37 MISSING FROM BOLIVAR
Search continues for Ike's victims
By James Shannon, Staff Writer
Joann Mier of Orange, Texas, got an early morning telephone call on Sept. 12. Most of the Texas Gulf Coast was under a mandatory evacuation order as Hurricane Ike continued on its inexorable path to the mainland.
It was around 5 a.m., but Mier was instantly awake when she realized it was her cousin Rose Dolores Brookshire, who lives in Port Bolivar.
"Joann, this is Dolores. I'm calling to tell you bye and that I love you."
Mier’s reply: "I said, 'Where are you going?'"
"I'm not going anywhere; me and Charles are going to drown," she said. Charles is Charles Allen Garrett, the 42-year-old son of Dolores, who is in a wheelchair.
"I said, 'What are you talking about?'
"She said, 'We don't have anybody to evacuate us.' She said there was a lady that was supposed to pick her and Charles up and take them to Dallas, but she left without them. She said she had nowhere to go and said, 'I just called to tell you bye, and I love you and I'm going to die.'"
Mier said the rising water meant she was unable to reach the peninsula. She told her cousin, who had no car, to start walking down the highway pushing Charles in his wheelchair and that somebody, law enforcement or somebody, would surely pick them up.
Mier said Dolores and Charles have not been heard from since. Their house is gone, washed away by the storm. The trailer in back, formerly occupied by Dolores' mother, is also nowhere to be found.
Dolores and Charles are listed among the missing on the list compiled by the Laura Recovery Center in Friendswood. Among more than 300 people on the list, 37 are from the Bolivar Peninsula.
* * *
That same morning, Sept. 12 at around 6:15 a.m., Angie Moore of Dallas was worried about her grandmother. Marion Arrambide, 78, who lived at 2111 Front Ave. in Port Bolivar. A registered nurse who had retired from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Moore said Arrambide had been facing health problems of her own in recent months and was scheduled to enter a hospital around the time the storm became a threat. Also living in the house was her daughter, Magdalena Strickland, 49, and Strickland's son, Shane Williams, 33. Both also had health problems, a common factor in a household where they relied on each other for mutual support.
Moore said they told family members in that early morning phone call they were packed to evacuate and were leaving then. That was the last thing they heard from the trio.
On Saturday, a man looking for his family found Arrambide's car. The next day, he found Strickland's truck, with an empty kennel cage in back. The vehicles were found near Gilchrist, many miles from Port Bolivar, swept off the road into a marshy area. There was no sign of Arrambide, Strickland or Williams. Ironically, their house, while damaged, is largely intact. All three are on the list of the missing at the Laura Recovery Center.
* * *
Glennis Dunn moved to Crystal Beach with her second husband, a retired colonel who later passed away, more than 10 years ago because she loved the beach.
Dunn had six children who lived mostly in Arizona, said her son Bill Roske,, who lives in Washington, D.C. But he said the beach was where she wanted to be.
"If (the storm) took her, that's OK to her, I think, because she just loved that beach. Her little dog, Jacques — that's what kept her young," said Roske.
That Friday morning, by the time phone calls from her children finally convinced her to leave, she told them water was already coming up the road to her house, about a hundred yards off the beach.
"We really couldn't personally get her out. Then we lost contact with the phone," said Roske with a matter-of-fact tone that belied the implications of his words. "I don't know if the phone went out or she just got tired of us harassing her and hung up." The last time they talked to her was around 9 a.m.
Her house at 946 Seadrift Lane in the Tidewaters subdivision is gone. Dunn's car was located, rolled over a couple of times, about a hundred yards from the house.
"She's got six kids and 16 grandchildren and I think everyone of us except the 3-year-old have been calling everybody multiple times," said Roske, not bothering to add those calls have been to no avail.
Dunn is on the list of the missing at the Laura Recovery Center.
* * *
Some version of the stories of those six people could be repeated 37 times for every person missing from the Bolivar Peninsula — over 300 times if you take into account the total number from Galveston and the surrounding area.
