Hurricanes Flossy and Betsy; Riding out storms in the Coast Guard station
Russel Crosby by Earl Robicheaux, 2009; 4700.2025
Click photo to enlarge
United States Coast Guard Station, 1960. USCG.
TEMPESTS: Storms in the Archives
Russell Crosby: The first hurricane that I can really remember was Hurricane Flossy which was '56 or '57. It wasn't that bad a hurricane. We were in our house and the water kept coming up, the wind kept coming up. So we moved from there and went stayed with an aunt who had a more substantial house that was right next to the Coast Guard station. It's now the town hall, but back in the 1950s it was the Coast Guard station. As the water came up, the Coast Guard came over with one of their big old fashioned rowboats. The Coast Guard was out wading in the water pushing the boat and we had several people, a lot of them were really elderly people. We got them in the boat and the Coast Guard waded back and pulled us back to the station and we all rode the storm out in the Coast Guard station. That's the first . . . first real storm I remember.
For Betsy, I was . . . Kind of ironic, I was serving in the Coast Guard at the time and I was stationed in New Jersey. I was being discharged and Betsy was in the Atlantic. The day I was discharged, I was in Cape May, New Jersey. I was married at the time and I remember telling my wife, "That's one storm we don't have to worry about, honey!" [laughing] So we came back and her parents lived on the West Bank in New Orleans. We got there and about a day later here comes Betsy tearing through there. And Betsy hit Grand Isle real bad. That's probably the worst storm we had there since the 1893 storm.
Earl Robicheaux: So wasn't it some sort of tradition that if you stayed on the island, you got into the Coast Guard station?
Crosby: Yeah, that was the place to go because it was the most substantial building here.