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Refugee's Grief Silent
By PATSY SIMS (States-Item Women's Section)
“Mamie’s dead, but I haven’t been able to cry.” The young Waveland mother, waiting at Red Cross headquarters here for emergency assistance, shook her head in tearless grief as she recalled the havoc played by Camille on her family and friends. “Mamie was a friend. '.
about 40,” explained Mrs. Ro-seann Christensen. “I used to babysit for her.
“The last count, they had found about eight people dead within a square mile of our house.
“I feel like it’s all choked up here. If I could cry, I’d feel better.”
Then as if to convince herself, exclaimed: “We’re all alive. I never expected to be.”
Surrounded by other tired, hungry refugees from the Coast and Plaquemines Parish, her mind was more on Waveland, her battered brick home and her dead friends and neighbors.
“We had a big pecan tree that I was worried about hitting the house,” she recalled. “When it fell in the street about 10 o’clock, I figured we were safe and that we could relax. So we started playing poker.
“We were playing when Someone tasted the water and it was salty.
“Our houe is 20 feet above sea level and three-quarters of a mile from the beach, yet the water came up three feet inside and four-and-a-half feet outside.
“Our boat was 50 or 60 feet from the house. During the eye, my husband and brother went to get it and we headed for the mayor’s house.
“We were only 150 feet away, but the wind picked up before we got there. . .we were only halfway, and I
home in Bay St. Louis to go to my sister’s home because it was on higher ground”, she related.
“We were all in the hallway because trees were falling all over the place. Then I heard water dripping, and I thought the faucet had broken. But when I went into the kitchen, there was nothing in the sink.
“Then I saw water coming in under the door. . .and I just couldn’t believe it.
“E d d i e, my brother-in-law, pulled down the attic stairs and told me to go up. But when I got in the attic, a tree had knocked a hole in the roof, and I was afraid to go up and afraid to come down. They talked me into going up.
“The attic had a false floor. The only floor was around the stair opening, so we put the eight children there.
*	* *
“BY THEN WE’D lost our lights. . .the flashlight had gone out, and we were working in the dark. Then the sliding glass doors crashed in and the water gushed in from every which way.
“I kept saying, ‘David, where are you?’ I just knew he’d come with a boat to get us, but he didn’t.
“I thought it’d never stop. The water came up four feet and we kept calling down every minute or so to Eddie to make sure he was all right and to see how high the water was.
“Eddie tried to come up.
bed, and we found a single mattress for my sister and the baby. I got the mattress with the seven children, and that’s how we slept.”
After a few days at a sister-in-law’s house, Mrs. Per-anich headed for New Orleans, where she and her children are staying with her aunt, Mrs. Frank Kemp, and Mr. Kemp. Crowded with them into the Kemps’ three-bedroom home are her sister and five children, another sister and her three children, and their mother, a resident of Pass Christian. There’s also the Kemps’ two children and Mrs. Peranich’s grandmother.
“I didn’t think my parents would survive,” Mrs. Peran-ich continued. “They live on Second St. in Pass Christian.
“We didn’t know anything about them until Mother called Wednesday night and asked us to come get her.
“There was one phone at the telephone company that was miraculously working, and the people were all lined up to use it. She stood in line from 8 a.m. to about 6 at night when she got through to us.
“We’re sleeping on the floor and grateful for it,” she smiled. “At least it’s dry, it’s clean, and we can brush our teeth.
“That’s why we’re here,” she said, explaining her presence at Red Cross headquarters, “to find a place to stay.”
Will she go back to the Coast, where she’s lived 15 years?
“We plan to build again on higher ground. If there’s ever another hurricane, I’ll leave. I’ll go inland way back from the coastline, somewhere away from the water.”