POLAND – Donald Stover spent Thursday shopping. He bought four tarps, four gasoline containers, a box of roofing nails, two box fans, an air conditioner and a generator.
All are bound for the little Mississippi town of Van Cleave, where his son, daughter-in-law and five grown grandchildren wait in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
On Saturday, the retired psychologist and his wife, Eunice, plan to load up their Volkswagen Passat and begin a 1,600-mile trek to the town just north of Biloxi.
“They all rode out the storm,” Donald Stover said of his son’s family. All are safe and together. And their three-bedroom house is still standing.
The devastation around them is enormous, though.
“Everything’s gone,” Edward Stover told his father Wednesday night, when they talked on the phone for the first time since the hurricane blew through on Monday.
Dazed people wander the streets, the son told him.
“He’s obviously been through an experience,” Donald Stover said Thursday of his son. “I think it was very terrifying for everyone.”
For Donald and Eunice, waiting at home in Poland, it was scary also.
Edward called home on Monday morning, just as the hurricane was striking the Gulf Coast. The phone lines, power lines and cell phone towers all were blown over.
“I became a TV junkie,” said Donald.
He enrolled on several Internet sites, aimed at updating people on their families’ whereabouts. He learned nothing. He called the American Red Cross. He was told he might have to wait five days or more for news.
Then, Edward and his wife, Vicki Gagne, called. A trucker, Edward had managed to reach his office Wednesday night in Mobile.
Together, the father and son talked about whether to move the family to a relative’s home out of state. Finally, they settled on staying.
“I told him I would help any way I could,” Donald said. So, he began shopping.
He bought the building supplies to work on his son’s roof, where the home was most damaged.
He bought the generator, too, since Edward has been told power might not be restored for two months.
Donald hopes the generator can power the home’s water pump, a refrigerator and the cooling machines.
“I bought the last room air conditioner I could find,” Donald said. The Mississippi home has central air, too costly to run from the generator.
His family will be all right, he said, as he prepared for his journey. Lots of people have suffered far worse.
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