School did not start until September back in the 1970’s and the scorching hot days of August were spent by most kids inside in the air conditioning or outside in the shade with the brisk coastal breeze wisping the perspiration off one’s skin. On the rock radio stations, one of the song’s heard frequently by the young people was “Cecelia” by Simon and Garfunkle. And while the local Catholic Priest at first found the rhythm catching he soon became incensed when he finally listed to the lyrics of that song “Cecilia“. And more than once did my father loudly state, “Turn that damned HIPPIE music off!” when he entered a room when his daughters were playing the radio.

But that song title, “Cecelia” would soon be changed to “Celia” as the residents of the coastal plains began watching a hurricane form in the Gulf of Mexico. In terms of the area impacted, Celia was a minor storm. As far as how that storm impacted on the minds and souls of those who survived her direct hit, she was a Category Five or better. Even thirty years after she hit, my father was still saying that he would never stay here though another storm of that strength. But, the trick of the situation is that one can never be sure when, again, a hurricane will, in the last few hours, intensive tremendously, dropping its central barometric pressure to a frightening low, tighten and draw in the eye wall, and charge the land with a fury that little made by man can withstand. The only relief given was that this storm did not come with a large storm surge nor torrential rains.

Yes, perhaps, people along the Coast Bend area were a little too easy with the thought of a hurricane making land fall here. There had been two hurricanes to hit Texas during the last decade: Carla in 1961 and Beulah in 1967. As of September 1961, Carla was the largest hurricane ever. She came in near Port O’ Conner and at Port Lavaca winds were estimated at 175 miles per hour. Her storm surge was estimated at eighteen and a half feet. Tornadoes were Carla’s main legacy. She spawned one over Galveston Island that killed seven people. There were others as she moved inland across central Texas. Alex Hrncir of Komensky, Texas, would recall years later how one of those tornadoes touched ground in the fields of Lavaca County just to the east of his farm. He watched it as it approached his farm house and he struggled to get back inside as it came nearer tearing and mauling anything in its path as it came. As Alex took shelter in his house, his existence was consumed by the intensity of not only the tremendous “locomotive” sound but also by the extreme vibrations and energy of the tornado. Perhaps, it was because the farm house was on a hill or, perhaps, it was by the grace of God, but the tornado lifted as it came upon the home of Alex and Lillian Hrncir and while it ripped and rented the mighty branches of the tall oaks in the yard. It spared the Hrncirs and their home. It did, however, again touch down and soon maul Moulton.

And as for Hurricane Beulah, she holds the distinction of being the third largest hurricane…she literally filled the Gulf of Mexico. She also made landfall in September, hitting land near the mouth of the Rio Grande with winds estimated at 135 miles per hour. She also would spawn an estimated 115 tornadoes…the largest number on record. But, her greatest legacy would be the incredible amount of rain she loosed. Officially, the rain amount varied from ten to twenty inches depending on the location. An unofficial reading taken in Falfurrias was an amazing 36 inches! Water, deep water--deep enough to submerge a car, stood over vast areas. For months, the Valley was isolated by what amounted to an inland sea. And, for years and years, large rainwater ponds stood in the Wild Horse Desert lands between Raymondville and Kingsville Texas. But, the Coastal Bend had been spared the worst of both of these storms.

Now when I state that, perhaps, the residents of the Coastal Bend were not prepared for what Celia would deal, I mean mentally prepared. As far as being physically prepared, most people were. Some better than others, perhaps. Living on a farm on the flat coastal plains, outside the buffer of a town or city, one needs to take more precautions. While I will focus on my family, what we did was not unlike what many other farm residents did…I would think.

We lived in a large, story-and-a half farm house with many windows. The upstairs had pairs of windows facing east, south, and west. There was one small window facing north at the end of a narrow attic. Downstairs, there were a total of forty windows, most paired and with two large “bay” windows set between two smaller windows in both the formal parlor and the main living room. While wonderfully effective in cooling the house during the hot summer months, these windows become a definite liability during any hurricane but never more so than during Hurricane Celia. Julius Rektorik was always prepared…and not just prepared, he was well prepared. For years, he and his family operated under a hurricane preparedness plan. A sufficient quantity of half-inch plywood was always stored up against one wall in the garage to cover all the windows of the house. Also kept in store were eight-foot two-by-fours which were to be nailed over the plywood once it was secured over the windows. All the material was put up with two-headed framing nails. These made taking down the boards after a storm easier. He would straighten and oil the nails and store them in a metal gallon bucket to be used again.

