Galveston's rebirth from Hurricane Ike
Island city rebuilts after Ike, but traces of sadness remain
Construction workers make repairs to the seawall damaged by 2008 storm Hurricane Ike in Galveston, Feb. 12, 2009.
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"What use are these toys then / with my soul, self, scoured away / . and my dearest friend gone, taken / by twists of fate ."
- Anonymous poem attached to the fence surrounding the 1900 Galveston hurricane memorial
The first thing I noticed after crossing the bridge onto Galveston Island was a boardwalk. It was half brown wood and half yellow wood, brown up to the point where last year's storm had presumably chosen another direction and yellow where the new construction now stood, clumps of sawdust upon it not yet taken by the wind.
The more I hiked the more yellow I saw. Yellow was everywhere - in walkways, railings, and homes - all the way into Galveston.
I passed through the area a full year after Hurricane Ike struck on Sept. 13, 2008. The signs were everywhere, but the island has made a remarkable recovery.
Even the people I spoke with seemed almost nonchalant about the episode, perhaps a kind of distance that comes with countless tellings of a tale. Seeing the outskirts of a bustling city and only the occasional indication of last year's storm, even I remained somewhat emotionally distant.
That is, until I reached the memorial.
In the middle of the sidewalk, which runs parallel to the 10-mile long Galveston Seawall, rests a memorial sculpted by David W. Moore and dedicated to the estimated 6,000 people who were killed in the great hurricane of Sept. 8, 1900. It is a large statue of a man, woman, and child. The woman is holding the child as if to protect it, and the man is reaching up toward heaven, as if in supplication to God.
What was once a memorial statue created to remember some distant event has taken on a much greater significance. More than 100 people died in the United States because of Hurricane Ike, many of them from Galveston Island. The friends and family members of these victims have chosen the memorial to represent their stories as well, filling the space with poems, letters, posters, beads, art, pictures, and more.
There is raw emotion filling the space now. A chain link fence surrounding the memorial is covered with personal tributes. One author posted a poem citing the differences of her new life, how she saw the world after her husband had disappeared in the storm. On a sheet of paper, a sticker read, "I don't like Ike."
A picture of a car buried in sand had a single sentence scribbled upon it: "We miss you more than I know how to express."
The statue itself has been adorned as well, someone going so far as to put a rosary in the metal man's hand.
I stood there for quite some time before moving on. The pain was palpable. For these people, the storm couldn't be summed up by how deep the water got nor by how much the insurance had to put up. It couldn't be measured by how many trees got killed nor by how much it cost to rebuild the stairs. The storm couldn't be talked about as easily as a number.
I moved on past the memorial and continued along the sidewalk for a bit before turning inward toward The Strand. It's always a little odd to me to see life continue as it had before, but I understand that it has to. We have to move to make sense of things, to figure out what remains of the world we once knew.
In the heart of Galveston, I did not see the yellow wood renovations of the coastline but knew they were there, fresh new starts on every block of the city. I realized they were everywhere but one place.
What I saw at the hurricane memorial, while a testament to the strength of the people, took no part in the city's restoration. Yellow wood or not, there are just some things that can't be rebuilt.
Smatt is the penname of S.Matt Read. A writer, inventor, baker, and hiker, he is currently hiking the entire outline of the state. Follow his adventure here and at www.texasperimeterhike.blogspot.com and www.twitter.com/perimeterhiker.
