olive green of the trees and foliage outlined against the boiling gold of the firmament, with the sullen grey and green of the bayshore and waters between. There was a tense quiet over everything; not a leaf stirred and all sounds seemed strangely near. These things, I had learned, are omens of a hurricane.

Upon my arrival at home Friday afternoon I informed my wife of the impending storm and at once she suggested that we move the children's beds in from the back sleeping porch. I opposed the idea because it seemed needless to take such a precaution until the evidence of its necessity became more urgently apparent; nevertheless when bedtime came we put two of the children, who usually slept on the porch, in my wife's bed and I took the third in bed with me o ​the front porch. The other children (there are six) usually slept in the body of the house.

Soon after we retired a fresh wind blew up and relieved the humidity of the day, but it was only pleasant and did not become alarming in bluster or velocity until the early morning. I did not know just what time that was, but as the rain began to blow in through the screen, I moved my bed from the porch into the living room, and turned on the light to guide me to the back room to see how the children were faring. The windows were open, but at that time the rain had not begun to beat through, and I returned to the living room and went back to bed. It was not to sleep, however. The wind and the rain increased in intensity and in a short time I got up again. By this time the wind was whipping the awnings in a lively fashion and their metal frames were creaking and shrieking in a most alarming medley, which made sleep quite impossible. Again I punched on the light, but had hardly done so when the bulbs faded out in a dull red glow, denoting that the current had failed.

My wife appeared and asked if I had any matches, and told me I would find candles in the kitchen cabinet.

Matches! With all my premonition of the storm I had not thought of matches. But if I am improvident my nature I may lay reasonable claim to a fairly good memory. I remembered that I had seen a packet containing three paper stemmed matches on a chiffonier. I groped in the dense darkness and found them. Yes, there were but three, and there had been several days of humid weather. What if the matches would not ignite? Fortunately the first match was successful, and then I misplaced the others and did not find them until after the storm.

After making a light I distinguished here and there through the night and blinding rain dim splotches of light which indicated that my neighbors had provided themselves with the primitive candle, with which our forefathers were familiar. Despite the progress of the age it seems inevitable that we must resort in emergency to primitive conveniences. Just across the street such a flicker was discernible, and I knew that Harry Goldstein, my friend of many years, was keeping a lonely vigil against the storm, for Harry is a bachelor and lives alone in a garage apartment which he had built only a few months ago. His domicile was a sad wreck, but he escaped unhurt, and he told me the next day that he had expected every minute to feel the house give way. I told him I thought of him during the night, and would have asked him to share our anxiety if this had ​been possible. He said he would have deserted his quarters had he dared go out. This fairly stated the predicament of all. They were frightened where they were but feared to venture out.

It is wonderful what a difference the light of day makes in one's feeling of security. It is improbable that any one slept through that horrific night, except children. Our Bobby slept, though drenched. Everybody waited for the dawn, and when it came there came with it a feeling of relief, though the most severe part of the hurricane was after 7 o'clock Saturday morning. It was like parts I and II of a grand opera program. Wagner probably gained some of his inspirations from a hurricane. Surely there was weird music in the rhythm of the storm. It was grand opera of the grandest and most awful character. At the height of its fury I played the Victrola to keep the children quiescent, but the instrument could hardly be heard above the din of the wind. Bobby prompted me when at the conclusion of a record I failed to change it. The child was more composed than I.

Going back into the back room shortly after my first visit, I found it leaking like a sieve. The water was pouring in upon the floor and beds. I woke Felix, our eldest child, who was sleeping soundly, and got him up, and rescued the two little girls, Mary and Jeanne. The water was streaming in upon them, and I took both in my arms into the living room. My wife had moved Baby Elise in her basket into the northwest corner of the living room and Catherine had come in from her room, bringing our third son, Millard, with her. Here, between the fireplace and an old-fashioned davenport, the little flock hovered as the wind charged and roared and made the night hideous.

Our house is of concrete and stucco construction, having been built by a North Carolina physician as a winter home for his family. I found comfort in this reflection, for the storm was developing such fury that I began to realize it would be fatal to the cheap and carelessly constructed houses that had gone up during the boom period. Later, when the wind shifted and the house began to quiver and the ceiling to undulate in billows as a bedspread does when shaken by an energetic housekeeper, I realized that even the strongest construction was being subjected to a severe test. In the meantime dawn had broken and I attempted to open the kitchen door upon the back porch to reach the refrigerator. The children were fretting from hunger. Several times I threw my whole weight and strength against the door but could not budge it, so strong was the force of the gale against it. Eventually there was a lull and I got the door open, but wreckage blocked the passage from the kitchen to ice box. The entire screen ​siding, with awnings attached, had blown across the children's beds, which also had been displaced along with two chiffoniers in which the children's clothing was kept. The whole house was flooded and everybody was wet to the skin. Rugs, bedclothing, furniture and everything else was in wet ruin. But just then a bottle of milk in the refrigerator seemed about the most important thing in the world. At last I surmounted the ruins and retrieved the milk. This stayed the hunger of the little ones for awhile, for all except Millard, who indignantly refused it because it was cold—he is accustomed to taking his warm, but as the electric current was off, and we were dependent on it for cooking, it was impossible to cater to the young gentleman's wishes.

The lull was of brief duration. I had begun to think of trying to get out, when my wife reminded me that this was a hurricane, and so far the wind had been blowing from the northeast only and was due to change shortly. She had hardly spoken before the shift was apparent and the real bombardment began. The battering started about seven o'clock and continued with unbated fury for several hours. It was shortly after eleven, when all of us were huddled together in Catherine's room, having left the living room for fear it would crush in, that I heard a thunderous hammering upon the kitchen door, accompanied by W. E. Sutherland's sonorous voice:

"Hey, there! Can I do anything to help you?"

I opened the door. There stood Sutherland in his bathing suit, water dripping from his grey hair and bronzed face, but his eyes gleaming with courage and kindness. One by one, smothered in bathrobes and other protective coverings, the children were taken to his home, which had escaped with minor damages, and our own water-logged ark was forsaken.

Not only did my good neighbor take in my forlorn brood, but he and his excellent wife provided shelter and culinary accommodations for several other families. They had an oil stove and the lack of electricity was no inconvenience to them in this respect. My children became their especial charge and care. For ten mortal days and nights they humored their whims and not only that, they displayed the greatest diplomacy and tact in their unaccustomed dealings with them. This proves the truth of my assertion at the outset, that disaster and misfortune make the whole world kin!

So there you are! What a difference a hurricane makes. Now I know my neighbors. I know the honest quality of their minds and ​hearts. I know they are true blue and may be depended upon in time of stress and trouble.

I should not have related this personal experience if it were not typical of many that occurred in Miami and throughout the storm stricken area during and after the disaster, which stripped many and left them without a penny or the wherewithal to get a meal or pay for a lodging.

To moralize is cheap, but there can be no question that unforeseen disaster, such as that which visited the Miami region brings one down to first principles. I think of Shakespeare's "blessed are the uses of adversity" in this connection, and shortly after the storm I was in the office of Burdine's Department Store and saw tacked upon the wall this legend:

Burdine's was a heavy loser, but the spirit of encouragement carried to many by this motto is characteristic of the very fine young man, Roddy Burdine, who is president of the Miami Rotary Club as well as head of this great business house.