Along with the plywood and lumber, there was not only one gasoline-powered electricity generator but a back-up one as well. Gasoline by the five-gallon can was brought in to run the generator whenever a storm threatened the Coast. Coleman lanterns, maybe three of four, and several gallon cans of white gasoline were brought in from the shop and also the camping stove. Canned goods, preserved meats, extra bread, etc were always purchased in advance. And, as always, my Dad watched. He was the son of Texas Czech pioneers. As a small boy, he had ridden out the worst of the 1919 hurricane on the seat of a Model T Ford inside the concrete garage on the Louis (Alois) and Jennie (Johanna) Mrazek Rektorik farm. Although not as proficient as his father, he had learned to watch the clouds, the wind direction, and the movement of the birds. But, by 1970, he also was able to listen to the storm updates published on the radio and television.

And listen he did. With each new coordinates, he would go to a large hurricane map that he had glued onto a piece of plywood and plot the new coordinates. He would place a pin on the new coordinates and draw a line to it from the old. What a wonder this map is with years and years of hurricane tracks plotted on it. (It is now being used as a Science teaching aid!)

On Thursday, July 30, 1970, a weak depression formed in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico. It was a weak cyclone when it moved across the western tip of Cuba late Friday. Then, it entered the warm Gulf waters and intensified. By eleven o’clock on Saturday, August first, an Air Force reconnaissance plane found that the storm had intensified to the level of “tropical storm.” Celia was born. From this point on, she moved on a northwesterly track. By five Saturday afternoon, Celia was upgraded to a hurricane. By midnight, her winds were at a hundred miles per hour near the center. On Sunday morning, August 2, hurricane warning was issued for the Gulf Coast from Palacios to Port Arthur, and evacuations were begun. At five o’clock on the morning of Monday, August 3, the hurricane warning was extended to the Corpus Christi area.

Julius Rektorik would have been awake during the night so that he could plot each update on the hurricane; and, it was only a few minutes after the five o’clock report and warning that he woke up his two daughters (who were still at home). It was time to get to work. It was still dark…but we had no time to waste. My sister who was at home back then did best with “in-“ work…”in- “doors, “in-“ town, etc…so, she was to handle the purchasing and “in” house preparations. I, on the other hand, did what ever I was told. And so it was, a fifty-seven year old man and a twelve-year old girl hauled over fifteen sheets of that half-inch plywood out and around the house. Three sheets had to be hoisted up to the upper story and held in place while they were nailed up. When we finished boarding up the house, we braced my Dad’s large work shop that had a large sliding, sheet metal door on the west side. It was that Mrazek gift of engineering which drove my Dad to create a spider web of two-by-fours that was designed to resist force from any side.

But, we were still not through. Feeders, trash cans, buckets, and anything else that could be blown had to be stored indoors. The fourteen-foot aluminum fishing boat was filled with water so that it would not blow away. And (of course), it was my task to catch the protective cluck with her chicks and put them in a cage in the feed house. For the dogs and cats, my Dad would leave one garage door slightly ajar so they could shelter inside. And, despite all the hurried but well-planned efforts…not all was attended too. I felt so bad and cried so dearly when, after the storm, I found my ring-neck doves dead in their cage--whether they were beat to death by the winds or drowned, I will never know; but I shall always lament that I did not do anything to protect them.

My sister and her friends were of college age. Her best friend had recently married and lived in a mobile home. It was determined that it would be best if she and her husband came to our house to ride out the storm. My sister’s boyfriend came over too. In a way, there was almost a party-like atmosphere before the storm really hit. Both of the young men drove large, American-made (of course) cars; and, after some discussion, it was decided that the cars would be safest if parked out in the open away from trees and walls that could collapse on them. And so, they were parked in front of the house beyond the front porch.

By late Monday morning when Celia was ninety-five miles east of Corpus Christi, we were pretty much through with our preparations. As the afternoon progressed, squall lines crossed over us with greater and greater frequency. Also the wind began to increase. With the point of landfall being between Aransas Pass and Corpus Christi and the subsequent path of the Storm, we were in the northwesterly quadrant--the harshest and (usually) most-dangerous quadrant of a hurricane. The eye of the storm moved ashore at 4:15 Monday afternoon. This is when she turned mean.

