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Miss Mae
Mathews:
Miss Mae and her daughter and husband were
not going to leave. They had sat out storms
before but when they saw a wave of water
come over their garage, it was time to leave
for higher ground. They went to a local
church. When they returned to the house it
had been flooded to about four feet high in
each room of the house. To add insult to
injury Miss Mae, at 74, suffered a stroke
and was in the hospital for three weeks
after the hurricane unable to care for her
property.
“It’s like you’re dreaming. Ten months later
the reality hits you. You hold it back…All
my life I’ve never seen anything like this.
You see it on TV. You see it all over the
world. You always think it will never happen
to me.”
One crew spent the entire week working to
sheet rock, paint and place a chair rail on
as many of the rooms in the house as
possible. They also washed the mold off the
outside of the house. A day before we were
to leave we started to re-roof the house.
One of Miss Mae’s special stories was about
her four grandchildren aged nine, seven,
six, and three who had been sent to
relatives before the hurricane hit. They had
been told what happened and were somewhat
prepared for what they would see when they
returned. To ease their return Miss Mae
wanted them to have something special when
they returned so she asked her family to
build a tree house.
“ They had to go in the yard find all the
lumber, wash it and build the most saddest,
pitiful tree house if you could call it
that. They went out into the yard to that
little tree house. It brought back the
smiles and playing and laughter. That took
their minds off of everything else. The tree
house will be there until I die. That sad
little tree house brought more happiness to
those four children than if you would have
gave them a brand new tree house. This
wouldn’t have been more special. “
We all wanted to leave Miss Mae with all the
tasks we had set out completed. We ran out
of time for some and had to leave before the
roof was completed. We were blessed that one
of our group could stay to see that the roof
was finished with the aid of the church that
had helped us by loaning us the tools we
needed to do roofing.
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