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Sacred
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“It looked like a
battering ram had
been working all
night.”
Joe Van Cloostere Long Beach
taking a nap when Camille knocked.
“The surprises came real fast,” he said. “I was half dozing. My wife said ‘Your mother’s car just blew across the backyard.’Just as I got up to take a look, a gust of wind picked it up and blew it through a hurricane fence.”
At the same moment, lightning hit. A tree fell across the family car and one of the beachfront buildings blew up the street and collapsed as he watched.
“That wiped out any idea of exit. Water was coming up from the sound and across Highway 90,” Roberts said.
He tied floats to the children and hoisted them up into the attic. More than a foot of water began to slosh into the house, which began to rock and roll.
“It was pretty wild. At about the time we got into the attic, you could feel the house get picked up and roll with the waves,” he said.
Two opposing fireplaces helped anchor the house, Roberts believes. It did not break up. A china cupboard fell, but all but one piece of family glass was undamaged.
St. Mark’s was pushed off its foundation and heavily damaged in the storm surge, but a pine tree held it in check on church property.
That pine, named “The Tree That Saved St. Mark’s” snapped in two during Hurricane Elena, and punched a hole in the sanctuary roof. “She’s all gone now, ” Roberts said.
Barges out front
Clergy fled St. Thomas Catholic Church in Long Beach. It was a wise move, because Camille smashed the beachfront church beyond belief.
St. Thomas parishioner Joe Van Cloostere, 73, threaded through the debris on the morning after to
Please see SACRED, Page 27
ED FAYARD
A statue of St. Clare kneels in rubble of St. Clare’s Catholic Church in Waveland.
He chose the church, on higher ground	than	onto a fork in the tree,
his house, because it had survived 18 hurri- Ironically, their house survived. Water canes since 1848. The family took food and came within two feet of the ceiling, but the prepared a meal in the church kitchen, then attic remained intact and would have been a returned to the auditorium.	safe refuge.
As Camille howled outside, the children A few miles away in DeLisle, a single tomb-tumed everything into a game until they were stone in a mass grave in the St. Stephen’s forced to lie down on makeshift palates. Wil- Cemetery lists the 13 dead. The oldest was .	liams, too, pulled off his shoes and glasses. 48-year-old Myrtle; the youngest, grand-
PlCking up the pieces	“It got to getting worse, so I got up and saw daughter Bridget, less than a year old.
Williams stayed on the Biloxi Veteran Ad- the water was coming in and working like fish “Some tell me, ‘If that’d been me, I’d kill ministration complex after Camille, recovering gjus on the floor, tearing up the	floor	boards,	myself.' But I don’t know why people think
from the physical and mental battering. Later,	_	like that,” Williams philosophizes. “Ifit was for
a son suggested	leaving the	Coast.	The wrong place to hide	me to die, then the storm would have taken
“A person can’t run away,” Williams says.	“We run upstairs and the water boiled up me and left my family instead.”
“You just never know when it will be your after us. One of my girls cries, ‘Daddy, Dad- Now a great-grandfather, Williams regularly time. We don’t know what life has in store for dy, what we gonna do?’ and I said only thing I attends a Methodist church and often reflects us."	can do is put you up higher.”	on God and living things. If abandoned kittens
His voice is not spiced with anger, as might	Williams and his older sons quickly laid need to be nursed, he’ll do it: if troubled
be expected, even when he talks about being boards across the rafters. Then came the loud friends need an ear, he’ll listen, forced to abandon his house to Camille. crack and the deadly surge of debris, water “I feel like I'm able to give people good, “Tell you the truth, 1 didn’t want to leave and wind. Williams was saved by moving from wholesome talk when they’re in distress” he home. But the loudspeakers were telling us the floating tree to another one standing in the says, “Maybe they don’t know how much they to.”	cemetery. Icy cold, clinging to life, he climbed can lose.”
Family
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