For Corpus Christi, the worst hit at around 5:30 Monday afternoon. Perhaps the best way to explain the sheer energy of this storm is to quote from a UPI story of the time which focused on the weatherman stationed at the Weather Bureau in Corpus Christi during Hurricane Celia:

“CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (UPI) ---It was approaching 5:30 p.m. The little man who looked like Peter Lorre put on his baby-blue parka again and stuck his head out the front door of the Weather Bureau. He peered out for only a second, and then lurched back inside to escape the stinging rain and high winds. The man threw off his coat and sloshed through ankle-deep water in a small, darkened room on the second floor. He aimed his weakening flashlight on the only two meteorological devices still working in Corpus Christi and then looked up. ‘It hit 140 knots---140 knots,’ he said. The watch on Donald A. Dunlap's wrist just recorded the most intense moment of Hurricane Celia. The needle on the mechanical wind gauge was at 161 miles an hour. The barometer was at what would be its lowest point of the day--28.46. ‘Be sure to mention how low the barometer went,’ he said. ‘Everybody will be real interested in that.’ When Hurricane Celia reached its destructive heights on the Texas coast Monday, Dunlap was the only weatherman still taking readings. As the winds began to build, most of the weathermen huddled around the radar screen to watch the progress of the storm. Dunlap, 52, stayed by his barometer.

Gee whiz, said one meteorologist, if there's anybody here who'll know what this hurricane will do it's old Dunlap.’ Then the power went off, and windows began popping out, water started flowing across the floor of the Weather Bureau. Dunlap unscrewed the barometer from its case, and walked with the water squishing in his shoes to the windowless second floor room. With the barometer safe, Dunlap donned his parka and made frequent dashes down the stairs to get the feel of the winds, taking notes in a small book. Once one of his co-workers caught sight of Dunlap in the darkened room and called out to the others: ‘Hey, Dunlap thinks we're still making readings.’ Dunlap was eating a sandwich. His round face turned up from his notebook. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I'm making a few observations.’

What is really significant in the above story is the barometric pressure reading and the fact that all mechanical information-gathering equipment was destroyed by the storm. Winds were actually measured at 161 mile per hour. The trained weathermen who were there when the wind blew away the equipment estimated that gust actually reached 180 miles per hours. Bursts of kinetic energy are said to have caused these tremendous gusts.

It was probably about the same time that the young people were looking out the front door of the Rektorik house watching in amazement as those two heavy, American-made cars were being lifted off of the ground on the windward side. They would arise, hold for a second, and then return to the ground. I went out through the back door and stood in the leeward-side wind…I always wanted to fly. I though this might be my chance but then caution convinced me to go in. And, a good thing it was too. We had a dog, too dim-witted to get in the garage. The last we saw him, he was on a chair on the front porch. The winds took the chair and the dog. We never saw him again.

It was about then that the last remnants of the party atmosphere ceased to exist. Although it was said that the Robstown area only received 6.31 inches of rain during the storm, the effect of that wind-driven rain was dreadful. The wind forced the rain behind the plywood over the windows. The water could not escape outward so it flooded inward. We first noticed the water pouring from the windows downstairs. Daddy braved the intense wind out to his shop and came back with a hand drill. He drilled holes in the window screen frames and through the plywood to let the water out. About this time, water started dripping on the dining table. Water was pouring down the light fixture. (Good thing the power was off!) It was then that we realized that the rain water was pooling in the upstairs windows too. This time I took the drill and I made my way through the dark upstairs. All you could hear was the roar of the wind. There was thunder but the wind drowned it out. To each set of two windows I made my way. I stood in water and as I drilled the window screen frames, water poured down my arms.

I had just finished drilling the upstairs windows and returned downstairs when there came the sound of an incredibly loud explosion…an im-plosion to be more precise. The bay window in the formal parlor had imploded. The doors to the room burst open and rain rich winds whirled though the house. (And remember, this is with the plywood over the bay window!) Daddy and the two young men dared to enter that room and to push out both the piano and organ. Everything else would be surrendered to the storm. The doors to that room had to be barred shut. Everything was happening so fast and there was so much to do, I didn’t really have time to be scared until after that window burst.

I cannot recall the exact sequence of events, but about this time, another incredible event took place. My Dad had left uncovered part of one small window that faced west…towards my Grandparent’s house. He would look out from time to time. Once, something caught his attention, it took him a second to figure it out. A piece of sheet metal had landed in our yard. There was an implement shed on my Grandparent’s place that was large enough to hold a two-row cotton picker, a four-row combine, a couple of tractors plus the implements. It was being torn apart by the great winds and piece by piece the sheet metal was being carried at well over a hundred miles per hour towards our house! Through the rain, we could occasionally see the implement shed as it was being dismantled but mostly we thought of those long sheet of metal being carried towards us.

