Andrew's Angels: A Volunteer's Story of Hurricane Andrew

By Nancy Pelletier

Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida in August 1992. At the time, it was the most destructive hurricane in U.S. history. Nancy Pelletier was one of many Red Cross volunteers who felt called to do whatever they could to ease the suffering. This is the moving story of the horrendous destruction she witnessed, the grateful people she aided, and the lifelong friends she made. With photos.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nancy Pelletier
• Release date: Jul 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301210909

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ANDREW’S ANGELS:

A Volunteer’s Story of Hurricane Andrew

by

Nancy Pelletier

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 by Nancy Pelletier

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

IN MEMORY OF

Patricia Jean Guenther

1934-1993

Patricia Jean Meyers Guenther

Born January 26, 1934, in Hamilton, Ohio, Patricia (Pat) Guenther was destined for a life as a volunteer. While growing up in Hamilton, Patricia admired her mother, who was a social worker and an American Red Cross volunteer. It was only natural that Patricia would later follow in her footsteps.

Upon her graduation from Miami of Ohio College in 1954, Patricia worked as a social worker for the City of Canton. But after a couple of years, still living with her parents, Patricia decided it was time to leave the nest and venture out to seek new horizons. She moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where she worked as an assistant buyer of women’s wear at Sterling, Linder & Davis department store. It was during this time that she met and married her husband, Joe Guenther, an architect from Canton. Joe and Pat soon returned to Canton, where Patricia became a Field Liaison for the Girl Scouts of America until the birth of their daughter Kathryn in 1961. Although she did not work formally at any job other than being a mom, says Joe Guenther, she volunteered for everything the schools offered.

In 1975, Patricia founded the Rape Crisis Center in Canton. She worked tirelessly, not only with the organizing of the Rape Center, but also responding in the middle of the night to hospitals in the area to counsel victims of rape and to help them to readjust.

At her local Red Cross chapter in Canton, Patricia not only wrote the entire Disaster Manual, but also worked the Servicemen’s Request, contacting Commanding Officers at bases throughout the world to help Service personnel return home on emergency leave due to a death in the family and for other emergency reasons.

Trying to get Service personnel home and counseling rape victims were not the only things that got Pat Guenther up and out in the middle of the night. She also worked Disaster Services for the Red Cross, which meant being on call to drive a Red Cross feeding van to fires and other emergencies to feed firefighters, police, and victims of a disaster.

Patricia also worked many national disasters for the American Red Cross, but her job as a Supervisor of Family Service during Hurricane Andrew in South Florida in 1992 would be her final mission. Upon her return home from Hurricane Andrew, Patricia was taken ill and died of an infectious disease in August of 1993.

A loving wife and mother, Patricia will be remembered for her incredible, long, and enduring years of service as a volunteer. A true role model, she will be especially missed and remembered by the volunteers of Hurricane Andrew who served under her guidance at Service Center #14, Homestead, Florida.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1. The Calm Before The Storm

Chapter 2. The Eye

Chapter 3. Beverly: A Perfect Stranger

Chapter 4. The Destruction

Chapter 5. Service Center #14

Chapter 6. On The Scene

Chapter 7. The Cave

Chapter 8. Home Visits

Chapter 9. Janis: An Angel from Home

Chapter 10. The Boardwalk

Chapter 11. Tony

Chapter 12. Iris

Chapter 13. The Strength Within

Chapter 14. Coming Home

Chapter 15. A Letter from Iris

Chapter 16. Five Years Later

Afterword

Notes

About the Author

INTRODUCTION

Sometimes the decisions you make in an instant determine your true character. Some people pass by an accident and don’t want to get involved. Others feel compelled to stop and help. There is a common thread that lines the hearts of those who have a need to help when help is needed. A disaster intensifies that need.

Devastated by the destruction of Hurricane Andrew in South Florida in August of 1992, I turned over my home to a stranger, left three jobs which were my only source of income, and went to work on the disaster as a volunteer with the American Red Cross, having no idea what to expect or how the experience would change my life forever—as it did for the more than 10,000 volunteers who answered that cry for help. I call them angels, Andrew’s angels.

