Lee Note 75 Janelle Smitherman

Happy Holiday July 4,2001

Someone at the luncheon in Dallas started talking about Hurricane Carla and the Brownwood Addition. My family lived on Crow Rd. in the Brownwood area. Robert and I were married the week before. We came back from our honeymoon and went to Mikel Casey's wedding on Saturday. We evacuated that night or the next day to Franklin, Texas. My Dad stayed with my Aunt and Uncle since they didn't live near the water.

Franklin is where my Grandfather lived at the time. After the hurricane was over we came back and found 6 feet of water in my parent's home. This was true of other REL graduates that lived in that area. I will skip over the details of cleanup -- which were not fun, but we all survived.

My husband Robert then had the job to put together a shipload of livestock for Guam. Governor Bill Daniel had the idea and asked Robert to put it all together. Bulls were donated by well-known people such as Lyndon Johnson, Price Daniel, John Connally, Governor of Tennessee, etc. Also there were horses, goats, pigs, quail, deer, and two armadillo. All the animals were sent to the Houston livestock yards. The "Operation Guam Friendship" was covered in Houston by Dan Rather.

Robert accompanied the animals by truck and saw that they were loaded on the Guam Bear in San Francisco. He had to accompany them on the sea voyage. They all arrived safely on Guam about a month later.

Before this shipment came up we had plans to have a mini-vacation on the way to Guam through San Francisco and Hawaii. So somebody had to do it since Robert went by ship. I left Houston by air and went through San Francisco and Oahu. Probably was the most inexperienced tourist ever. Had never flown, or traveled by myself. The airport in Honolulu was completely made of bamboo at that time -- it was replaced by concrete and steel shortly after I came through.

After arriving in Guam, we lived in an apartment on the ocean -- great view. I went to the College of Guam for a year and finished my Associate Degree. The College of Guam was a two-year University at the time accredited with the University of Maryland. My major was business. I worked at Micronesian Products Center for the next year as bookkeeper and sales person. It was a great place to work for the knowledge I acquired about the Micronesian Islands.

We sold handmade things and did send a huge shipment to the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C. We also furnished the Bishop Museum with grass skirts for sale since they didn't have a source in the Hawaiian Islands at that time.

Life was good until we had a major Typhoon called Karen that hit Guam at 220 mph. Actually I think that was knots. At any rate, it was the highest winds ever recorded at that time. Eight people were killed and most everyone was affected in one way or another. We all had to go to a concrete and steel structure during the typhoon. The winds were starting to get bad late in the afternoon and did not quit until early the next morning.

We had to keep changing rooms during the night. The men would board the windows in one room and then the windows would blow out on the other side of the building. We went to the Agricultural Dept. building since that is where Robert worked. At one point we looked up and saw the roof lifting up and down. The naval and air force bases opened up their cafeterias for people to eat for a month after the typhoon. We didn't have water for a week and electricity for a month. I didn't have to iron our clothing since everyone was in the same boat.

It was during the time that I was in College because I remember wearing unironed clothes to school – of course this was all before perma-press. I washed our clothes in the bathtub.

Some of the stateside people that were there on a contract basis literally picked up a few belongings and went back to the states. Before the typhoon, buildings were made of tin and wood. After the typhoon buildings were built much better. After the high winds, we were amazed at the amount of WWII stuff that was uncovered right around us. There was an ammunition concrete storage building really close to us that we didn't know existed.

At any rate, we enjoyed our stay on Guam, but we tell everyone that we had a stormy marriage.

Don't want to bore anyone -- these are just the highlights. Hope I didn't ramble on too much.

Janelle Smitherman Fears