The hurricane force winds and heavy rain began during the darkest hours of the night and we lost electrical power. They continued until shortly after midday.
Any photos had to be taken through the window glass. I dared not open an outside door in fear of the roof being lifted off the house as the winds would enter inside.
I kept reassuring myself with the fact that the house had withstood the winds of a disastrous hurricane in 1947 and Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and was solid and dry after the storm. There were times when I silently asked my deceased parents for courage. The roaring of the wind and the sound of tornados overhead soon became a song, a song I never want to sing. I knew we were high on the River Road and it would flood only if the rest of the world flooded but nothing was to keep the house from blowing apart in the wind or a tornado from carrying us all away.
"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death" were words from a prayer I repeated hundreds of time during the storm.