Dove "Dunny" Green

Dunny Green at the remains of his Long Beach, Miss., home.

Dunny Green (Class of 1974) was visiting his mother in Pawleys Island when Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on Monday, Aug. 29 and demolished his home in Long Beach, Miss., a waterfront community with a population of 17,000.

"When Katrina was upgraded to a category 5, I knew something bad was going to happen," says Green, whose wife, with two dogs and two cats, evacuated inland to Hattiesburg, where one of their daughters attends the University of Southern Mississippi and another daughter lives and works.

Though anxious to get home after the storm, Green was frustrated: "I couldn't get out," he says. He finally was able to catch a ride to Columbia with his brother, then had a nephew take him to Greenville, where he loaded up his sister's Blazer with supplies, food and water and drove back to Long Beach and stayed with friends.

Approximately a third of the town had been completely destroyed, including many homes and buildings that were more than 150 years old. At his own home, only the pool was left, a waterlogged relic of life before Katrina.

"I was lucky because when we went to church that next Sunday, someone stood up and announced they had a house to rent. I raised my hand and said, sight unseen, 'I'll take it.'"

Green, who is the son of D.W. Green, one of Coastal's original founders, works as an oceanographer for the Naval Oceanographic Office (Navo Oceano) at the Stennis Space Center. He knows from past experience about the devastation of hurricanes. The Greens had already rebuilt their home once, following its destruction by Hurricane Elena--which hit the Gulf Coast exactly 20 years before Katrina. Hurricane Hugo damaged his mother's Pawleys Island home and a cousin's home in Charleston when it hit South Carolina in 1989.

Now the Greens are spending their days working (wife Venean is a landscape designer who is now very busy), dealing with FEMA and waiting for insurance engineers to determine what "took the house away," though Green has his own theory. "You can tell by the twisted trees near the house that a tornado came in with strong winds," he says.

While Vanean packed family pictures, paintings and silver for the evacuation flight, their loss is overwhelming nonetheless. "Most of what we lost can be replaced," said Green optimistically. One of his regrets, in hindsight, is that he didn't pack up some of his prize fishing rods. "We'll rebuild. Again," he vows, hoping that the third time's a charm.

Stacy Luthy

The parents of Stacy Luthy, a postdoctoral researcher who has been working at Coastal for the past year, lost their home in Slidell, La., one of the worst-hit cities in Katrina's path. Steve and Debbie Luthy evacuated their house, taking only clothes and photo albums, and took shelter with an aunt in Baton Rouge. There, they watched the storm approach on television with the rest of the nation.

It was a week before they learned there wasn't much left of their house. "There was five feet of flooding on the first floor and part of the roof came off, so there was rain damage on the second floor," says Luthy. A futon, a computer desk and a foosball table were all they could salvage.

Luthy, who is working with Coastal marine science professors Richard Dame and Rob Young on a joint project with the University of South Carolina at Belle Baruch laboratory, went home to help her folks clean up and find new housing.

"Coastal Mississippi was worse than I had imagined," she says. "Even as far north as I-10, trees were dead from the salt water, and debris was everywhere. The U.S. 90 bridge between Ocean Springs and Biloxi looked like a line of dominoes that had been knocked down. It's amazing what water can do."

Luthy's mother Debbie, chief of nutrition for the Louisiana Public Health system, was already working in the shelters, so her dad needed all the help he could get.

"We called what seemed like hundreds of rental properties, but everyone was looking, so we had no luck," says Luthy. "Condos that weren't even built yet were selling out, so we turned to realtors next. A house had just been listed in Prairieville [near Baton Rouge]. We went to look at it and had to decide in about five minutes--without even talking to my mom."

The Luthys are now working, dealing with insurance companies and trying to find new furniture to update their new house, "which needs a lot of work," according to Luthy, who was overwhelmed by the sights of the area that was once home.

"Houses in the area were flooded or completely destroyed," she says. "There were big piles of debris everywhere, military choppers flying overhead and ambulances all over the place. It was like a war zone."

Katrina Relief at CCU

Campus aid efforts for victims of Hurricane Katrina began soon after the storm hit the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005. By the end of September, students, faculty and staff had raised a total of nearly $7,000 for the Red Cross.

Faculty band Virtue Trap played a six-hour fundraiser on the Student Center Deck.

Collection buckets were placed around campus and were circulated at many university events, such as the football game against James Madison University. Other fundraising efforts included a concert on the Student Deck by faculty rock band Virtue Trap and the Necessary Brothers; a Prayer Circle on Prince Lawn sponsored by the CCU Gospel Choir; a pizza party and T-shirt sale event called "Coastal Cares for our Coastal Friends" sponsored by Students Taking Active Responsibility (STAR); a 12-hour walk-a-thon on the CCU track sponsored by the Horry County Scholar's Academy; and a book sale at Kimbel Library.

Coastal also offered to assist students displaced from colleges and universities in the affected areas.

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