Happy anniversary, Ivan …
I admit, my recollection of Hurricane Ivan is a little sketchy. The overnight landfall spanned the latter part of September 15, 2004, and early morning hours of September 16. Technically, it hit at 2 a.m. And our hurricane party had long wound down by then.
There are certain parts of Ivan that I do remember, though. I’m a Pensacola native. I’d been through my share, dating all the way back to Frederic in 1979. (Or so I’m told. I was not quite 1 year old at that point.) But Shannon? Ivan was going to be her first.
I distinctly remember her asking what was going to happen. I said something to the effect of “A lot of rain. More wind than you’ve ever seen. And people are going to die.” That last part wasn’t hyperbole. We’d both been journalists long enough to know it was true, but there’s a real difference between reporting it in a newspaper, and knowing that folks from your town wouldn’t make it.
I remember us being with my grandparents on their boat the weekend before the storm hit. It led to one of my favorite pictures of them.
I remember my house being full of friends and family the night of the storm. Nine of us in total. Shannon and myself, of course. Her parents. Five friends. We had one hell of a hurricane party. The neighbors at our end of the street had all left town. That probably was the smart thing to do. But my family had never done so, not in my lifetime. So we boarded up and stocked up and got as ready as we could.
I remember us all cleaning up in the morning. Trees and limbs and leaves needed to be dealt with. We were lucky. Our heritage oak in the front yard lost a good chunk, but it didn’t actually threaten anything. The tall pine between our house and the one next door fell almost straight down, barely nicking our roof. The wind kept the water moving, so we didn’t have to worry about flooding.
I remember manning the grill so we all had something good to eat for breakfast.
I can remember checking in on my parents and grandparents. They were all fine. Not unscathed, but nothing that couldn’t be replaced.
We slowly made our way downtown and finally to the Pensacola Yacht Club, on Pensacola Bay, where I spent so much of my youth. On the water. In the pool. Climbing the trees — most of which were now gone. That part hit me surprisingly hard.
I can remember trying to find a pay phone. Cell service was pretty much out — this was before the towers all required generator backups. I was able to change our flight on Sunday to the Mobile, Ala., airport. I’d worry later about how we’d get there in time. We also called our minister and let him know we’d still be at the church on Saturday. Shannon called the florist and left a message for the cake-maker and photographer. “We’ll be at the church no matter what,” she wrote in a year-end column three months later. “Get there if you can.”
I remember lunch with our friends at Jerry’s Drive-In, one of only place we found open on Friday.
I’ll never forget all our friends who made it to the church on Saturday. No air-conditioning. Half of them had to go to work that afternoon — newspapers didn’t take days off back then. I remember Vince and Anna Whibbs and her spectacular hat. I remember pickled mushrooms and Oreos and a single dance to a Coldplay song, brought to life from a CD in Nicole Lozare’s car.
I remember nine people rushing back to our house, packing up and hitting the road like we’d looted the place.
I’ll somehow never forget spending the night in the terminal at the Mobile airport. Do not recommend. But unlike most of the bad travel experiences I’ve had, at least I wasn’t alone.
I knew Pensacola was hurting, but it would survive, just as we did after Erin and Opal and Elana and so many other storms. We try to put it out of our minds, but we never really forget.
But mostly I remember standing baby-faced in front of our friends and family, marrying my wife 20 years ago, on September 18, 2004. Two days after Hurricane Ivan hit Pensacola.
