Racheal Boykin was 15 when Hurricane Katrina came knocking down the doors of her home at the corner of Fifth Street and General Pershing in Violet, Louisiana.
“It was a football game that Friday night, and Mama came and picked me up,” Boykin said. “I remember walking into the house and … I was so excited. Then all of a sudden, Daddy looked at me and said, ‘You might as well pack you a bag.’ I thought we were just leaving for a couple of days, not knowing that was it.”
Racheal’s father, Wayne Gunter, loaded the family into his Dodge Ram, crammed with documents, clothes and whatever else they could grab. They drove north to Hamilton, Mississippi, where his sister lived. The family stayed in Hamilton for more than 10 years before moving to New Hope in 2021.
“When we got up here, we thought of everything we should’ve brought that we forgot, like pictures … family bibles and films,” Gunter said. “It was too late.”
Gunter lived in Louisiana more than 40 years before Katrina hit. When he returned three weeks later, the road home was unrecognizable.
“If you didn’t know where you were going, you’d get lost,” Gunter said. “… You couldn’t tell the roads from the ditches from the yards.”
Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast Aug. 29, 2005, bringing with it wind speeds of 175 miles per hour and flood waters of more than 20 feet. Volunteer evacuations began when the storm became a Category 3 storm on Aug. 27, and mandatory evacuations were ordered along the coast the following day, as the storm jumped from a Category 4 to a Category 5.
The storm was responsible for about 1,833 deaths along the Gulf Coast, with about 238 of those deaths in Mississippi.
Rising waters
Not everyone managed to evacuate. Lawrence Lowry had just moved in with his best friend’s family in Waveland two months prior.
“We were expecting the storm, but we weren’t expecting the water,” he said.
As floodwaters rose knee-deep inside the house, the family climbed into their boat and began rescuing stranded people and pets from their homes. When the boat was filled, they found another with the keys inside and kept rescuing until they reached a motel on Highway 90.
They unloaded about 13 people and three dogs onto the second floor before going back for more. For six days, they lived at the motel.
“As soon as the water started going down, we went over and busted into the grocery store and got food,” Lowry said. “We were feeding everybody in the motel room. … Everybody kind of buckled together and took care of everybody.”
When the water receded, Lowry and his friend’s family headed to Macon, where they sheltered for about a month before returning to Waveland. There, they slept in tents and trailers and helped demolish condemned homes.
In Violet, Boykin and Gunter’s trailer sat underwater for seven days. It had been swept off its foundation, and little more than a few dishes, lamps and a concrete bench from the yard could be salvaged. Boykin dug through a foot of mud searching for her mother’s jewelry and coins from a lost piggy bank.
At her mother’s childhood home in Ycloskey, Louisiana, water rose nearly 50 feet, Gunter said, washing away everything but two things: an aluminum table where she ate as a child, and a small bench from her father’s trawl boat.
“It washed the piers away, the houses away, but it didn’t wash that aluminum table away,” Gunter said Tuesday, pointing from his front porch in New Hope. “It’s the only two things I got … from the hurricane. … I wouldn’t take $1,000 for that bench right there.”
Planting roots
Patricia and Chase Wienke had little more than the clothes on their backs when they left Gulfport. She had lived on the coast since 1990 and managed an apartment complex on the Gulfport/Biloxi line for two years before the hurricane made landfall.
When Katrina struck, a brick wall collapsed on her leg. With local clinics effectively shut down, she went to Arizona for surgery and never returned to her home on the coast.
“I don’t think I could have handled it,” Wienke said. “… They were literally driving down the road throwing newspapers at us, and my home, after it collapsed, was in that newspaper, so I never went back because it would be too much.”
By January 2006, Patricia and her husband had resettled in Columbus, though she didn’t feel safe until much later.
“We walked away with basically nothing and started over,” Patricia said. “… At that point, I didn’t want anything because when you lose everything, you think you might lose it again.
“I didn’t ever want to live here,” she added. “I don’t ever want to live on the coast again. I was so torn.”
Her husband’s work as a long-haul truck driver and her daughter and grandchildren kept her grounded in Columbus. By 2015, after moving into a home in the county, she finally began to feel settled.
After Katrina, Lowry bounced from job to job in Texas, Macon and Winston County, where his grandson was born. When his son moved to Caledonia five years ago, Lowry followed.
“If the hurricane hadn’t happened, I would have probably been planted in Waveland,” Lowry said. “… I still get the urge to move back to the coast. … I would love to move back there, but I don’t think I will.”
For Boykin, starting over in Hamilton meant a new school, her first job at Backyard Burgers and eventually three children. In 2012, she met her husband, Jeremy Boykin.
“I never in a million years thought I was going to be up here,” Boykin said. “I didn’t know nobody, had a fresh start. … I hated it, but now I wouldn’t go back. Louisiana is not what it used to be.”
After cycling through food service jobs and a stint as a stay-at-home mom, Boykin now cares for her father, who has lived with her since her mother, Toni-Jo Gunter, passed away in 2021.
“This is home, here,” she said. “Louisiana will always have a part, of course, but it’s not home.”
Her father feels differently.
“That trailer on the corner of Fifth Street and General Pershing, that will always be home right there,” Gunter said, his eyes tearing up. “I lived on that corner 20 years. That’s where me and Toni-Jo met, that’s where we lived, that’s where I raised these two girls. That will always be home.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 29 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
