Many families sought refuge in public schools during the hurricane. The all-Black East District School was destroyed in the storm. Annie and Ed McCullough barely escaped being killed when part of the Rosenberg School, pictured here, collapsed.

  And then Ed urged Annie to move from one long hall to another. Suddenly, lightning struck the building’s chimney. Bricks crashed down into the hall—instantly killing more than a dozen people. It was right in the hall, in the exact spot where Ed and Annie had been.

  Annie never forgot it. “Just did get away!”

  Milton: The House Fell on Us

  On Saturday afternoon, about four o’clock, a young man named Milton Elford escaped from his house, with his parents and young nephew, Dwight. They made their way to a solid home in the neighborhood with a brick foundation. It was on higher ground and they hoped it would be safe.

  As the storm roared, Milton’s family clung to one another, along with fifteen or sixteen other people. Everyone clustered in one room.

  “About 5 [o’clock] it grew worse and began to break up the fence, and the wreckage of other houses was coming against it,” Milton wrote his brothers later. “We had it arranged that if the house showed signs of breaking up I would take the lead, and pa would come next, with Dwight and ma next.”

  Milton went on, “All at once the house went from its foundation and the water came in waist-deep, and we all made a break for the door, but could not get it open. We then smashed out the window and I led the way.”

  Too late. Milton said, “I had got only part way out when the house fell on us.”

  Everything happened fast. “I was hit on the head with something and it knocked me out and into the water head first,” Milton said. “I do not know how long I was down, as I must have been stunned. I came up and got hold of some wreckage on the other side of the house.”

  Fifty-one people are reported to have died in this structure. Buildings that collapsed on people seeking shelter caused many deaths, including the members of Milton Elford’s family.

  Milton was alone. He couldn’t see anyone else. Not his parents or nephew. No one. “We must have all gone down the same time.” Only he had come up. Milton could only guess the others had been thrown down under a wall or floor and pinned there. “It was just a wonder I did not get killed.”

  Milton had no choice: He had to keep going. He pushed his way out of the window, hoping his family would be right behind. Half swimming, half walking, he fought to get free of debris. He tried to keep from getting struck and dragged under again. At last he was out of the house. Partly running, partly swimming, Milton somehow made his way from one pile of debris to another.

  “The street was full of tops and sides of houses, and the air was full of flying boards.” Milton worried about getting trapped or hit or buried.

  After about five blocks, Milton noticed the water beginning to go down. By now, it was about three in the morning.

  It was too dark to see. Shivering and heartsick, Milton could only wait for dawn.

  Arnold: Clinging to a Tree

  Arnold R. Wolfram worked at a fruit and produce store in Galveston. Late Saturday afternoon, he headed home to his wife and children, about twenty blocks away. As he struggled to avoid flying glass and debris, Arnold came up with a brilliant idea. He’d just bought a new pair of shoes. Stepping into a doorway, he took them out of the package and tied them around his head for protection.

  “At the corner I suddenly stopped in horror. A little Western Union messenger boy, a lad of about ten years, had fallen from his wheel [bicycle] into the street and was being swept by the water towards the sewer drain.

  “Even as I started toward him, he was just going into the whirlpool marking the spot of the drain. I caught him just in time, and dragged him up on the sidewalk.”

  Arnold recognized the boy as the son of neighbors. “I shouted to him above the roar of the wind and rain that I would take him home.” Arnold’s voice was lost in the gale, but he motioned for the young messenger to put his shoes around his head too.

  “We were now forcing our way in the very face of the storm, which had become a raging tempest. It was almost impossible to shout above the din, and I realized then that we were facing death,” said Arnold.

  “The wind and rain were wreaking havoc everywhere, poles and wires were snapping, making passage down the street doubly dangerous; windows were crashing in; flimsy structures and parts of roofs were swirling swiftly down the river which had, just a few hours before, been a beautiful esplanaded street; and the water was rising higher every minute.”

  The next street had become a raging river. Arnold and the boy managed to swim across. On the other side, they spotted a man clinging to a fence, weak and exhausted. Before they could reach him, the man lost his grip and was swept away.

  Arnold Wolfram and his young neighbor clung to a tree to escape being swept away in a scene much like this one of raging floods during Hurricane Carol in Connecticut in August of 1954.

  They kept on. The water now reached the boy’s armpits. As they waded across another street, the current surged. “We were both suddenly swept from our feet and rushed pell-mell into a tree. I struggled up to the surface all the while holding frantically to the tree,” said Arnold.

  Arnold looked around and was relieved to see the boy clinging on too. The two climbed higher up into the branches, shivering and holding on to the trunk for dear life. “The air was full of flying wood and slate and glass and the water was hurling everything imaginable at our perch,” Arnold said. “During this time, we sat in our tree and prayed that we might be spared.”

  The moon peeked out behind the clouds. In its pale light, Arnold watched a terrifying scene unfold. A man and woman drifted toward them, clinging to the roof of a house. That makeshift raft crashed right into the tree. The man floated away on one part. The woman screamed and held out her hand. Arnold leaned out to grab her, but she was swept away.

