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CAMILLE: 20 Years Later
Dining out
Serving chow meant canned foods, creativity, scrap wood
By SHARON WALDO_______________________________
THE SUN HERALD
■	For survivors of Hurricane Camille, meals among the rubble were a ghastly parody of pre-hurricane cookouts.
Most ate what they could when they could. And, if they had meat, they cooked it and ate it as fast as they could.
“Eating outside on the driveway, cooking everything you can on the barbecue, ” is what Julie Hatten of Gulfport remembers about the days and weeks after Camille.
“It was such a time of frustration and heat. We really just didn’t know how bad it was going to be,” she said.
“Now, of course, I run to Delchamps and buy Spam and Stemo. It’ll get you through. ”
Getting by
Stories abound of people getting by for weeks on Vienna sausages wrapped in bread or squashed between stale crackers, cold ravioli or pork and beans — right out of the can — and, of course, Spam.
“I was tickled by my mother, ” Hatten said. “She thought cooking a can a ravioli was just wonderful. Normally, my mother would never had eaten a can of anything.”
Mickey Riebling of Gulfport also says she remembers making do with what she had. “Food wasn’t easy to come by.” Not to men-
tion ice or water.
“We had no electricity for 17 or 19 days, so we kept what food we could get in an ice chest, ” she said. “We’d get a little bit of fresh sandwich meat and eat it up in one day.
“It was such light eating. We survived is about all you could say that we did.” _
A time for sharing
Indeed, everyone has a story to tell. But for every hardship story, there’s a tale about how people opened their hearts in addition to. their cupboards and ice chests to share whatever they had.
“Let me tell you my version of it: Every-' body worked together. Everybody stuck together. Everybody, helped everybody ' out. That was one time that everybody was equal. The rich were just as poor as the poor, ” said Everitt Necaise of Saucier.
“I had a neighbor, .who lived three doors down from the house and who I hadn’t seen for about eight, years, stop by to see if I needed any food. He had a pickup truck full of groceries,” said Necaise, who was living in Long Beach at the time. “Come to think of it, that’s the last time I’ve seen that fellow.”
One blessing in disguise
Anna Lynde, who was living in Pass Christian when Camille hit, also got help from some “friends.” For Lynde and her family, what
happened about a week before Camille.turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
“These people stopped me on the street one day and asked me did I have any room in my freezer. They were moving and didn’t have any place to put it. I picked the food up on a Saturday before the hurricane. They had pounds of ground meat and steaks.
“After the hurricane, we ended up eating everything out of the freezer. It was something different every day,” she said. “I tried and tried, but I never could find those people. ”
After the aftermath
Lilly Byrd of Gulfport, who had given away almost a freezer-full of food to local churches because she couldn’t cook it fast enough, says she ate mostly sweets until she got electricity. “We ate dozens of sweet rolls, cinnamon rolls, jelly rolls, anything that would keep.”
She vividly remembers her first home-cooked meal a few weeks after Camille. “We went to Wiggins to visit a friend and on the way back, we stopped at some big food store. We brought the food back, and I remember that I treated my family to pot roast, with potatoes on the side.
“I don’t believe any food ever tasted so fantastic. When Daddy said Grace for that-first meal after having my beautiful electric stove working, that grace meant so much to u^."
“Believe me, it ^tastes great. If another hurricane conies and you get tired of sandwiches, just remember: Spam is good for the tummy if you are hungry.”
Aunt Juillette’s Fried Spam
2 large cans of Spam 2 eggs, beaten Seasoned bread crumbs Milk
Beat eggs and milk, dip meat into egg mixture, roll in bread crumbs. Fry into golden brown.
Pat Gill Biloxi
Jane
Continued from Page 23
Camille may have kept Dietz dead tired and busy round-the-clock, but she did not stop her from going to Southern. Since classes were postponed for a few weeks, Dietz was still able to attend. It
was a close call, though.
, “Going to school then was not a priority,” she said. “We were working from morning to night working constantly. There were 5,000 insurers in our file alone . . . People were nice, not demanding. There were people who lost everything. ”
Once Dietz and her Dad settled back in the office and the pace slowed down some, he asked her
about school. “I said ‘Let me try it to see how it works out on a possibility basis,’ ” she said.
She left soon after. For four years, though, she came home every weekend to help with the barrage of work caused by the hurricane.
Dietz earned a degree in nursing and joined the U.S. Navy. Now she is married and the mother of three children. Dietz and her husband are franchise owners of the McDonalds
restaurants in Biloxi.
Hurricane Camille, Dietz said, taught her to never take anything for granted.
“There were a lot of kids who didn’t go to school because of the hurricane,” Dietz said. “We were lucky. We didn't lose anything. But there were a lot of kids who lost everything.
“They didn’t even try to go to school. They just went to work and cleaned their houses.”
■S"T
HURRICANE
John
Continued from Page 23
Then came Camille. She ruined another set of plans when she destroyed Dubuisson’s home.
“I knew I wouldn’t be able to go to school,” Dubuisson said. “I was the oldest in the family. Mom was not working ... I worked on different homes in Pass Christian, building and rebuilding. There was a lot of work to be done after
Linda
Continued from Page 23
I was married. It was like I was still
living at home.”
She was, actually. Her “love
nest” on the beach was ravaged by
Hurricane Camille. Shower gifts were in pieces. New linens were drenched in mud and water. It was a totally unlivable place. “We never got to spend one night in the apart-
Camille. ”
Dubuisson, his Mom, and younger brother and sister stayed with relatives in in DeLisle the night of the storm. Their own home was too close to the beach.
When they eventually made their way back to it the day after Camille, three walls were left
ment,” Robertson said.
And even though the 100-guest wedding — complete with two flower girls and two receptions — was a glowing success, the honeymoon was a disaster.
Since the storm was predicted to hit Mobile, the Robertsons changed their Dauphin Island honeymoon plans and drove instead to New Orleans. But so did about half the population of South Alabama.
At 2 a.m., the Robertsons found a hole in the wall hotel. By 8 a.m.,
standing. A water-logged couch sat in the midst of the rubble.
“Everything was gone,” Dubuisson said. “We were in shock. ”
Dubuisson’s summer job was construction work. He and his family lived in a trailer while he helped rebuild their home — and. .many, many more that had been demolished by the wind and the water.
“I don’t think these people ever really lost their spirit with Camille,” Dubuisson said. “Everyone worked together.”
they were back on the road to Long Beach. Camille was supposed to hit New Orleans.
“It was like it was following us,” Robertson said. “I cried. Too much was going on ... I just wanted to go home.”
Home, of course, was where Camille landed.
“It took a while for a normal married life to get started," Robertson said. “It was so different because of Camille. The newlywed part really never happened, being a
Before he had another chance to try out for football at Perk the next year, another detour entered his life. He was drafted. Vietnam.
“I knew I would go,” he said. “My number was 13. Of all numbers. ”.
Dubuisson has been Pass Christian police chief since 1984. It took a little longer than he had planned to get into law enforcement, but Dubuisson knew that one day, he’d get there. He is married and has two step-children.
“Regrets?” Dubuisson said. “Not a one.”
new wife. The housekeeping and the cooking didn’t even exist for a while. ”
After living with her parents for almost five weeks, the Robertsons found their own home. It was time to begin married life.
“I grew up a j>t that year,” she said. “Larry and I both did.”
Twenty years later, Robertson is still married, a housewife and the mother of three girls.
“Don’t you think I need a real honeymoon th;- year?” she said.