MONMOUTH – Judy Beck returned to her native Lewiston immediately after Hurricane Katrina drove her out, and she lived in the Ramada Inn for six weeks.
To burn off pent-up energy from living in the confines of one room with his mom, her 13-year-old son, Billy, hit the pool almost every day and helped guests carry bags in from the parking lot.
Judy and Billy are in an apartment now. There’s less swimming but a lot more privacy. She’s still piecing together the bits of their former life in Waveland, Miss., and finds it galling that, six months after the hurricane, some people assume it’s old news.
“People I talk to get me so upset. It isn’t over for me. Don’t tell me to forget about it,” she said. “People have just put it out of their minds. It’s not going to be normal for another 10 years.”
Judy and her daughter, Crystal Spaulding, both lost apartments in Waveland, a few blocks from the beach, to Katrina. Neither had renter’s insurance. Both are still waiting for property claims filed with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They’re living on FEMA rental assistance in side-by-side units.
Crystal, 21, moved here to be with her mother in November. She and her boyfriend, who just got a job at Formed Fibre Technologies, share a car.
Little things like having a baby shower remind her how far away she is from people who made home feel like home.
“I don’t know anybody, and I feel like I get stuck inside all day,” Crystal said. “The highlight of my day is I get to go to Wal-Mart or the doctor’s.”
She’s picked August to go back. The baby will be 3 months. Crystal won’t live within 50 miles of the coast again.
Judy misses home, but she isn’t sure she can go back. Her health isn’t good.
“It was fun to see Billy with his first snow, though,” she said. He tried scooping it up to make a snowman. She had to teach him about rolling snowballs.
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