The Laura Recovery Center in Friendswood, Texas, is a non-profit organization founded a decade ago in memory of Laura Kate Smither, who was abducted in 1997 at the age of 12. The center's stated purpose is to assist in the recovery of missing and abducted children and the prevention of the same.
How they became involved in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike is a curious story. After the storm hit, people who called Galveston County Emergency Management to report missing persons were given two toll-free phone numbers. One was to the American Red Cross, who operate an emergency service where people can call in to check on loved ones or to let loved ones know they survived. There is no recorded list of those reported missing on the Red Cross Web site.
The other number handed out was to the Laura Recovery Center, whose co-founder Bob Smither said they agreed to help when asked by the county.
Jim Guidry of Guidry News Service was retained by Galveston County to handle media relations in the wake of the storm. On Sept. 23 he told The Examiner that the county had taken no reports of missing persons from Ike. This was true, since those attempting to make such reports were directed to the two toll-free numbers.
Two days later, the activities of the Laura Recovery Center were made public, along with the shocking news that 400 people were listed as missing from three Texas counties. This was at a time when the official Texas death toll was still hovering in the low- to mid-20s.
The rumor mill, which was already spinning, soon revved up to full speed, driven by the stark discrepancy between 400 and 20-something. At first count, among the 400 were 66 residents of the Bolivar Peninsula. That number now stands at 37, but the chances of many more people being found alive in a shelter somewhere grow more remote by the day.
What happened on Bolivar Peninsula on Sept. 12 and 13 will be the focus of intense scrutiny for some time to come, even as the search for the missing continues along with the agony of their families. Privately, officials involved with the search operation say many of the missing may never be found.
But the search will continue — for the missing and for answers.
T H E M I S S I N G
Ricky Allen
Age: 52; Crystal Beach
Kathy Allen
Age: 50; Crystal Beach
Sherry Lyn Arnold
Age: 68; Port Bolivar
Charles Arnold
Age: 67; Port Bolivar
Marion Violet Arrambide
Age: 78; Port Bolivar
Alexis Christine Banton
Age: 7; Gilchrist
John Beck
Age: 75; Port Bolivar
Don Bernelli
Age: 75; Port Bolivar
Harry Bingham
Age: 61; Crystal Beach
Rose Dolores Brookshire
Age: 72; Port Bolivar
Michael P. Covington
Age: 48; Crystal Beach
Ronnie Duke
Age: 57; Crystal Beach
Glennis Dunn
Age: 70; Crystal Beach
Walter Fisher
Age: 70; Port Bolivar
Nathan Foreman
Age: 60; Port Bolivar
Charles Garrett
Age: 42; Port Bolivar
Cindy Goodwin
Age: 50; Crystal Beach
Richard Gozissom
Age: 61; Crystal Beach
Harry Heinz
Age: 27/28; Gilchrist
Alice Heitland
Age: 50; Bolivar
Jerry Manley
Age: 55; Gilchrist
Thomas McGready
Age: 80; Gilchrist
Jean McGready
Age: unknown; Gilchrist
Jan McLemore
Age: 50; Gilchrist
Jerry (unknown)
Age: 55; Crystal Beach
Donna Parker
Age: 45; Bolivar
Ester Peek
Age: 50; Bolivar
Dennis Richards
Age: 59; Bolivar
Joe Wayne Roberts
Age: 50; Bolivar Peninsula
Duke Ronald
Age: 53; Crystal Beach
Reagan Sampson
Age: 60; Port Bolivar
Susan Shaver
Age: 45; Crystal Beach
Susan Shile
Age: 51; Crystal Beach
Magdalena Strickland
Age: 49; Port Bolivar
Sandy D. Walton
Age: 54; Gilchrist
Shane Williams
Age: 33; Port Bolivar
Christopher Woods
Age: 42; Crystal Beach
http://www.theexaminer.com/npps/story.cfm?ID=2688