It is a story of love, compassion, death, destruction, and the bonding of volunteers and victims. Faced with the never-ending problems of the disaster, volunteers began to understand the mission of Clara Barton and the moral obligation to give back.

Andrew brought devastation and destruction in unprecedented proportions. Many people came from other parts of the country to loot or to perpetrate fraud, but the residents of Homestead, Florida banded together— across barriers of race, creed, and national origin. It showed them they could survive by working together, and it taught all of the volunteers who went there the same lesson. We found love in abundance, and it changed our lives in ways we could never have imagined.

Prior to my work after Hurricane Andrew, I was aware that the Red Cross helped people all over the world, but I had no idea just how massive their work was. What was even more remarkable to learn was that the majority of Red Cross workers were volunteers. Who were these people, and where did they come from? I was on a mission to find out.

Learning to conduct interviews with survivors became the most challenging undertaking of my life. The hours were long, the paperwork massive, and the stress level immeasurable. Just when you thought you had heard the worst story, there was another one right behind it. I found it interesting that most clients came in to the Red Cross Service Center for a particular reason, the need for food, clothes, and housing, but that they seemed to need and want even more to tell their stories. They were extremely anxious to do so. Thus it seemed that volunteers became counselors as well as caseworkers. We listened to their stories: stories of the sound and the terror that they thought would never end, stories of being under debris for hours, stories of children armed with M-16 rifles protecting what little they had left, stories of having the American dream destroyed.

More than 20 years have passed since Hurricane Andrew devastated South Florida, and even after all this time, whenever I see another disaster on the news, it takes me back in time and I relive all the emotions I felt back then. It’s as though it were yesterday. The images stay locked in your mind forever. Now it seems that national disasters are becoming more frequent, as well as more intense. There will never be enough volunteers to go around.

I kept a journal while working with the Red Cross after Hurricane Andrew and decided to write this book not only to encourage volunteerism, but also to remember the beautiful people of South Florida who survived this terrible storm and the thousands of volunteers I met during that time. They became my friends forever.

I would especially like to thank Barbara Sloan at Flagler College, where I was working shortly after returning from assisting with the disaster, for helping me with the editing of my book. She taught me a valuable lesson: that writing is 10 percent idea and 90 percent revision. Consequently, I have been revising over the past 20 years. However, I have also learned that it is never too late to tell your story.

I would also like to thank David Dvorkin and Leonore H. Dvorkin, of Denver, Colorado, for their help in preparing the book for publication. David and Leonore are both much-published authors, with more than 20 books (fiction and nonfiction) and more than 50 articles and essays to their credit. Now they are assisting other authors who wish to tell their own stories to the world. Several of their clients are blind.

Leonore did the final proofreading and editing of this manuscript, and David did all the technical work required for publication of the book in e-book and print formats. For more information about their books, articles, and essays, as well as their editing and publishing services and a partial list of their clients to date, please see the following:

David Dvorkin’s website: www.dvorkin.com

Leonore Dvorkin’s website: www.leonoredvorkin.com

Details of their editing and publishing services:

http://www.dvorkin.com/ebookpubhelp.html

July 2013

CHAPTER ONE

The Calm Before the Storm

St. Augustine, Florida

August 22, 1992

All eyes were focused on the small TV resting on an old wooden shelf behind the bar. Amidst the clanking of glasses and chatter, the happy-hour locals who frequent the Wildflower Café on Anastasia Island were viewing the tracking of Hurricane Andrew. The color radar image revealed what looked like a massive ball of fire swirling counterclockwise toward the East Coast. Some of the spectators gazed at the TV with a look of concern, while others joked and teased about the predicted forecast.

Anyone want to put money on the storm that it ain't gonna hit here? shouted Joe Reilly, a heavyset man, propped on his stool at the end of the bar.

Nah, laughed Mike Nolan. He took a sip of Red Brick beer and wiped the foam from his thick white beard. We all know it’s not gonna hit here. Never does. Been here 15 years—haven't seen a hurricane yet.

