PASS CHRISTIAN, Miss. (ABP) — “She wanted me to buy her the house of her dreams,” he says. “This was it.”
His voice choked with raw emotion, Bob Zeller points toward the pile of rubble that now lies where his home once stood, rubble that represents 14 years of his life. His wife Linda stands by his side, legs streaked with mud and a weary look in her eyes.
“I was in the Navy,” Bob explains. “I told her since she'd had to move around so much with the military, I'd buy her whatever house she found that she wanted.”
“I found it here,” Linda adds.
Their story is one that could be told a thousand times over in the once-lush and beautiful town Pass Christian — Ground Zero for Hurricane Kristina. A protected and historical residential town along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, not given over to mass tourism like others that surround it, Pass Christian was once filled with large, affluent homes. It was a place of dreams for older retirees, young couples looking for a safe place to raise children, and those looking for a peaceful ocean-side life.
But today, it's a place of destruction, with barely a brick or board still intact, a place where buildings, homes, churches and schools now lay in massive heaps, unrecognizable and unredeemable.
“We moved here in November of '91,” Bob recalls. “I retired from the Navy in February of ‘92. This is the longest we've lived anywhere.”
Bob and Linda evacuated their home, which was located on 2nd Street just a few hundred yards from the beach, on Sunday before the hurricane hit, traveling a few miles inland to stay with long-time friend Tonya McClelland during the storm. Knowing that their home had no doubt suffered extensive damage, they tried to get back to the area Aug. 30.
“We climbed over piles of debris trying to get here on Tuesday after the storm to see if we still had a house,” Bob says. “The place was completely blocked.”
It was days before the Zellers were finally able to see the true extent of the damage. “When we were coming down the street here, I guess we expected to see our house,” Bob says. “But all we saw was a slab.”
The Zeller's home, like so many others in their neighborhood, was pushed by raging wind and water off of its concrete slab, moving it several yards backward and virtually destroying the house and everything in it. All along the street, it is the same story — rubble, piles and piles of rubble, and a strange silence.
“It was an eerie kind of quiet,” describes Linda. “There was no noise of any kind, no cars going down the street, no people around. Just silence.” Standing beside the mounds of rubble in what had been their front yard, the emotion evident on their faces, they surveyed their property and talked about their memories and their dreams.
“Our house had 40-ft wrap-around porch all around it,” Linda remembers. “We used to sit out there and look at that old oak tree in our front yard.”
“We just celebrated our 35th anniversary in February,” Bob recalls. “We renewed our vows right here, inside our house.”
“During Mardi Gras, we'd have 200 people at our house,” he adds. “There'd be people everywhere, and the parade would run right past our house, right down this street.”
Among the piles of debris, torn from their home by the water and wind, Bob and Linda found evidence of the life that they had led before Katrina, small items that were not valuable to the world but were irreplaceable to them. Linda found parts of her prized teddy bear collection.
“I've been collecting them for many years,” she says with a laugh that doesn't quite reach her eyes. “They're gone now.”
Before evacuating, Linda had packed their car with a few clothes and some boxes of photographs and family memorabilia, intending to salvage some of the things that meant the most to them. “Now all I have left is what's packed in my car,” she says.
Despite the loss of their home, the Zellers count themselves among the lucky, the ones who will survive.
“We're going to be fine,” Bob says. “There are so many others who are a lot worse off than we are. I thought about going to FEMA for help, but then I see everyone else who needs it more.”
“It's been amazing to see what's happened since the storm,” adds Linda. “Neighbors are helping neighbors, strangers are helping strangers, and you see people on the street who don't even know each other and they stop and hug and cling to each other. We've all gone through the same thing, and we're pulling together.”
The town of Pass — as locals call it — will take years to rebuild, years of clean-up, years of restoration and years of financial recovery. The residents, many of whom have built their dreams along its quiet beaches, will face the decision to stay or to build lives elsewhere.
But for the Zellers, the decision is easy.
“We're going to stay,” Bob says with an air of determination. “We'll rebuild. What can we do? We love it here.”
And they are already making plans for next year's Mardi Gras.
“We going to have a parade here again in February,” Bob insists, a light of excitement in his eyes. “We may only have an empty lot here, but we're gonna have a cookout, and I'm gonna throw beads from right here in the street in front of my empty lot.”
“Pass will come back,” Linda agrees as she looks at the incredible amount of debris that covers her street as far as the eye can see. “It'll take awhile. But Pass will come back.”
— Photos available from ABP.