October 13, 2005
By Pamela McLaren

Most of us carry childhood memories that remain unchanged through time: our first home, the corner drugstore, our favorite hangout.

For Robert McLain, assistant professor of history, those memories were recently shattered — by Hurricane Katrina.

When Katrina hit on Aug. 29, McLain worried about friends and relatives who lived in and around Biloxi and Gulfport, Miss. When he was finally able to reach them and knew they were safe, he had to return to help.

“I didn’t know [what was happening to family and friends] for a couple of days,” he remembers. “I watched the TV news and recognized places, but there was nothing there. I was sure they were dead. It was awful.”

McLain was stunned at the devastation, including the complete disappearance of several small coastal communities. He was shocked too at the toll it took on the survivors. “They were fatigued, stressed. So much so that they were slurring their words, losing their train of thought.

“It was like an atom bomb,” he says. “I’m glad that I went — I felt compelled to go — but I would love to forget what I saw. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.”

The images were unbelievable, he says, showing a video of a floating casino’s steel carcass in the middle of a freeway with a tractor-trailer plunging through its side. He flips through photos of people standing on piles of debris.

His aunt’s home was destroyed but for a corner of her front porch. The only way they knew it was her house was because someone had spray-painted the address to the five-foot-tall chunk of bricks and mortar.

“She had evacuated inland to a brick building. Then when the hurricane hit, the roof was pulled off and the walls started to collapse,” says McLain, who encourages people to give to charities such as Habitat for Humanity. “If the hurricane had lasted another hour, she would have been killed.”

She was fortunate in a way, he adds, because although her home was gone, she managed an apartment complex that, though damaged, was still standing. She now lives in one of the apartments furnished with items salvaged from other apartments.

“So many people evacuated and didn’t return,” says McLain. “It was eerie. Children’s posters and backpacks — it was like they left half their lives there.”

His college roommate, a literature teacher at Gulfport High, is one who will not be returning. He, his pregnant wife and 20-month-old child fled before the hurricane hit and returned to find half of their house destroyed.

“They didn’t want to leave. They loved their life, their home and Mississippi...but there’s nothing there for them now.”

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