I honestly don’t remember too much about how we dealt with the aftermath of Donna. Our trailer was uninhabitable, so we moved into a friend’s home on Connecticut. They were snowbirds and were up north at the time and generously offered their home while we figured out what we were going to do. What I do remember about that time is the mud on the floor of their home. They had terrazzo floors which were covered with about two inches of mud from the bay. I recall my dad and some of his friends scraping the mud off the floors with shovels and then mopping up the dirt.
We stayed there for a few days and later moved into my uncle’s guest house at the end of Egret Street. Although the house was directly on the bay, it was elevated and had less damage than the Connecticut house. To me this was a vacation since he had a pool and a great dock for fishing.
We must have spent a considerable time at Red Coconut helping to clean up the debris and getting our belongs out of the trailer. What I do recall is the fun we kids had roaming around the park looking for “treasures.” We found all kinds of interesting items that were buried in the sand: silverware, plates, dishes, pictures, books, and clothing. I also remember going to St. Raphael’s Church and standing in line waiting to get tetanus shots, which was not much fun for an 8-year-old who was terrified of needles.
Eventually, life got back to normal. We got a new, larger and fancier trailer and the park slowly but surely was put back together. The next storms to directly affect the island were Hurricane Charley in 2004 and Hurricane Irma in 2017. Irma made landfall on the same date as Donna (September 10) fifty six years later. Let’s hope we don’t have another storm for 50 more years.
