Parker and Family Experience Change Over Last Year
2/13/2007 12:00:00 AM | Softball
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. ?? Lauren Parker not only went through a change in colleges this past year but also went through a change of lifestyle with her family after Hurricane Rita struck her hometown in September, 2005.
Parker, a middle infielder out of Port Neches, Texas, had just started college at Baylor University. She was a wide-eyed freshman anxious to show what she could do at the collegiate level after accomplishing a state championship with Monsignor Kelly Catholic earlier that spring.
She committed to Baylor early in her junior year of high school after attending a softball camp there. She liked the environment, the fact that it was a private Christian school and it had really good academic and softball programs. It wasn't too far into her freshman year that things would change for her and her family.
One night soon after Katrina had hit the coast of the Gulf of Mexico by Louisiana and Mississippi, Lauren got a call from her mother, Tammy, who told her a hurricane was on pace to hit her hometown of Port Neches, a town that is about 100 miles east of Houston and about 20 miles from the Gulf of Mexico.
"Katrina had just hit a week or two before so it was a big panic but we were used to it because we have been hit by hurricanes before," said Lauren. "My mom had the panic in her voice but tried not to show it."
Back home in Port Neches it would have been just like any other hurricane had it not been for Katrina. Usually people would watch the news to see how bad the hurricane is predicted to be. They would then make their decision to evacuate or ride the storm out, which most would normally choose to ride it out.
"With all the things that happened with Katrina in New Orleans it kind of magnified everything for people in our area," said Tammy. "We saw, what I guess was a level five at that point, what a hurricane could do. We had evacuated every year since we were little but only for storms that were three or bigger."
"People waiver on that because we have been there so long and were fortunate not to get a storm like that," said Lauren's father, Joel. "Everybody waits until that waking moment when you have to get out. Watching the weather and seeing where the eye of the storm was, you could just see it. It was going to hit us."
Joel and Tammy Parker made the decision to leave based on the prediction of how big the storm was going to be. They would pack up what they could and head to their house on Lake San Rayburn near Jasper, Texas. After going through the evacuation process so many times the Parkers knew what to take with them as they packed pictures, things Lauren and her brother, Jace, had done in their lives, important papers like insurance policies and deeds for their home and enough clothes to get them by for about a week. When they left Port Neches it took them 15 hours to go to the lake house which was only about two hours away.
"There was about 200,000 people trying to leave at the same time from the little area of Port Neches, Nederland and Groves," said Joel. "It was a mass exodus. Everybody was gone so there were no stores open. Everybody ran out of gas trying to move north. There was no way to get gas so people were stranded out on the highways and left there to die. There was no food, no water. It turned life upside down as you and I know it today. It was pretty depressing."
Meanwhile in Waco Lauren and Jace were in school and paying close attention to what was going on with the storm.
"The hurricane hit about midnight or 1 a.m. and my brother and I were still awake watching when it hit," said Lauren. "The eye of the storm hit Port Arthur which is the town beside Port Neches and as soon as it hit we lost connections of our phone and everything else so we had no idea what was going on."
Tammy and Joel reached the lake house along with some relatives. Tammy and Joel's parents joined them along with Joel's two sisters and their families, his aunt and uncle and another couple who were the grandparents of a girl Lauren played softball with in gold tournaments. In all, there were about 20 people along with pets that crammed into a storm shelter that was about 10' x 12' in size.
They were left with nothing else to do but wait for the storm to pass through.
"When Rita hit we had seen some pretty good winds come through but nothing like that," said Joel. "They were expecting 150-175 MPH winds. We built a storm room on that place exactly for this and at that point we weren't even in a safe place. We had massive pine trees around that lake and they looked like dandelions. They would lay over and touch the ground and come back up. That is how massive this thing was. You could hear those big pine trees snapping in the dark and you didn't know where they were going to land."
In fact one pine tree landed in the middle of a house close by. The group of 20 people huddled in the shelter for about four or five hours before the eye of the storm passed over them.
"We went three or four days without talking to my parents and we didn't know if they were o.k. or not and that is a scary process," said Lauren. "My dad called three days later and said he was cutting his way down the highway through trees and everything."
Joel and Tammy made their way to Waco but were prepared for anything after spending 15 hours trying to get to their lake house.
"We had Jace rounding up gas cans in case we couldn't make it to them," said Tammy. "You might only go 14 miles in one hour and no stores were open. My sister came down to get my parents and they also brought water, food and gas cans."
Joel, a carpenter for the Port Neches school district, got called back to work after he was in Waco for about three or four days. He drove back with Tammy so she could get her car. For the first time they were about to see the damage to their home and town.
When they arrived they found that windows and doors had been knocked out. There was damage to the roof. There was water inside the house and all the carpet was ruined and mold eventually set in. Electricity was out and stores were closed. Port Neches also has a lot of gas and rubber refineries that were hit.
"A lot of the electrical, big towers were folded over like pretzels," said Joel. "You could see waterways where there are big towers and it looked like somebody took them and threw them on the ground."
"We kept telling ourselves we were one of the lucky ones," Tammy said. "Our house had almost $40,000 dollars worth of damage to it. There are still people living with blue roofs, tarps on their roofs. The sad part was when it hit you right after the storm that you didn't know what you were going home to. You had no idea."
The night that Joel and Tammy returned to Port Neches gave them an eye-opening experience.
" The one night we did spend at home when I went back to get my car, we slept in the front room of the house," said Tammy. The police would come by and shine a flashlight into your windows. There was a curfew and you would go to jail, no questions asked, if you were outside your house because of Katrina and all of the looters. It was like we weren't living in our own time. The whole area smelled like death because all of the iceboxes were taken out and thrown on the yards and sidewalks. There was exposed meat and it was hot. You could only go certain places and the police would stop and check you.
Tammy went back to Waco the next day and stayed with Jace for about a month in his one bedroom apartment while Joel stayed to start rebuilding Port Neches. He went three weeks without electricity and was forced to eat army MRE's, a ready to eat self-contained meal.
"I lost about 50 pounds," said Joel. "It was so hot and there were so little places to get things. It was primitive living. It opened our eyes. We took it for granted all those years saying we weren't going to get hit. A lot of things have changed since then."
Joel and Tammy had been looking to size down to a smaller house anyway since both their kids were in college so after the insurance fixed their house they sold it to a family who's house was destroyed by a tornado during the hurricane. The Parkers moved to another location about 45 minutes away just outside the flood plane, the first time they had lived outside their hometown area. They have since moved back.
Lauren decided to leave Baylor and come to Alabama after her first year of school. Although she enjoyed her time there she didn't feel like it was the right place for her.
"You live and learn and you feel right in certain places and you feel wrong in certain places," said Lauren. "It was kind of one of those things that I loved Baylor and the softball program but it just wasn't the time and it wasn't my place. I loved every minute of it, but I had a feeling that I didn't belong there, I did my job and I needed to move on."
Now Lauren couldn't be happier with her decision to come to Alabama.
"It has been the easiest thing I've ever done in my entire life," said Lauren. "I got a year of college under my belt. I am a newcomer but as far as being away and having an adjustment period there is nothing to it. I may be in a different place but I am still away. I came here not knowing anyone or anything, but when you get to a place and feel at home it doesn't matter. That is where you belong and to me it is not really an adjustment at all."
Parker had a tremendous start to her career with the Crimson Tide, hitting .538 with six runs scored, a triple, a home run and seven RBI in her first weekend with the team. She will try to continue her success this weekend when Alabama hosts the BAMA BASH! Feb. 16-18.
