IKE: A Documentary

Rather, Dan:
Some people get excited about going to Las Vegas now, or maybe Monte Carlo. Well, for us, getting to go to Galveston maybe once over the summer maybe twice, but this was our Las Vegas, this was our Monte Carlo. Not because we gambled, or anything but just go to the beach. Galveston has this wonderful long blond beach. I know sometimes it's gray but to us it was always blond. And the sound of the washing of the waves, that I can remember from one of my earliest memories was hearing the waves washing up against some of the piers that were built out and against the seawall.

Francis Sullivan:
My so-called friends have said, "Oh your poor dear, you lost everything." No, I didn't lose everything. I just lost my worldly stuff, I still have my faith in God.

Julie Schmid:
Galveston is not a cookie-cutter community. We moved away for about nine months and I couldn't handle it. It was too cookie-cutter. Everybody was the same, everybody had the same little bows in their hair and everything and I begged to come back to Galveston because Galveston has so many characters, it has genuine people, it has all different socio-economic levels, all different racial -it's just a great mixing. Everybody knows everybody, and cares about everybody. And that's what I love about it. You're not in suburbia, you're in a small town town of people that care about their kids, their community, and their schools, and I love it.

Catherine Jackson:
Defining who you are without you know, the things that are missing or gone, materialistic items are not so much the issue, it's the comfort zone. And your kids. It's watching your children cry. Watching your children look through wreckage trying to find something that they own, I mean that's a hard thing. When it's not just flooded and it's missing and you can't find something for them to grasp on to, that's very difficult for me, is my children. I don't care about our stuff. But the plight that you see those kids going through over there or watching the elderly dig through debris piles trying to find something that they can grasp onto, something to give them some sort of light or hope. And the battle with insurance or mortgage companies and everything else you just want something, just something. Even if its just a small materialistic thing but something to guides back to where you were before Hurricane Ike.

Catherine Jackson:
I could be real negative about it, and continue to be negative, but... faith. If you don't have faith in something abstract to believe in, when everything concrete is missing, you have nothing. And what a miserable, lonely life you will lead if that is all you have, is something concrete and nothing else to hold on to. It's an awakening.

Julie Idema:
It just looked like someone had dropped a bomb on Galveston island. The closer I got the more my throat tightened up and you know, my eyes were tearing because a lot of people that live down here, a lot the students- their families don't have a whole lot, and now they don't even have that. And that was really hard for me.

Mamie Aoughsten:
Ike was a tale, a tale of my land. Of my people's island. A tale we would tell for years to come. For it would show our prosperity, it would show our fortitude and everything we could become. Ike took my people and made them come together, and forced them to regroup, and to defy Mother Nature. We would grow silently. My inhabitants, like myself would face their fears. They would go against everything they thought was true, and prove that a storm was no ending. Because when the sun rises, so do my people. Because when the sun rises, so does our future. Because when the sun rises, my tale is told.

Mamie Aoughsten:
I would survive if only so my people could return and know that no thunder no wind and no horrific flood would take me from them. I was their home and they my family. We would return

Mamie Aoughsten:
My winds grew strong, my waves rose to heights i had never before achieved and my people left I was alone in a storm of destruction left to experience my deepest fears. My silent swears of terror unhead and my untold tales ignored. An isolated soul abandoned in the dark hours of an awful eruption. I bunkered down.

Christian Dierlam:
This is one of the greatest parts of the wreckage. I think there was a house here, I never really went down this far. I still can't figure out what this container is, or the green stuff. But I'm pretty sure if it touches you, you might not want to have it on you later.

Patricia Rennick:
Well, I think it's fabulous what you're doing. Because I think - here again, Ike has given you the opportunity out of chaos. You have an opportunity to better yourselves as Galveston does... You have to look at the good side of this. There is a good side of this. There's a reason why this happened... And I think by doing this documentary, this is going to be a stepping stone for you.

Lyda Ann Thomas (Mayor):
When you're watching the storm coming in, and you're listening to the broadcast from the national weather service, and they're telling you this thing is bigger than ever, it's gonna ruin your city. Yeah, you are scared.

Larry Gregory:
Essentially it was a mess and we had to clean it up. It was that simple, and I came to the realization there are really only two alternatives after the storm. You can quit or you can move forward and do the best you can and try to come back and that's kinda how we looked at it. Try to make every day a little bit better, try to make your big pile of mess a little smaller and that's how we got through the first few months because everything was very very primitive and very basic.

Lynne Cleveland:
It was sobering... you're in shock at first, and then it's the reality of "Oh my gosh, it's really devastated our community."

Shirley Wheeler:
Well you try not to stop long enough it's... heard on the heart. I'm disabled, I shouldn't be doing the work I am doing but you have to, you just pitch in and go.

Morris Gould:
Where do you start? Everywhere you look there's a pile of trash, or mud, or something, you know. Where do you start?

Gail Meads:
It broke my heart because the people in Galveston are a service-industry people and what they do when people come from other cities and states for vacation is they show them a good time. And I knew that their job was monumental and I knew the people who had the businesses were gonna be heart broken and never imagine that all the piers and businesses were gonna be gone and I felt really sad for them.