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Mike Moser Galveston of yeserday
I enjoy reading Rheta's work because we have
a common thread. We both got our starts at small newspapers in
Alabama about the same time. Rheta and her former husband were
the news department for the Monroe Journal in Monroeville, AL,
when I was editor of the Central Alabama Advertiser in Clanton. Rheta has taken on a challenge at the Atlanta
paper that many would have run from, that of replacing one of
the region's most beloved humorists in Grizzard. Simply said,
no one can or could write about life as funny as Lewis Grizzard. But Rheta is her own person and I equally
enjoy reading her columns. She leans more toward historical accounts,
out-of-the-way places and the quirky side of life. This week she wrote about a horrible tragedy
that took place in this country where 6,000 people were trapped,
and died without warning or reason. She did not write about terrorism
against the World Trade Center or Pentagon. She wrote about a
monster hurricane that struck Galveston, TX, unannounced on Sept.
8,1900. Amazingly, the agonizing aftermath of the
hurricane in Texas parallels the tragedy in New York City in
the number of deaths,the futile search for survivors and gruesome
disposition of bodies. Rheta learned of this tragedy by reading Erik
Larson's 1999 best seller about the disaster, "Isaac's Storm."
It must be worth hunting down and read because the book is based
upon letters and memoirs of those who survived that great storm. In 1900, scores of victims in Galveston were
not identified and some were never found. Fear of disease and
damage to air quality and water contamination were real. Men
were shot robbing the dead. The Galveston mayor was praised for
his untiring efforts to restore the city and for his decisiveness
following the disaster. While New York City had its firefighters,
police officers and paramedics who raced into the Twin Towers
to save what victims they could, Galveston had 10 sisters in
St. Mary's Orphanage who herded 93 terrified children in a chapel. Mother Superior ordered the sisters to tie
lengths of clothesline to the youngest children and then around
their own waists. When the storms' fury had passed, ninety children
and 10 sisters were dead. Later, as Rheta recalls, a rescuer found one
toddler's corpse on the beach. He tried to lift the child's body
but it was held back by a line buried in the sand. He pulled
the line and another child emerged. And another. He uncovered
eight children ... and a nun. For those of you who have visited Galveston,
you know the city rebuilt and did so with a vengeance. It is
hard to determine today which Victorian houses withstood the
storm and which were built in its aftermath. · · · |