  “Our own situation was becoming more desperate,” he said. Debris kept slamming against the tree, which wasn’t very big. Arnold worried it would be torn up by the roots and they would be thrown into the deluge. They were exhausted and cold, and getting weaker by the minute. He wasn’t sure how long they could hang on.

  And then Arnold saw a way out. Some debris floated toward them and became lodged between the tree and the porch of the nearest house. Arnold’s neighbors lived there. Arnold figured that if they moved fast, he and the boy could climb onto the debris and get to safety.

  They made it! The neighbors welcomed the survivors with warm, dry clothes and hot food. It was now about midnight. The young messenger dropped off to sleep, but Arnold couldn’t rest. He wanted the water to go down; he wanted to look for his wife and children.

  He wanted this terrible night to be over.

  Louise: “Wait!”

  Seven-year-old Louise Bristol lived with her mom and siblings on Avenue C. This was a part of town closer to the bay and the Texas mainland, and farther from the Gulf beach. Louise was the baby of the family. Her sister, Lois, was eight years older and her brothers, John and William, were in their early twenties.

  Louise’s mom was a widow who struggled to make ends meet. She’d taken out a mortgage to enlarge the house so she could rent out rooms to boarders. Her home was her only way to support her family.

  Even though they were farther from the Gulf shore, the floods still reached their neighborhood. At first, Louise was excited. “I remember seeing the water come down the street and being so delighted that we didn’t have far to go to the beach. It was right there at the front door and then it began to get bigger and wider and was coming into the garden that my mother had.”

  Then, as Louise saw the garden disappear underwater, she began to understand the danger. And by the time one of her older brothers reached home, the water was up to his chest.

  Like Harry Maxson’s father, Louise’s mother was worried her house might crumble from the pressure of the flood. Louise said, “She got an axe and chopped holes into every floor of every room downstairs in the hallway and the kitchen and the dining room. So the water would come up into the house and hold the house on the ground.”

  The family gathered upstairs, bringing what they could from the kitchen cabinets. The house began to shake. At one point, Louise’s sister screamed and pointed at a corner of the wall. It had separated from the ceiling and was moving up and down with each gust of wind.

  Louise’s mother didn’t seem surprised. “She realized that the house was going to pieces around us,” said Louise. “She knew that the back end had already gone off, because we heard the crash.”

  Now it was only a matter of time. They could see a lamp on in the house across the street, which was sturdier than theirs. Louise’s mother had an idea. She took sheets off the bed and got ready to tie her children together. Her idea was that Louise’s two brothers, who were strong swimmers, could pull the rest of the family across to the other house on a floating mattress.

  Louise’s fifteen-year-old sister urged her mom to hold off. “My mother would say, ‘Let’s go now.’ My sister would say, ‘Wait,’ ” said Louise.

  “If we hadn’t waited I’m sure we never would have made it across.”

  You might have noticed that, unlike Hurricane Katrina, Harvey, or Maria, the Galveston hurricane doesn’t have a name.

  That’s because hurricanes weren’t given names until 1953, when female names were used; starting in 1979, male and female names were used for Atlantic storms. NOAA’s National Hurricane Center doesn’t control the naming but follows a procedure established by the World Meteorological Organization, an agency of the United Nations.

  The lists of names are recycled every six years, unless a name is retired and not used again. A name is retired if the storm is especially costly or deadly. To date, the most retired names happened in 2005. In addition to Katrina, that year saw Dennis, Rita, Stan, and Wilma. Each year’s list contains twenty-one names. If there are more storms than that in any given year, names are taken from the Greek alphabet.

  To see a list of hurricane names, visit the National Hurricane Center: https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutnames.shtml.

  Is your name on the list?

  By Saturday evening, more than fifty people had gathered in an upstairs room in Isaac Cline’s house. At seven thirty, Isaac and Joseph had witnessed a sudden surge of four feet. The force of the water wreaked havoc on the houses near them, turning walls and roofs and furniture into battering rams against the Cline home.

  Even a lighthouse on a rock couldn’t hold out against the terrific beating. Joseph Cline tried to prepare the others for what he feared was about to happen.

  “I urged them, if possible, to get on top of the drift and float upon it when the dangerous moment came,” said Joseph. “As the peril became greater, so did the crowd’s excitement. Most of them began to sing; some of them were weeping even wailing; while, again, others knelt in panic-stricken prayer.”

  And then it did happen.

  Around eight thirty, the house began to topple over into the water. Joseph sprang into action. “I seized the hand of each of my brother’s two children, turned my back toward the window, and, lunging from my heels, smashed through the glass and the wooden storm shutters, still gripping the hands of the two youngsters,” he said.

  Joseph had one goal in mind: to land on a wall resting on top of the water and not be crushed beneath the house as it fell. “The momentum hurled us all through the window as the building, with seeming deliberation, settled far over. It rocked a bit and then rose fairly level on the surface of the flood.”

