Friends Surviving the Atlanta, Georgia Floods

In May of 1982, I was a senior at Seton Hall Prep, and our house was partially devastated by a fire in the middle of the night. Dealing with this kind of adversity is really hard, but it is also strengthening. My parents inadverantly didn’t renew their fire insurance that year, having done so faithfully for years. But they got caught with their pants down, and we had to recover. Any kind of natural disaster can create intensely lonely and overwhelming feelings. But with friends and family, you begin to recover. And you get an amazing opportunity to show what you are made of. I did a lot of the cleanup, learned how to take windows out of their frame, and put them back in–the firemen broke every window in the house to let out the smoke(I admit here and now that some of the windows don’t have that little piece of metal that holds them in, just the putty around the edges! Ha!) I lost my speaking trophies, hard earned awards earned throughout my four years of high school, but I lived with it. My music teacher’s record collection he had lent to me was ruined by the water hoses. The front of the house was rebuilt. We moved on with our lives. It was a financial hardship my parents had to deal with for a long time, but they got past it.

I’ve learned recently that some very good friends who moved to Atlanta have had their lives turned upside down by the flood in September. I’ve just finished looking at a blog set up to help them out, and am amazed also at the flip side of their disaster–the friends and family who are there to help, and how David and Gloria are showing what they are made of. They too didn’t have insurance for a flood, and are finding they will have to rebuild their home and their lives themselves. But because of the kind of people they are, they won’t have to do it on their own. None of us would chose, I suppose to go through such adversity, but it is in these adversities that we grow, develop, put the metal to the test, and come out stronger, wiser.

I am including here a link to the blog for anyone who wants to read their story or make a donation to their rebuilding efforts. Gloria and David Recovery