[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 125 (Friday, September 18, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1764-E1765]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  A VILLAGE KID IN THE 1938 HURRICANE

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. MICHAEL P. FORBES

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, September 18, 1998

  Mr. FORBES. Mr. Speaker, I insert the following:

       My recollections of the 1938 Hurricane begin as I attend 
     George Hunt's afternoon chemistry class on the second story 
     of the old Six Corner's School, Westhampton beach. Wilson 
     Eckart and I were at our desks next to the windows on the 
     southeast side of the building. The wind and rain had started 
     and the windows appeared to bend in their frames as the wind 
     increased. The outside brick wall of the addition housing the 
     English class began to sway and we all decided it was quite a 
     blow!
       Mr. Hutt soon moved us to desks in the center of the room, 
     where we watched the tin roof from Mechanic's Hall on Mill 
     Road sail across the playground. Elizabeth Parlato Cross was 
     teaching fourth grade in that building at the time.
       The roof was soon followed by a group of cherry trees, 
     which appeared to be almost all those north of Main Street. 
     One cherry tree left the others and sailed across the road 
     west of the school, directly through Perry Pike's car parked 
     at Slattery's Garage. Perry announced, ``Class dismissed!'' 
     He was conducting French classes on the west side of the 
     building.
       Edgar J. Brong, the supervising principal, soon evacuated 
     all classes to the gymnasium on the lower level. As the 
     science class filed past the English room, the brick 
     structure began to crumble. The door frame was about to give 
     way, but Wilson Eckart held it fast as Lillian Roos, the 
     English teacher got out, being the last to leave. There was 
     no panic. All of us had seen many a September ``line storm,'' 
     and many of us had gone with our parents to sandbag the dunes 
     when the ocean had broken through.
       The students were warned to stay in the gym until all 
     parents could be contacted, or other transportation provided. 
     The danger of fallen wires was stressed. Some students heeded 
     the warnings, others did not. However, everybody apparently 
     arrived safely wherever they were headed. I rode home with 
     Nonie Van Cott (Allen) and her father, Cliff Van Cott, of the 
     Southampton Town Police.
       My home was located on Library Avenue, South of Main 
     Street, where the Grimshaw and Palmer Hardware building now 
     stands. The Library was next door, and south of that was the 
     Union Chapel.
       My grandmother, Bess Clark, had hot rosettes and beach plum 
     jelly waiting for me. As Gram, my mother and I sat at the 
     kitchen table, the wind and rain increased. Salt and seaweed 
     plastered the windows on all sides of the house, and the 
     windows began to leak. It was said that those windows never 
     leaked in one hundred years!
       Gram and I mopped and mother worried about the weather vane 
     on the chapel steeple, since the storm was so bad that she 
     couldn't see it. (In our house we noted the wind direction 
     every day, this was important to us.)
       Just then, the solid old front door blew open. It took 
     three of us to close it and turn the key in the old brass 
     lock. Again it blew open. Gram searched for some tools, and 
     eventually we managed to nail the door shut. We then knew for 
     certain that the wind was definitely southeast.
       Suddenly the rain stopped. The sun came out. Gram put the 
     coffee pot on, but my

[[Page E1765]]

     mother had to investigate the weather vane. I reluctantly 
     followed her to the chapel next door. The steeple had blown 
     off and buried the weather vane in the soft ground. We later 
     learned that this was the eye of the hurricane passing over.
       Just as we returned home, the sky blackened and the rain 
     and wind increased. Gram had poured the coffee when we heard 
     a pounding on the door. It was cousin Gen (Mrs. Clifford 
     Raynor) who lived further south on Library Avenue. She called 
     ``Come quick! The ocean is coming! Get in the car!''
       Gram became obstinate. She had no intention of leaving her 
     home, her three-colored cat or her mother's silver tray. I 
     pushed her ahead of me to the car while she clutched the 
     tray. She balked again before the open door.
       And then I saw it. A solid, square, gray wall of water 
     about thirteen feet high, slowly but steadily devouring the 
     dividing line between sky and grass at the library, about 
     fifty feet south of the car . . . no curling wave, just a 
     wall. I stood at the car door and watched only the line which 
     appeared stationary. It was hypnotic. I often had told 
     friends of my recurring dream, ``that dream,'' I called it, 
     where in the dream, I ran slowly up Beach Lane, the ocean 
     behind me. It now sounds too preposterous to be true, however 
     it needs to go into this personal account.
       Slowly, or so I thought, I pushed Gram into the car, but 
     with such force, that she hit her head on the opposite side. 
     Cousin Gen sped us up to the hangar at the Westhampton Beach 
     Airport, on Riverhead Road. Gram, Mother, the silver tray and 
     I joined others sitting on the floor, heads against the wall. 
     I think there were only a few people there. It was very 
     quiet. I don't remember any conversation. I do recall 
     picturing the map of Long Island in my mind, and thinking, 
     ``It's so small, so flat, so narrow. Of course, the ocean 
     will reclaim it one day. It just happens to be in our time. 
     It will be no different from being rolled under a wave, it 
     just takes a little longer.''
       Before the night was over, somebody picked us up and 
     delivered us to the home of Gram's cousins, George and Mame 
     Burns, on Osborne Avenue in Riverhead. The next morning, the 
     sun was shining brightly as Mother and I returned home.
       We found a forty foot boat from Yacht Basin docked against 
     our kitchen windows, alongside the propane gas tanks. The 
     untouched coffee cups were still on the kitchen table. The 
     ocean had washed in about twelve inches above the floor of 
     the house, and everything smelled terrible. The dining room 
     floor had buckled, but the cat was safely upstairs. We felt 
     very fortunate.
       We went right up to Main Street to see what had happened, 
     as did everybody else in the village who was able. Our 
     village was a shambles. There was little conversation. It was 
     very quiet. In those days, everyone, summer and winter 
     residents, knew each other. We were a very close-knit 
     community. I remember Dr. James Ewing saying to my mother, 
     ``Toni, this town is in shock!''
       Our house was one of the few on Library Avenue left on its 
     foundation. Men were at the foot of our street, clearing away 
     the wreckage of Raynor's Garage, searching for bodies from 
     the dunes, and removing them to the temporary morgue at the 
     Country Club. This took days, and the weather had turned very 
     hot.
       Several days passed before we could communicate with my 
     father, Jeremiah Ferguson. He was up in Western Nassau 
     County, and couldn't get in touch with us. In turn, we 
     couldn't get in touch with them. The newspapers and 
     communications personnel had reported that Westhampton Beach 
     had been washed right off the map. When he and other family 
     members finally got through to the headquarters set up in the 
     Patio Building, they only learned that our names had yet 
     appeared on the list of missing persons.
       The following days were spent carting water, sandwiches, 
     and disinfectant to our house, Police Headquarters, the 
     National Guard, and the Red Cross. It all became a blur of 
     mud, dripping carpets, the smell of mildew. We couldn't 
     believe that the ocean had done this to us. but we just kept 
     moving, most of the time firm in the knowledge that 
     Westhampton Beach would again appear on the map, even though 
     it might take twenty years for that to happen!

     

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