My wife and kids, that is all I have left

Photo By Sgt. Thomas Day | GULFPORT, Miss. (Sept. 2, 2005) -- A surviving American flag from a Gulfport Coast Guard station. In the background is a Coast Guard building that was completely annihilated under the wind and tide of Hurricane Katrina. (Photo by Spc. Thomas Day, 40th Public Affairs Detachment)  

09.03.2005

Courtesy Story

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Spc. Thomas Day
Camp Shelby, Miss. -- Sept. 3, 2005

What was once the town of Gulfport, Miss., is now a pile of broken glass, cinderblocks and ply wood. It was as if the hand of God Himself wiped the Mississippi gulf coast clean with a dish towel.

I never thought a trip to New York City three weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, would only prepare me for the destruction of Gulfport nearly four years later.

October, 2001: I was a senior at Penn State, skipping out on a football weekend to meet my father in Manhattan with a $20 "point and shoot" camera. A year later, I was a soldier. Two years later, I was an Army journalist, following down the soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division with a $2,000 Nikon D1H camera, a notepad and my M-16 slung over my back.

This is my first "deployment" since I rotated out of Iraq after a one-year tour in March of 2004. No M-16 this time, my mission is to document the massive military aid package marching into the streets of Mississippi and Louisiana. Friday was my first opportunity to see what we have all read about in the news.

"This area didn't get hit too bad" quickly turned into, "Holyâ?¦" as we made our way south along Mississippi's Highway 49. Spc. Chris Jones, my roommate in Iraq, was in the driver's seat of our rented Ford Expedition. We parked about three blocks from the coast and walked directly into Gulfport's Ground Zero.

It was not a war zone, but it could easily be mistaken for one. The destructive force was astonishing. Gulfport's shoreside casinos annihilated down to their foundations. Sixty-foot tall trees broken in half like toothpicks. Shops washed over like sandcastles.

As the people of the Mississippi Gulf coast line return and brazenly picked up the pieces of their lives, some will do so without a home and without the loved ones they depend on.

"Let's go back to the phone lines. Kicker 108, hello?"

"Yes, this is a message forâ?¦." It's cruel that many Mississippians are unable to get in contact with missing family members, not necessarily because they are dead, but because almost all cell phone towers in the area have been destroyed. The uncertainty could delay the mourning process for some as long as several months.

Radio stations have bagged whatever format they operated under a week ago and have broadcasted their own missing persons alerts. Some get a response, most go unheeded.

One man I found who did manage to stay together with his family was Petty Officer Chris Allgood. "My wife and kids," he told me. "That's all I've got left."

Allgood is a Navy engineer based in Gulfport. He wasn't the only one in his unit who lost everything. Another sailor told me that "all I have left is in my suitcase."

Nothing could keep these sailors from work, however -- and it's hard to imagine what more fate could hit them with. It was an inspiring sight, watching those sailors answer their call to duty, working to clean their hometown even when they had no home to return to.

We have seen this sense of duty before.

October, 2001: New York firefighters, many of who had lost friends by the dozens on September 11, carried their heavy hearts to work everyday to clean up Ground Zero. I had bought an FDNY hat at the Yankees game earlier, and when a group of four firefighters walked by presumably on their way to dinner, Dad and I stood among a group of about 30 onlookers and gave them the rousing ovation we owed them.

I found my day walking around Gulfport eerily similar to the day I saw Manhattan's Ground Zero with my father. The parallels in destruction are obvious, but I found a great deal of encouragement meeting local Mississippians eager to rebuild Gulfport. Several shops have already reopened, doing so even with shattered windows and no electricity.

It will take days, weeks, months, maybe years, but eventually the suffering will turn into determination throughout the Gulf Coast. Mississippians will dry their eyes and pick up a shovel. From the piles of broken glass, cinderblocks and plywood, Gulfport will rise from the rubble.

hkat

• Date Taken: 09.03.2005
• Date Posted: 09.06.2005 13:16
• Story ID: 2901