What about Dora in ‘64? Don Moore asked. That was pretty bad. The city was underwater, and there was no power for days. The islanders couldn't get to the mainland, and those who were in the city couldn't get back to the island, ‘cause the bridges were flooded. Believe me. We’re due for a good one.

Hell, I'll bet you 50 bucks we don't get hit, Joe argued. The Spanish settled here in St. Augustine for a reason, probably because of its position on the coast. Obviously, they knew something we don't—‘cause St. Augustine has had the fewest hurricanes on either side of the Sun Belt. They always hit south of us or move up to the Carolinas.

TV Channel 4 showed live video of elderly residents being evacuated from condominiums and apartment buildings on Miami Beach. I glanced at the TV, poured Joe another beer, and turned up the volume.

Some residents of South Florida are beginning to evacuate, the reporter announced, his voice revealing a sense of urgency, while others are confident that Andrew will not affect them. Cashiers in the Miami area are busy as families are buying up supplies. Shelters have opened, and residents are urged to start coming in.

Why aren't you going to leave? the reporter asked an elderly woman. Why? she answered matter-of-factly. I got two little dogs. I will not take them no place. They will die.

Are you scared? he asked another lady in her eighties. Not really. Cool, calm, and collected, she laughed.

I don't think this hurricane is going to be as bad as it's reported to be, said an elderly man. But why take chances? the reporter questioned. Hey, what will be, will be, the man replied.

While some Wildflower patrons continued arguing about the storm and where they thought it would make landfall, others played darts or pumped the jukebox with quarters, confident that North Florida was out of harm’s way.

Terry Reynolds arrived at the café to take his shift at the bar and relieve me. Terry was a local radio DJ who also moonlighted as a bartender at the café. He was always smiling as if he had a real juicy story he was about to tell, but we never really knew what was behind his mischievous smile. In his mid-thirties, he had jet black hair and a matching mustache that fell into the dimples of his cheeks. Often I would ask him, Why are you so happy, Terry? Because it’s happy hour, he’d answer. You’re supposed to be happy. He'd grin for a moment or two, just long enough to make me curious and wish I could read his thoughts. At least once a week, Terry would tell me that he thought he was in love. Each time, he had met another real knockout. So many women, he'd say, so little time.

I was grateful to see Terry. The café was hot. The small air conditioner on the wall never seemed to work well, and customers were always propping the door open to get out the smoke from cigarettes. At times, you could barely see across the smoke-filled room. The local water contained sulfur, and each day at 4:00 p.m., when the sprinkler system went on at the Beach Club just behind the café, we were intoxicated with the water’s rotten eggs odor.

My feet were sore. My back ached. Moonlighting as a bartender was not exactly what I thought I'd be doing at the age of 48, but I just couldn't survive on my day job as a legal secretary, even with the rent I was collecting from my first floor apartment. St. Augustine is so behind the times; most jobs pay only slightly above the minimum wage. After the huge salaries I was accustomed to earning when I lived in Massachusetts and then later working at the Watergate in Washington, D.C., it was difficult to learn to live on such low wages. There were other more prestigious clubs I could have worked in, but the Wildflower Café was close to home, and I didn't like driving at night; night blindness was becoming a problem. For most folks, working two jobs was the price we paid to live in St. Augustine, with all its historic charm and miles of white sandy beaches.

I cashed out my drawer and turned the bar over to Terry. I was saying goodnight to Ed and Louise, two of my regular customers, when Brad Mitchell walked in. Brad stood five feet eight inches tall with a medium build and a crop of white hair on his head. He always wore his shirts opened at the neck. A heavy gold chain drew attention to the thick white hair on his chest that he was proud to show off. His eyes were as blue as the sky on a clear day. He had a cute smile, loved attention, and had a way of announcing himself when he walked into the café so everyone would be aware he had arrived.

Hey, gorgeous, where ya goin’? he shouted to me. I was collecting my purse and car keys, getting ready to leave.

Home, I said as I turned to look at Brad. I just finished my shift.

Stay and have a drink with me, he begged. I have something I want to talk to you about.

Oh, Brad, I really need to get home.

Please, just one, he pleaded. It's really important.

