There was one really good part to every vacation--the first three days. The first three days every year were spent driving to the Gulf Coast to spend time in Galveston. No matter where we were going on vacation--California, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, South Dakota. When we were little, we didn't question that part of the trip--it was just a great time on the beach before the long, hot days cooped up in the car.
Later, we realized that little side trip resulted from a promise my father made when he and my mother got engaged at the University of Texas. She was born and raised in Houston and her biggest reservation about moving to Oklahoma City was leaving her beloved Gulf behind. My father promised her she could visit it once a year, and, to his credit, kept his promise for sixty years. We loved our trips to the beach as much as our mother--Galveston with its white beaches, palm trees, and colorful houses seemed exotic after central Oklahoma. We knew we were there when we heard our mother's unvarying cry, "Look--oleanders!"
As children, we were confused by our Houston grandmother's refusal to join us on our beach jaunts. She refused, with no explanation, to ever go to the beach with us. Even for a picnic, even for an afternoon. Our mother tried to explain to us that she was afraid of the waves, of the noise, of the smell of the ocean. We thought that was ridiculous and laughed at such an idea. Afraid of the Gulf of Mexico's three-foot waves? We reveled in them and competed to see how far we could swim out. We had no understanding of what happened to my grandmother when she was ten years old or that she had never recovered from it.
My grandmother, Birdie, was born in 1890 and raised on Galveston Island. At that time, Galveston was the port of Texas and an honest-to-God boom town, with more millionaires per capita than any other city in the country. It must have been a beautiful place to live then, because it still is, even with many more people on the island. Then the population of Galveston Island was 38,000; now it is 59,000. The sky was the limit--it was an excellent place for my great-grandfather, Patrick Rabitt, a civil engineer and architect, to make his fortune.
Patrick was a member of the firm of N.J. Clayton, Architects, who built schools, churches, and opulent homes for the scions of the gilded age, some of which can still be seen towering over the streets of the city. The most important one in my grandmother's story was the Gresham home, begun in 1886 and finished in 1893. Walter Gresham was a cotton baron and U.S. Congressmen; he was also a man who hedged his bets, for he charged his architects with building a home that would withstand any storm. He gave them an almost unlimited budget; the house cost $250,000 to build.
The house now known as the Bishop's Palace is undoubtedly one of the finest examples of the excesses of the gay nineties. It was constructed of two layers of bricks laid end-to-end and faced with stone. Of course it had huge windows to make the most of the sea breeze, with wide verandas and all the modern conveniences, including gas, electricity, and running water. Gresham had his architects build in fourteen fireplaces to counteract the winter damp and panel the inside of the house in rare woods. The windows are stained glass, deeply recessed, and equipped with built-in hurricane shutters. The "ground" floor of the house is fifteen feet up and built over a deep cellar; Gresham wanted plenty of room for flooding.
One hundred years ago, weather forecasting was in its infancy and American optimism was at its apex. People knew a hurricane could be devastating to tiny, shallow Galveston Island, but hoped it could dodge a direct hit. The Gulf is normally a placid sea; people just assumed it would always be. On September 8, 1900, they were proved so wrong.
As the storm grew and the waters rose, the architects who had poured their expertise into building the perfect storm-proof structure moved their families into the shelter of the Gresham home. Two hundred people spent the most horrifying night ever in that house, my grandmother, only ten years old, among them. The rains poured, the winds blew away the weather instruments, and the tidal surge rose to 15 feet. The Gresham house sustained no damage, but when the 200 emerged the next morning, they were met with a scene of indescribable chaos and horror.
Over half the town was destroyed, and between 6,000 and 10,000 people were dead--no one knows exactly how many. I wish I could tell you about my grandmother's memories of that horrible night and that awful scene and the days that followed, but she never spoke of it. Not ever--not to her parents, not to her husband or children or her grandchildren. My grandmother was to grow up without aunts and uncles and cousins. Her father could have stayed in Galveston and made a good living because, incredibly, the town decided to rebuild--to build a 17-foot stone seawall, to raise the level of the town 17 feet, and to replace the destroyed structures. But their personal losses were too great and the Rabitt family relocated by the first day of 1901.
There was no diagnosis of post-traumatic stress syndrome in 1900, no thought of counseling. People dealt with their shock as best they could, and most of them came through, but quirks remained--like a terrible fear of storms that never left.
My mother told us that the shadows of the storm always remained. Her mother was unhappy that her children chose to ride the interurban to the beach at every opportunity and was nervous until they returned safely home. Whenever a storm blew over the Gulf, my grandmother shut the windows, drew the curtains, and sat in the dark, praying the rosary over and over--probably just as she had in 1900. In Oklahoma City, thunderstorms are so common and so violent that they become a form of entertainment--but not to my grandmother. Again, she prayed through them when she visited.
When our family buried a relative, we walked away, never to return to the grave to "visit" or leave flowers. It took me a while to figure out that my grandmother had never done these things because after the hurricane there were no bodies to honor--people were swept out to sea or the bodies burned on the beach--so the tradition of tending graves was one that was just never followed in my family.
But my sister and I have found a way to visit the graves of those lost in the storm of 1900. This year we planned our annual vacation to the beach to coincide with the commemoration ceremonies for the victims of the hurricane so we can honor those members of the family who died that night. We'll be there--unless the weather service predicts even a chance of a hurricane.
Look for photographs
of the hurricane's aftermath on the NOAA website.
The Bishop's
Palace in Galveston 
