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Photo Credit: Sarah Lim/Victoria Advocate
Connie Rowney, left, picks up a full canister of waterproofing lacquer to move it away from the tide as and her husband, Clyde Rowney, walks along the shore of Sunday Beach on Matagorda Island to survey the debris created by Hurricane Ike.
Click to view morePhoto Credit: Sarah Lim/Victoria Advocate
Clyde Rowney looks at a shutter from a window that washed ashore on Sunday Beach on Matagorda Island. Debris from Hurricane Ike has washed ashore, including televisions, sofas and empty jugs of chemicals.
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PORT O’CONNOR – Connie Rowney’s first visit to Sunday Beach turned her stomach.

All week long, she saw fishermen bringing in debris from Hurricane Ike to the public boat ramp at Froggie’s Bait Dock. So, on Thursday, she and her husband Clyde Rowney, a retired national cemetery director, decided to take a look for themselves.

Their small fishing boat swerved to avoid full trees near the J Hook. After crossing to the Gulf side of the beach on Matagorda Island, they both stopped and gasped in disbelief at an endless trail of trash down the beach.

The surf kept hitting a couch in the water. A series of TV sets formed a line nearby. Buckets, trash cans, water bottles and plastic items like cleaning products and Barbie toys stuck half-buried in the sand.

“This is really heartbreaking,” Connie said with watering eyes. “This makes me sick.”

“And it doesn’t deteriorate. That’s the thing,” Clyde added about the plastic. “This needs to be cleaned up.”

Walking down the line of litter, the Port O’Connor couple ran into a couple of friends who were cleaning up the beach as much as they could, hoping to recycle what they found.

Sunday Beach usually serves as a getaway for David and Donna Hall, who live in rural Calhoun County. They took their dog, Brutus, for a walk as far as the lighthouse, where the density of the trash seemed to just get worse.

The items show just how many homes in the Galveston area were destroyed by Ike, Donna Hall said.

“It could have been us, you know,” Clyde said. “We could have been wiped out. We’re spared again.”

A Beaumont couple camping on the beach shared that sentiment. The home of Shawn Smith, 44, and Al Vincent, 63, only suffered downed trees and lost electricity.

Al, who had camped on the island before, brought Shawn along this second time. They didn’t realize they would have so many reminders of the hurricane.

They collected a couple flying discs from Crystal Beach and the Bolivar Peninsula for their dog, Pearl. Shawn found three rolls of film she’ll try to develop.

“To know it’s people’s possessions, it’s hard,” she said. “It’s hard when you have friends that have lost their homes.”

On the way back to the mainland, Clyde pointed out a stretch of beach where dunes once stood.

Connie would like for anyone who wants to help clean up the beach to come to Froggie’s and talk about getting a group together.

“This is just unreal, so unreal,” Connie said. “We need to get this cleaned up. Where’s it going to go?”