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TV face of Katrina tragedy loses wife, finds hope with his Palmetto family

By BEN NELMS
bnelms@TheCitizen.com

For millions of television news viewers, the human face of suffering in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath was a distraught black man named Hardy Jackson, caught on camera as he wandered in the debris-littered streets of Biloxi, Miss.

“I’m lost, I’m lost,” he wailed as he clutched a child in his arms and the woman interviewing him wiped tears from her own eyes. “I don’t know where I’m going.”

From the living room of his sister’s home near Palmetto, Ga., Monday, Hardy Jackson recalled with emotion and with resolve the event that snatched his wife from his arms in the fury of the storm, the event that took her life, the event that gave him a new way to live.

Hardy said that in past hurricanes a government representative would come to his and other homes in Biloxi, Miss., to determine if people were going to leave or ride out the storm. The storms had hit many times before.

This time, said 53-year-old Hardy, no one came. Hardy and and his wife, Tonette, decided they could ride out the storm as they had done with others.

Their children, ages 12, 15, 26 and 28, all decided to move to different locations around Biloxi as Katrina approached, further away from their home that sat no more than a city block from the churning waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

One of their daughters, 26-year-old Mary, had already called in those early morning hours, trying to convince them to leave. But Hardy and Tonie, the name he called 45-year-old Tonette, persisted in their intent in staying in their home, believing they could ride out Katrina.

”We were inside, sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee like it was a regular morning. I was walking and pacing up and down the floor, scared,” Jackson said, knowing that Katrina was closing in. “I had my hammer stuck down in my pants. Tonie said, ‘Get that hammer out of your pants, you’re not going to need that.’ But I told her I was going to keep it because it might come in handy.”

The phone rang and again it was Mary, telling them to leave, knowing that her father could not swim. But Tonie would not hear of it, telling Mary instead not to worry her father.

“Tonie told Mary that if anything happened she would save me,” Hardy chuckled. ”We were going to stay right where we were in our neighborhood. Some other people stayed, too.”

Mary called again, from her brother’s house located on higher ground. She told her parents to look out the window. Hardy went to the window and peered through the cracks of the boards he had fixed to the windows earlier.

“It hadn’t really broke daylight, I couldn’t see really good yet. I peeked again and thought, No, no, there’s supposed to be a house next door.

“Then we heard something up under the house, like a rumbling noise and I knew it didn’t sound good. Then the carpet started getting wet. Then I went back to the window and thought, Lord have mercy. That house was gone. Before it was over my house was the only one left.”

As daylight began to break, Hardy was able to see the evidence and the damage being done by the storm surge. He went to the door to check on his van but what he saw was the storm surge coming from the south, from the Gulf of Mexico, little more than a block away.

The water was leaving the Gulf, pushed rapidly by Katrina. It was moving inland, covering everything in its path. Katrina’s wrath would not be content to remain in its element, outside.

As with the countless homes and businesses along the coasts of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, nature’s way became a force of invasion. The storm surge filled everything in its path, beginning to wash away everything, homes, possessions and lives. The liquid death brought by Katrina was no respecter of any person.

“Water started coming in the house, fast. The big freezer we have just fell over,” Hardy said. ”We went into my daughter’s bedroom. The water was coming in so fast. The bed started floating. I got out my hammer and started beating on the ceiling. I beat and beat. I beat until I beat a hole in the ceiling. By that time the water was coming in waves.”

By this time the water was chest high in the house. And the water just kept coming.

Safe today with his family in Palmetto, the frantic desperation to escape Katrina’s storm surge was still evident in Hardy’s voice, still fresh in his mind.

“I just knew I wanted to save my wife even if I had to lose my life to save her,” he said, his face tearful. “I helped push her up into the attic and up we went.”

Once in the attic, Hardy and Tonie went to the rear portion of the house, the north side, as far away from the Katrina’s waves as the physical boundaries of their home would allow. And then they prayed.

“We were huddled up, praying, ‘Oh, God, please, Lord, spare us, don’t take our lives.’ We had kids and grandkids to take care of. And then we heard that rumbling sound, like a freight train. And the walls began shaking and cracking. I looked through the cracks and what I saw I couldn’t believe. Coming from the north, the water looked like it was 25 or 30 feet tall,” Hardy explained, their hopeful refuge obliterated as Katrina’s counter-clockwise destruction began to hit from the north.

“So I said, ‘Oh, baby, we’ve got to go to the front.’ We had two big, old oak trees in the front yard. We got over there to that part of the attic and I looked through the little air vents and thought, no, no, it can’t be,” his voice straining. “There was a house floating right down the street. Waves came from the south. Waves came from the north.”

Conditions continued to worsen. By this time water was coming into the attic, up through the hole in the bedroom ceiling Hardy had made only minutes earlier. Yet the water now rushing into their little safe haven only foreshadowed the tragedy they had prayed to avoid.