Even these thirty-years later, I still cannot truly fathom the strength of that storm. But, she showed us that raw power that evening. We were then on the back side of the storm which is usually less severe…but with Celia, this too was different. Educated estimates were made that the wind reached speeds of 180 miles per hour in Robstown…it is still cited in the Texas Almanac. It was here that the most intense wind bursts occurred. Now recall, we were in a story-and-a-half house. The downstairs space was the equivalent of about nine normal size rooms. Upstairs, there were two large bedrooms and attic space. Most of the house was on a pier-and-beam foundation but the large utility room (with bathroom) on the east side of the house was on a concrete foundation. For a period of at least thirty minutes (it seemed like forever back then), the wind bursts would pick the house up off of the foundation. Over and over again we could feel the floor rise with us on it. A large crack developed on one wall from ceiling to floor from the rapid and repeated movement of the house. Although no one said it, we all thought the house was about to come apart. Daddy did tell everyone that we should get ready to get into the closet under the stairs. That is all he had to say…we knew what he meant. I was terribly frightened. I tried to sop up the water pooling on the floor in an effort to calm myself. I cried as I worked. I have never been so afraid again in my life. More water accumulated as I worked.

But, the house did not blow apart. I have no idea what time it was when the wind diminished enough so that we all tried to sleep. I was so tired, I left my clothes on the floor as I put on my nightgown and got into bed. It was still dark when I got up. I do not know if it was still that early or if it was dark because the windows were boarded over. I was dazed, a bit in shock. I just picked up the clothes I wore the day before and put them on. What a nasty surprise, they were full of ants. The ants had come up through the floor. Seeking refuge too, I suppose.

If the inside of our house looked bad, the outside looked like hell (pardon my language.) But, I cannot find a more appropriate analogy. Not many trees grow well down here but Hackberries do. If I recall right, we had four or five before the storm that had boles too large to be encircled in one’s arms. That morning, our house was surrounded by huge limbs twisted and rented from the trees. All that remained were shattered stubs above where those large trees branched. Muddy water filled with debris stood every ever. The cotton crop was a total lost. All that remained standing (but all bent to the east) were bare stalks. The cotton itself was down in the muddy water. And, there were many sheets of contorted metal driven into the ground. The power lines were down. The big door on the shop had imploded. It was so good to see that the house of Grandma and Grandpa was still standing. As a side note, that house was actually lifted by the gusts and moved over enough that it no longer sat on the piers!

It was then I found my doves.

Before dawn that morning, my brother began driving up from the valley. He said he saw very little damage until he reached Bishop which is about twenty miles south of Robstown. It was there that the damage became so vast and savage that he feared for our lives. The first few roads he tried were impassable. Eventually, because of his great force of will and the fact that he a strongly-built man of six foot, he moved downed power poles to get first to my Grandparent’s house, our house, and then the home of our Uncle, Aunt, and cousins on another adjacent county road. He said he found the people in the same condition at each house…disoriented and in shock.

Because of the length of this story already, I will skip over what happened over the next few day, and talk a little about the aftermath as a whole. We were without electrical power for over two weeks. We lost all the food in the freezer and refrigerator. While my Dad and brother cut down the huge tree limbs with chain saws. I would attach a chain to them and pull them a way with a small John Deere tractor. We had many huge burn piles. It was also my job to gather up all those pieces of sheet metal that had been driven into the ground. Again, I used a heavy chain attached to the back of the small tractor. My Dad had welded a pair of vice grip pliers onto the end of the chain. I would back the tractor up to a piece of metal now securely imbedded in the dry ground. I would attach and tighten the vise grip pliers to the metal sheet and then ease the tractor forward to pull the metal from the ground. Some sheet were driven so deep that I had to use low gear to get them out!

How does one end a story like this? I am not sure. Just a month or so ago, one of my sister’s who came in to help after Celia looked at the huge island of trees surrounding my Dad’s house and commented on how amazing it was now compared to the skeletons that stood there on August 4, 1970. Trees grow anew and people recover.

I left the farm in 1979 and lived in Austin for many years. With the exception of two storms, over the next nineteen years, I drove down to my Dad’s house each time a hurricane threatened that part of the coast. Each time he and I would board up the house and the shop. Each time we would buy supplies. Each time we said we would never stay through a storm like Celia and then we rode those storms out. During the last three years since I have returned to our family farm, my son and I have once, Hurricane Bret, boarded up my Dad’s house under his watchful eyes and with his supportive words. And, I will board up his house again should we be threatened by a hurricane. I am my father’s daughter!

Of course, since that devastating hurricane of August 3^rd and 4^th, 1970, no major hurricane has made landfall in the coastal bend. But, it is not IF but WHEN. Another truly bad one will come. And, I will be here to prepare for it. The real question is: Will I leave if they predict a direct hit by a Category Four or Five storm? Probably not. There is always that closet under the stairs at my Dad‘s house!

Susan Rektorik Henley

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