Displaced hurricane family finds help in Air Force

  • Published
  • By Master Sgt. Tonya Keebaugh
  • 53rd Wing Public Affairs
HURLBURT FIELD, Fla. (AFPN) --  It was like walking into a family reunion. The children were riding scooters outside; the adults were mostly inside talking, surfing the Internet, and just enjoying one another’s company.

Tech. Sgt. Christopher Reeves, of the 16th Logistics Readiness Squadron here, opened his base house to 22 family members who left New Orleans with little more than a couple of changes of clothes. What would be stressful for most people is not for him.

“I love it,” he said. “We’ve been overseas for more than 10 years in our career, and I’m really enjoying having all this family around.”

They all seem to be enjoying it, but their joy is shaded with sadness of what they have left behind.

They thought they would be returning to Louisiana shortly after the storm. But now, more than three weeks later, their eight houses are still submerged in the murky waters that overtook 80 percent of the city.

“We’re from New Orleans; we’re used to floods,” said Sergeant Reeves, who also owns a house in the city. “We’ve all been through them. Usually the water will rise a couple … feet and then be gone within a few hours.”

Sergeant Reeves and his wife live in base housing with their 11-year-old son and are expecting another baby Nov. 1. They also have two grown children.

The Reeves had plans to evacuate from Katrina here and go to New Orleans, but their plans changed as the storm continued its westward march, and their families became the ones who needed a plan.

They both come from large families -- Sergeant Reeves has eight brothers and sisters, and his wife, Donnice, is one of seven. Their entire family, on both sides, except for one brother, all reside in New Orleans where the couple was raised. Half of their family came to nearby Fort Walton Beach, and the other half went to Lake Charles, La., where Sergeant Reeves’ brother lives.

The first week was bad. Initially, there was jubilation after the storm passed and left so much of New Orleans was relatively in good shape. But less than 24 hours later, the levees broke, flooding the city and this family’s lives.

“Shock -- that’s the only word to describe it,” Sergeant Reeves said. “We were only concerned with the safety of everyone for the first few days, no one even remarked about their houses until we found out everyone made it out OK.”

After everyone was accounted for, their concerns turned to their houses and neighborhoods and futures.

They searched satellite images of the crippled city for their neighborhoods and saw their houses submerged in the “soup.”

“We looked at the satellite images, and you know, you can only see the roofs. It’s hard to tell how deep the water is, so we started making ‘measuring sticks’,” Sergeant Reeves said. “If you could see cars, then the water was only a few feet deep -- no cars meant it’s a lot deeper.”

Sergeant Reeves said he realized that his families’ stay was going to be an extended one. They rallied though, and with the help of his first sergeant, were able to put a couple of the four-person families up at the enlisted widow’s housing in nearby Fort Walton Beach for a while.

The children are all enrolled in local schools. Many of the family members are working or looking for work locally. They are slowly building a life here. Two of the family members, a husband and wife, are pre-law at the University of New Orleans. They are now taking all their classes online.

All of them plan to return to New Orleans.

“We’re just waiting for them to say our ZIP code so we can go and check on our houses,” Sergeant Reeves said. “I think some of them may not be prepared to see what I think we’re going to see.”

Total ruin of their estates is what he expects.

“We will live in a trailer until we get our house back up,” said Monique Albert, Donnice’s younger sister. “But there’s no doubt that we will live in that city again.”

Until then, base housing has turned into their safe haven.

“It’s really great here -- the kids can go out front and play, and it’s safe,” Ms. Albert said. “It’s just such a sense of security here. It’ll be a shock to them when we go back home.”

Another perk has been that when eight women with the 53rd Wing at nearby Eglin Air Force Baseheard about the Reeves family, they made it their own personal mission to help them by cooking the family dinner every day for a couple of weeks.

“We wanted to do something, and this is where we found ourselves,” said Kathy Thompson, 53rd Wing office of personnel. “It would be really expensive and challenging to feed that many people on one man’s salary or eating out every night, so we were glad we could help.”

And they have left an impression on the family also.

“Everyone is running around all day … and then in the evening, we start to wind down, and start asking, ‘wonder what they’re fixin’ for us today’,” Sergeant Reeves said. “Everybody gets excited and we start looking for them -- it’s really been so great of them to help our family like this.”

“I’ve grown to really care about them and what happens to them,” said Master Sgt. Lisa Casteel, 53rd Wing military personnel superintendent. “You just feel sort of helpless when you’re sitting here seeing all the people suffering from this storm. We wanted to do something, and this way we see our work in action.”