“We knew it was all over. I knew it. She knew it, too,” he mourned. ”We hugged and kissed. And we prayed, ‘Oh God, please don’t, please don’t.’”

Hardy and Tonie tried to grab hold of the rafters at ceiling level. As they clung there, they heard the creaking, crunching sound of the house shifting on its foundation. The rafters began popping apart as the house began to give way to the storm.

“My wife looked at me and told me, ‘Hardy, no matter what happens, if you fall in, hold onto something. I’ll be there to get you.’ But I told her not to worry about me. I can’t swim. I’m already gone. You save yourself. You can do better for those kids and grandkids than I can,” he explained.

“Then we heard something coming from the back of the house, like a power saw. It was the house coming apart. It gave us enough time to hug again and pray to the good Lord. Then the roof opened up and the house split and fell apart.”

“I prayed, ‘Lord, I’m gonna keep that promise.’ I’d made a promise to God about 10 years ago when I nearly died when my car got hit by a train in 1995, but I didn’t keep it. I made a promise to believe in Him and He gave me life again,” Hardy continued. “But I didn’t keep it. I backslid.”

As the house collapsed, Hardy fell toward the front of the house and soon found himself clinging to one of the oak trees. Tonie fell down into the rushing water, at first toward the rear of the house but somehow ended up within arm’s reach of Hardy, who was still clinging to the oak tree or to some type of debris. In the fury of the moment, Hardy could not be sure what was securing him. During the mayhem, the waves continued to pour in.

“I slid down that tree. I didn’t care. I was going to save my wife. She came up out of the water and I grabbed her by her wrist. I prayed, Lord, please don’t take her from me,” Hardy said, the emotion in his voice undeniable. “Then I heard that voice again saying,’That promise you made is way overdue.’ I said to Tonie, ‘Don’t turn loose. No matter what you do, please don’t turn loose.’ And then I heard His voice. I praised Him, I pleaded with Him. He said that promise was way overdue.”

“I was holding her but I felt the grip coming loose. She looked in my eyes and said, ‘Hardy, you can’t hold me. Just take care of the kids and grandkids.’ I was holding on and it was like she was trying to open up her hand and let go. I squeezed her hand but she just let go. She floated north toward the bay. I started screaming and hollering. Then I couldn’t see her anywhere. All I could see was those big waves. I couldn’t believe I lost her. Twenty-eight years.”

Hardy tried to climb higher in the tree, later being hit in his left side by debris. His wife gone, he was destitute, able to see only water. He felt as if he were alone, surrounded by open sea.

“Up in that tree, I said, ‘Father, forgive me. I’ll keep that promise.’ I dropped my head and started crying,” he said. “I stayed in that tree for hours, they say it was nine and a half hours. That nine or 10 hours felt like forever.”

The waters of the storm surge eventually began to recede. As the waters flowed back into the Gulf of Mexico, Hardy heard another voice. It was the voice of a neighbor that lived down the street, in a two-story house on higher ground.

He and Hardy had never really spoken, only giving a brief acknowledgment of each other in times past. But on that day it was that neighbor who saw Hardy in the tree and came to get him down.

“That man came to my rescue. He waded over to me in the water and he yelled, “Hardy, hold on, I’m coming.’ He got to me and put his arm around me down,” Hardy said with a smile. “Then he took me to his house and gave me dry clothes and tennis shoes and something to drink. That was a little after four o’clock in the afternoon.”

Hardy was soon reunited with his children and grandchildren who returned after the waters had receded. He wanted to continue to look for Tonie, but his children insisted that conditions were still too dangerous.

Hardy and his family soon traveled north to Georgia, just outside the town of Palmetto in south Fulton County, just northwest of Tyrone. Hardy’s sister, Sharon Mack, and her husband Paul, opened their home to their family from Biloxi.

Paul stood in his front yard Monday night, cordial and calm, he and Sharon willing to share their home. Both families will travel to Biloxi this weekend to make funeral arrangements for Tonie, lost to the storm.

“You do what you need to do to help,” he said with a smile.

Hardy’s family in Palmetto have helped meet many of the needs that accompanied Hardy, three of his children and three of his grandchildren since they left Biloxi. As with so many along the Gulf Coast, some needs persist. Contact with the family can be made through paulpalmetto@aol.com

As for Hardy Jackson, he is unwavering in his love for the wife he lost to Hurricane Katrina and in his resolve to live life from a certain perspective.

“I lost my wife right in front of my eyes. She was my momma, she was my wife, she was my girlfriend, she was my best friend and, number one, she was my backbone,” Hardy said, close to tears. “I would have given my life if I could have saved her. Now I’ve got to give His testimony, that’s what I’ve got to do. You can’t make nobody do nothing. All you can do is tell them. And He said, ‘You tell them it’s up to them to listen to God.’”