By Richard Ball

(Editor’s note: Retired Columbia CPA Richard Ball wrote for The Columbian Progress the following remembrance of Hurricane Katrina and the loss of his daughter. It is reprinted here with his cooperation and permission of The Columbian Progress. He is the brother of Dr. David Ball of Batesville.)

Katrina, the hurricane of August 29th, 2005, is extremely difficult for our family to remember.

We lost our youngest daughter, Rebecca, in the violence of that hurricane. She chose to ride out Katrina in her newly purchased home just a block off the beach in Waveland, Miss. No amount of persuasion could get her to leave… and the cost of that decision was her life.

What we remember most are all the various emotions we endured: grief, helplessness, anger, denial, fear, dependence, uncertainty, betrayal, hope, thankfulness and love.

It was almost a month after the hurricane before Rebecca’s body was officially identified. After this official identification, it was several more days before we were notified. Until that notification we were never sure Rebecca’s body had been found.

We could get very little in the way of information from FEMA. We suspected her body had been found in the first week following the hurricane. My brother, David, and nephew, David Warren, and I were at Rebecca’s house site when a National Guard sweep team came through on a second sweep of the area.

They were kind enough to tell us that the day before, another sweep team with dogs had found two bodies about 200 yards directly behind Rebecca’s home. They would tell us nothing else. We immediately checked with FEMA but they also would not give us any information. You can imagine how frustrated we were and how helpless we felt.

Our experiences with the government agency FEMA were anything but reassuring. First, FEMA lost/misplaced Rebecca’s dental x-rays. Next, we furnished them with body x-rays. They lost/misplaced them. These original x-rays could not be replaced. We still had some of Rebecca’s hair and for the third time went to Gulfport and furnished FEMA this for DNA comparisons.

Frustration, dependency and helplessness were always present during this time and it was especially difficult for Jo Ann. Even to this day, she can barely make herself talk about this time.  Remembering Katrina is not for her because of the awful pain it brings.  It was the darkest of times for us as a family. Nothing compares!

All of the individual people we met with from FEMA were very compassionate and caring, but as a unit they were like a ship without a rudder with the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing. Individually, all were without authority and/or afraid to take authority.

To us, FEMA was a well-intentioned mess!!! But, in fairness, probably no country is ever fully prepared for such an unprecedented disaster; certainly not FEMA, even though they were charged with the responsibility.

One of the lingering emotions I still deal with is guilt. I still have feelings of guilt that, as a father, I didn’t go and physically put Rebecca in the car and bring her home to Columbia where it would have been safer.  All I did was talk to her, many times, on the phone and try to explain what things were going to be like, based on Hurricane Camille.

Her mother, and sister, Beth, also talked with her trying to get her to leave. I have later learned that many others tried to get her to leave.  Her friend, Danon Jones Vest, was one.  Another was Tommy Longo, the mayor of Waveland.  He helped my feelings by telling me he personally went to Rebecca’s home and talked with her about leaving. He said he also feels a sense of guilt because he thinks he should have declared martial law and ordered the remaining people (25) to leave. He didn’t declare martial law on the advice of his city attorney. Like me, he says he will always feel some sense of guilt over what “might have been.”

About a month after burying our daughter we received a letter from Rebecca’s insurance company. They denied coverage for any damages to Rebecca’s home or business. They had no intentions of negotiating the claim. That was to be it, denial. Then came fear.  What about the balance owed on her mortgage? What about the bank note I had co-signed for her business? Anger, betrayal and fear shouldn’t have to be involved in an insurance claim, but in this case, they were major players.

Now after five years have passed, our emotions are still activated when the name Katrina is mentioned. Katrina now evokes the emotions of hope: hope that we will be with Rebecca again, based on our Christian beliefs, thankfulness, for all the help and kindnesses shown to our family, but the greatest of these is love. The love of God has, and does, help us through every day.

One last thing in closing this remembrance: we have Rebecca’s dog, Nick. We found him still staying around the home site a week after the hurricane passed. He is now blind from diabetes and goes wild if there is bad weather. As a Katrina survivor, maybe he is relating it to that hurricane. Jo Ann jokes that one day he may talk to us about what happened… and we are waiting.