wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Lucimarian Roberts is thankful to have survived Hurricane

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ECUNET.ORG>]

Note #9035 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05628
Nov. 23, 2005

Lucimarian Roberts is thankful
to have survived Hurricane Katrina

Says that, while wind was 'hollering' around Biloxi home, 'God was in
control'

by Evan Silverstein

BILOXI, MS - With Hurricane Katrina closing in, Lucimarian Tolliver Roberts
played the piano and prayed.

	The long-time Mississippi Gulf Coast resident and Presbyterian devout
was trying to discern what God intended for her: staying home and riding out
the powerful category-4 storm, or trying to flee.

	It was through her strong faith in God's favor, power and protection
that she decided to stay in her traditional, one-story home in west Biloxi,
even as Katrina churned toward the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, packing winds up to
145-mph.

	"God will take care of me," Roberts, 81, said she thought that
fateful day. "I'll be fine right where I am. Wherever I am, God is. I felt
that way, and said, 'We're not to be fearful.'"

	Roberts, a co-chair of the steering committee directing the $40
million Mission Initiative campaign of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), is
the mother of Robin Roberts, a co-anchor of ABC-TV's "Good Morning America"
program.

	Her late husband, Lawrence E. Roberts, who died in October 2004, was
an active Presbyterian and a retired Air Force colonel, one of the famed
Tuskegee Airmen of World War II. 
 
	An oil painting of Lawrence Roberts as a young man, dressed in
airman's garb, adorns a wall in the living room of Roberts' Biloxi home,
which the couple moved into 11 years ago. 

	French doors overlook a fenced-in backyard with oak and maple trees
that swayed fiercely during the storm. Six snapped like toothpicks or were
simply whisked away by the wind. 

	It was from those French doors - glass panes vibrating from the storm
- that Lucimarian Roberts and her daughter, Dorothy Roberts McEwen, of Long
Beach, MS, watched the hurricane roar through. 

	McEwen, 49, refused to leave her mother after she and other family
members were unable to persuade Roberts to move out. McEwen's daughters,
Jessica, 20, and Lauren, 17, also rode out the storm in the house.

	"Don't get too close to the doors," McEwen said, imitating warnings
sounded by her daughters.

	As the rain intensified, the wind picked up and trees and debris
began to take flight in her backyard, Lucimarian Roberts realized how serious
the storm really was, even if she couldn't watch news coverage on television
because of power outages. 

	"The wind, I think, was more disturbing then anything," said Roberts,
an elder at First Presbyterian Church in Bay St. Louis, MS, which sustained
minor damage. "The sound and the howling. You have no electricity. You know
your power was gone. But through it all, you understand that God is in
control."

	The hurricane carried off the back fence, and a tree fell against the
house, which had hurricane windows in just one room. The crest of the roof
blew off, exposing the interior to rain. With high winds shaking the modest
home, the family scurried for pots and pans to catch the water. McEwen
recalled that she was afraid the whole roof might fly off. 

	"Literally you just heard the wind hollering," said McEwen. "I really
thought we were getting ready to take off, getting ready to go into flight."

	But the home and its occupants stayed grounded and the roof remained
attached. But with cellular phone service and land lines down, the women were
cut off from the outside world. 

	Anxious family and friends wouldn't learn of their fate until Robin
Roberts showed up in Biloxi the next morning to report on the storm.

	During the storm, Lucimarian Roberts said, she recalled a verse from
a Bible story her pastor used to sing when she was growing up in Akron, OH, a
verse she said will serve as a reminder to evacuate if another hurricane
comes to town.

	"He'll just make you willing to go," she chanted. "He will not compel
you to go against your will; he'll just make you willing to go." She said the
verse from "Jonah and the Whale" replayed in her head like a broken record. 

	"I kept hearing that song, and I said, 'Lord, next time I'll be
willing to go,'" she said. "'This will be the last time I sit through a
storm.' The next time there is a hurricane warning, I will take some pictures
along with me and head to the furthest place."

	Apart from the damaged roof, which until this week was covered by a
blue tarp, the Biloxi house suffered only minor damage. There was no flooding
in the neighborhood.

	It was an entirely different story just two miles away, where movie
theaters, strip malls, apartment buildings and corner stores were blown to
pieces. Neighborhoods were turned into debris fields. Ninety percent of the
waterfront structures in Biloxi and nearby Gulfport were destroyed; dozens of
people were killed.
 
	The storm surge was 33 feet high in nearby Pass Christian, MS. The
first floor of a home the Roberts family owns there was completely flooded. 

	In fact, a neighbor from two houses down swam to the Roberts' house
and climbed in through a second-story window to weather the storm.

	That is the house the family considers "home," having resided there
for 30 years before Lawrence and Lucimarian moved to Biloxi. They often
returned on weekends to be closer to their Bay St. Louis church for worship.

	Lucimarian said she used to enjoy sitting in a rocking chair on her
Pass Christian porch, smelling the sweet sent of azaleas and listening to the
birds sing.

	"You just felt like you were in a safe place, just a lovely
community," she said. "In February we'd look forward to the azaleas. Now my
azaleas are gone. Trees are gone. Fences are still down. Larry isn't here
anymore. That makes you cry. You just can't help but cry."

	Hurricane Katrina rendered McEwen's Long Beach residence
uninhabitable, prompting her to move home with mom temporarily -along with
her children.

	"Mom has been a wonderful hostess," said McEwen, who directs a
program for children in need of direction. "But there are moments where this
is her house, and it's kind of strange to be an adult going back and living
with your mother."

	For two weeks the house was without power, but Lucimarian still
refused to leave.

	A neighbor across the street let people use his gas stove to cook
food and boil water. A couple next door allowed their neighbors to use their
swimming pool for a range of uses, including keeping the toilets flushing.

	"There's a sharing, a sense of neighborliness that you experience,"
Lucimarian said. "You felt closer to your neighbors than ever."

	For Lucimarian and McEwen, the hardest part came after the storm
passed. 

	"The aftermath is what's so bad," said McEwen, who hopes to return to
her home by mid-December. "You have one day that changes your entire life.
... In that one day's time, your restaurant or your cleaners or your place of
business is completely gone." 

	"In Biloxi I didn't cry after the storm," Lucimarian said. "It's like
you are in a state of shock. You keep thinking this is a dream. I'm going to
awaken and it's going to be back to normal."

	Reporting from amid the rubble, Robin Roberts shed tears after ABC
colleague Charlie Gibson asked about her family's well-being. "They were OK,"
Roberts said, "even if their house was less so."

     "Normally, you know, I share these kinds of moments with you, but it was
too personal when I walked in that door and I saw my mom," she told Gibson.

	Lucimarian's decision not to evacuate wasn't surprising. The Roberts
family had experienced numerous hurricanes during their years in Biloxi and
Pass Christian. They survived Hurricane Camille three weeks after they moved
to the area, in 1969. Then there were hurricanes Fredrick and Ivan in the
past, and Dennis earlier this year.

	"I think we were sort of lulled into a sense of safety, those who
stayed in their homes," Lucimarian said.

	The Roberts weathered earthquakes long ago when Lawrence was
stationed in Turkey. 

	"The earthquakes are so fast, and you have that moment of fear; but
this storm lasted all day," Lucimarian said of Katrina. "The wind, it didn't
seem to lessen at all, and you just watched as your landscape was changing
before your eyes."

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