Well, okay, but just one. I want to get home and watch the news on the storm.

Brad and I walked over to a table in the corner of the room where we could talk privately. Terry switched the station to the sports channel. The crowd cheered for their favorite teams and told their newest dirty jokes.

Don't worry about the storm, Brad laughed. If it comes this way, we just have a hurricane party right here and wait it out.

Not me, I said. If it comes this way, I'm out of here.

You worry too much, darlin’, he said with a laugh.

Yes, well, I don't like hurricanes. So what did you want to talk to me about?

Ahhh... you know, sweetheart, he confessed, it’s not over with you and me. I still love you, and I know you love me. I don't care if it takes five years; I'm gonna wait for you.

Brad and I had been introduced the previous year by mutual friends who thought we would make a perfect couple. He had just been divorced, and I had just ended a two-year relationship. There was an instant chemistry between Brad and me from that very first meeting. We plunged into a whirlwind of a relationship. After a few months, it was obvious that Brad still needed to sow his oats and was not ready to make a commitment. Soon afterward, we went our separate ways.

I don't love you, Brad. Anyway, I heard you had a new girlfriend. What's her name, Tiffany?

That's about over, Brad said. I hardly see her anymore. I know you love me. I can see it in your eyes. You just built up that wall so high this time that you won't let anyone tear it down, but I will tear that wall down, and we will be together again.

I don't think so, Brad, I said, as I stood to leave. Listen, I really need to get home. I've got to work tomorrow. Thanks for the drink.

But tomorrow is Sunday, he said with a puzzled look.

I know, but my boss needs some depositions typed for an early morning meeting on Monday.

Oh, so will you just think about what I said?

I suppose so, but I really have to go.

Brad insisted on walking me to my car, where he pulled me into his arms and kissed me long and hard, again insisting that we belonged together. He slipped a diamond-shaped, pink-ice ring on my finger.

I saw this at the Strawberry Festival last week and bought it for you. I do love you, and I want us to be together again.

I thanked Brad for the ring. It was thoughtful of him to have bought it for me. We said goodnight and I drove home, playing the tape of all that Brad had said in my mind.

I was relieved to get home. I poured myself a glass of wine, took off my shoes, and put my feet up on the coffee table as I turned on the TV to listen to the news reports on the hurricane. Tourists by the thousands were bailing out of the Florida Keys. Traffic on northbound US1 was a wretched crawl. The lights from hundreds of cars looked like a field of fireflies in still motion. The storm was about 600 miles away, inching its way up the Caribbean. On what was one of the longest bridges in the world when it was built, the Seven Mile Bridge from the Florida Keys, traffic was bumper to bumper, with stalled buses and engine problems. All the while, Andrew was teasing those who dared to stay behind.

Bonnie Copeland

Homestead, Florida

Bonnie Copeland returned from work on Saturday to her home in Homestead, Florida. The last thing that was on her mind was all the talk about a hurricane. Bonnie had more exciting things to think about; her new hot tub was being delivered that day. Ordinarily, she didn’t have to work on Saturdays, but her Security Administrative position with the Florida Department of Corrections in Florida City required that she attend emergency meetings any time of the day or night. That morning she was called to work for just such a meeting. The meeting was brief, she remembers, to inform the staff that a hurricane was headed in their direction, but all indications were that the hurricane would turn north and they might only get some winds and rain. Emergency supplies were checked, loose items secured, and 900 inmates were assured that all was well.

Being female and working in a State Prison that houses all male inmates furls the eyebrows of many people, Bonnie admitted, but after 13 years, that reaction had become rather routine for me, as had routine emergency meetings.

Her 29-year-old son, West, lived with her at the time and worked for the City of Homestead. He was also called in for a meeting that morning, to help secure the city buildings. He did, however, come home in time to help set the hot tub in place.

At 7:00 the next morning, Bonnie was again called into work. It seemed that Hurricane Andrew had not yet turned north. There was a possibility that it might not make that turn. Its present course would take it right over the area of Homestead. Andrew was also continuing to grow stronger, becoming a major threat. This turn of events had certainly interfered with