  The plan worked. Joseph held on to Allie May, who was twelve, and Rosemary, eleven. “It was raining in torrents, and through winds of terrific force came flying pieces of timber. The clouds had broken in spots, and the dim light of the moon made it possible for us to see for a short distance over the mass of drift about us,” said Joseph.

  Joseph called out; no one answered. Then, just as the house began to break up completely, Joseph spotted Isaac and his youngest girl, six-year-old Esther, clinging to a drift a hundred feet away.

  Isaac had been pushed under the water. As he groped for the surface, he’d brushed against Esther. He kept hold of her and managed to get to the surface and stay afloat by clinging to some debris. Cora Cline and her unborn child were lost, along with most everyone else who had been with them inside the house.

  Now the survivors had to stay alive. It wouldn’t be easy.

  Throughout that long night, Isaac and Joseph, along with Isaac’s three young daughters, struggled to keep afloat, clinging to one piece of wreckage after another. They would settle on some boards or planks that seemed safe. But before long, each makeshift raft would start to sink under their weight.

  Some houses, like Isaac Cline’s, capsized and disintegrated. This house on Avenue N was toppled on its side from the force of the water.

  “We remained close together, climbing and crawling from one piece of wreckage to another,” recalled Joseph.

  In this way they floated, shivering and terrified. Minutes, then hours, went by. At one point, they were swept into the Gulf of Mexico into complete darkness. Would they drift so far out to sea they would be beyond reach? Would their raft hold together?

  They were in luck. The wind shifted, blowing them back to Galveston Island. The brothers sat upright, trying to shelter the girls on their laps and protect them from flying timbers and drifting debris.

  Once, incredibly, the family’s dog appeared. The retriever sniffed each person in turn. Then, despite Joseph’s best efforts to hold him, he jumped off the float again. Joseph realized the loyal dog was looking for his mistress, Cora, the only family member missing.

  “I made a lunge for him, but he dodged, outran me, and plunged over the side of our drift. We never saw him any more,” said Joseph.

  The bulky wreckage was keeping the Cline family safe. At the same time, it made their unlikely lifeboat extremely dangerous to others. And soon they found themselves coming closer and closer to one house. Joseph heard people calling for help from inside.

  He knew they were not bringing help, but destruction. In the next moment, their debris float struck the house with a crashing blow. The house began breaking apart.

  “My brother was struck and knocked down by one of the hurtling timbers,” Joseph said later. After making sure Isaac was all right, Joseph noticed a little girl struggling in the water and plucked her out of the flood. In the darkness, he thought it was one of his nieces. But no, it was a survivor from the house. They later learned her name was Cora too. Now they were six drifting in the night.

  Finally, about an hour before midnight, they floated near a house still standing on solid ground. This time, their raft lodged without damaging the structure.

  “Tired and unspeakably battered, we climbed through an upstairs window into a room from which the roof and ceiling had been blown away,” said Joseph. “Just under the floor of the room, the black waters of the Gulf were lapping. After having fought a frantic battle of body and mind for three hours, we dragged ourselves wearily inside.”

  Grateful to be alive, they joined other survivors in the house. They huddled together, hoping for this longest night to end.

  Galveston survivors woke up to devastation after the storm.

  Katherine

  Dawn. The wind had calmed. The waters were receding. But daylight brought unimaginable scenes of horror.

  Everywhere they turned, Katherine Vedder and her family found chaos, death, and destruction. Nearly 3,000 homes had been completely swept out of existence; many more were damaged. And while the actual number of deaths can never be known, most historians estimate that at least 8,000 people were killed.

  When Katherine’s mother looked out the window on Sunday morning, the first thing she saw was the body of an African American child, tangled in the debris in their yard. Katherine and her mom would never forget that heartbreaking sight.

  Only three houses still stood in Katherine’s entire neighborhood. Katherine’s brother called out, “ ‘Papa, where are the Peeks?’ ”

  They looked over to the spot where their neighbors’ house had been—the house Katherine’s father had thought was sturdier than their own, the house he had planned to go to for refuge if theirs didn’t survive.

  “Not a plank nor brick remained,” said Katherine. “Not even a trace of the foundation. Richard Peek, his wife, eight children, and two servants were gone.” Their bodies were never found.

  The Vedder home was too damaged to live in, so the family set out on the grim walk to Katherine’s grandparents, hoping they had survived. It took five hours to get through what had once been a thriving city. Katherine’s father carried her much of the way. Debris blocked their passage almost everywhere.

  “No streets or roads were visible. The wreckage piled high obscured every familiar landmark,” recalled Katherine. “We picked our way where we could, sometimes in ankle-deep water and mud, sometimes in water waist deep where great holes had been created by the current.”

  They came across many bodies: a small white child wrapped in a quilt, a nun who had tied several children to her body, a Black man caught in the mud with his bicycle. People who had tried to run, to get to higher ground, to swim, or even to ride a bicycle to safety. All lost. At one point, Katherine’s mother broke down and wept.

 

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