We waited until spring to see whether our trees showed new growth, a sign of survival. Suggestions to keep the trees alive and to help them deal with harmful elements in their environment included long, slow watering and nourishment.
Their roots had cracked and dislodged sidewalks, but this was accepted as a sign of life.
Today, we mourn their deaths and flinch at the screech of the saw. Trucks slip though town loaded with severed limbs and trunks — Hurricane Ike’s casualties.
People wait at the dumping ground, the tree cemetery, eager for a memento that will sit on a dining room table or lend its shape and density to an artist’s chisel. People will breathe new life into it and make it a part of their existence.
Once upon a time, trees outnumbered us. We used them for shade and food. We played in them. We chopped them down and lived in the comfort of hewn logs. Who among us has hated a tree?
Through no fault of our own, we stood in Ike’s path. It developed into a storm that produced the largest evacuation in Texas’ history.
Through no fault of their own, many residents were displaced, their homes and belongings wiped out. People suffered losses, some more than others.
Many responded to those in need, others continued in their usual path, unaffected. Some have stopped counting days. Ike is in the past. It’s history.
Yet many continue to count the days without their loved ones, without a home, without familiar keepsakes that marked their history.
Individuals with names, a past and dreams for the future, strangers to us, were forced out of their homes.
Census Bureau 2000 data reveals that 22,337 (37 percent) of Galvestonians were the most vulnerable members of our society — children 18 and younger, and people 65 and older.
Do we remember that we lived among them? Some of these children and elders may no longer live here because, through no fault of their own, they lived in homes that were not insured.
Can any readers acknowledge the absence of someone who no longer lives in Galveston because their home was destroyed by Ike?
Galveston deserves a planned approach to the future. We must raise damaged homes, rebuild destroyed ones and save historical properties. In part, didn’t survivors of the 1900 Storm do this?
Galveston needs a future that accommodates the needs of its community, one that includes a working class that does not own a home and cannot afford a place to live because of the economy. These are the poor, the underpaid and underemployed.
Whole neighborhoods where a poor population lived have been razed. One of those homes was where a former Galveston mayor grew up. If dead oak trees represented a dislocated elder or a child, would we lament their loss so passionately? Would we be satisfied with a carved statue of who they were?
They all had a Galveston address and are claiming one again. Wouldn’t you?
