SAN ANTONIO, Texas (ABP) — In 1965, when Hurricane Betsy hammered New Orleans, a pregnant Rose Green told her husband she didn't think she could survive another hurricane.
Sadly, she was right.
Rose survived the winds of Hurricane Katrina, but coping with the flooding of New Orleans overworked her weak heart. As her husband, one daughter and a granddaughter looked on helplessly, she died before a boat arrived to carry them to safety.
When rescue did come, Lawrence Green had to say goodbye and leave his wife's body behind. “We were married for 53 years,” he explained. “But we courted for two years. So that makes 55 years we were together.”
“And this is the result of all those years together,” one of his grandchildren said, sweeping her arm toward the three rows of cots that took up one end of the shelter at Churchill Baptist Church in San Antonio.
Almost 40 of Green's children, sons- and daughters-in-law, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are being reunited at the shelter for people with special needs, sponsored by Baptist Child and Family Services of San Antonio. The relatives all escaped New Orleans when the storm and flood hit.
“We kept telling [Rose] to calm down, but the excitement was just too much,” Green recalled. “When the winds hit, it shook the house like everything. And I thought that was the end for all of us. But we survived.
“Then in the middle of the night, the alarm on the car started going off. And when I looked to see if someone was stealing it, it was floating away.”
The flood drove the family to the second floor of the daughter's house where they had taken refuge. But Green refused to try to force Rose up the narrow, steep stairs to the attic.
“She physically couldn't do that, so we just prayed that the water would stop,” he said.
It did, but so did Rose's heart.
Three days later, Green climbed out a window with his daughter and granddaughter, onto the roof and into a boat, leaving Rose behind.
The boat deposited them on top of a school. A helicopter picked them up there and flew them to New Orleans Lakefront Airport, but there was no one there except other storm victims.
“We slept on the ground all night and most of the next day before another helicopter took us to the international airport,” Green recalled. “It seemed like it would never end. Then all at once we were landing in San Antonio.”
Lawrence Green was declared “special needs” because of his advanced age. And, because BCFS's policy is to keep families together, he and 27 of his clan were among the first to move into the Churchill Baptist shelter Sept. 4.
Since then, relatives from other shelters in other states have been transported to the San Antonio church, with the help of BCFS staff and volunteers who traced missing relatives, made travel arrangements and provided for the physical needs of the large family.
The phone calls that re-established contact were also sad calls, as Green broke the news that Rose was dead.
“I don't know what we're going to do, but we sure are grateful for all that everyone has done for us here,” he said. “And we'll survive somehow and move on.”
After a pause he leans toward his daughter Rose — named for her mother — who was the child Rose was carrying when Hurricane Betsy pounded New Orleans 40 years ago. He repeats a phrase he uses often: “She told us she could never survive another hurricane. She told us.”
— Photo available from Associated Baptist Press.