Reporters’ book recounts Ike tales

GALVESTON — Just hours before Hurricane Ike made landfall, Galveston County Daily News reporters Leigh Jones and Rhiannon Meyers set out with emergency workers on last-ditch rescue missions.

“We’re sitting in the truck as the wind is pushing it back and forth, and lifeguards are swimming down the street, in the middle of downtown Galveston, trying to get to a car to see if someone is inside,” Meyers said. “It was insane.”

As the hurricane pushed ashore, the two reporters would be swept up in the disaster, alongside residents, emergency workers and public officials remaining on the island. It was the beginning of a horrific adventure that would haunt their nightmares.

It was also the genesis of a book. Meyers and Jones have researched archives, combed through official e-mails and interviewed more than 60 survivors to write a page-turner about Hurricane Ike and its aftermath.

“Infinite Monster: Courage, Hope and Resurrection in the Face of One of America’s Largest Hurricanes” goes on sale Tuesday at locations throughout Galveston and Houston, with an official launch party set for Friday at the newspaper’s island office. Several book-signing events also are planned that weekend, including a question-and-answer session hosted by Moody Gardens.

“One of the reasons for writing the book in the first place was that we felt like Galveston got forgotten,” said Meyers, speaking by phone from her desk at The Daily News.

“We got cycled out of the 24-hour news cycle within two days — Lehman Brothers collapsed; the stock market followed suit and all of a sudden, Galveston was just not in the news any more.

“We felt like no one else was going to tell the whole story, and we were the only ones who could do it,” she said.

The two women were veteran reporters, old hands at covering island politics and people, so they were part of the team remaining on the island as Hurricane Ike headed inland. Alongside city and county officials and other media, they sheltered at the San Luis Hotel when the hurricane struck Sept. 13, 2008.

The morning after, Jones and Meyers set out to cover the disaster and discovered their own homes had been flooded.

“We came back to the San Luis that night with these city officials and other people that I had reported on and talked to before,” said Jones, speaking by phone from her office in Atlanta, where she moved a year after the hurricane.

“We were all now having these very personal conversations about how much we had lost and what that was like ... For that brief period of time, there were lots of hugs all around and shared tears and shared sympathy,” she said.

“All of a sudden, I wasn’t necessarily just a reporter covering a story, but I was part of the story, and I shared this connection with the people I was interviewing.”

That shared connection would add depth to the continued coverage of the disaster and be woven into the making of the book. In a nutshell, “Infinite Monster” is the story of Hurricane Ike from the Monday before landfall through roughly the first year of recovery.

The story is told through the experiences of both public officials and average Galveston residents, some who stayed, and some who didn’t. Voices recorded include grief-stricken families, heroic helicopter pilots and exhausted leaders.

Three stories form the backbone of the book — the accounts of Steven and Lupe Rushing, Emory and Merlinda Brockway and the late Fletcher Harris — residents who weathered the hurricane on the island.

The book was more than a year in the making, as the women worked two jobs — journalists by day and authors in their off hours, researching, interviewing and writing. They shipped the manuscript to several publishers, pushing for a launch by this hurricane season, but without luck.

“At one point, I doubted anyone would ever read it,” Jones said.

The women approached a self-publishing company, only to find the price too steep. But the company executive was so enthusiastic about the book, he pointed the women to a small Dallas publishing house, which quickly agreed to a fast launch schedule.

Now all that remains is to gauge the reaction as new readers watch the lives and stories spurred by Hurricane Ike unfold in the pages.

“We’re so grateful for all the people who shared their stories with us and who were honest about their experiences, their pain, their devastation,” Jones said. “The book would not have been as good if we didn’t have that authentic look at people’s experiences.”

The reporters dedicated the book to the people of Galveston.

“Without their strength and their ability to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and rebuild this city without federal help and without state help, we wouldn’t have had this inspiration,” Meyers said.

“It never ceases to impress me, the love and strength of the people here and just how much they care about this island.

“They’ll do anything to keep it afloat.”

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Details

“Infinite Monster: Courage, Hope and Resurrection in the Face of One of America’s Largest Hurricanes” goes on sale Tuesday at The Admiralty, Tina’s, Gracie’s, UTMB gift shop, Big House Antiques, the Front Parlor, Galveston Bookshop, Moody Gardens gift shop, The Galveston County Daily News (Galveston and Texas City offices), Galveston Historical Foundation gift shop, and Murdoch’s Bathhouse in Galveston. In the Houston area, the book will be stocked at Costco Galleria, 3836 Richmond Ave.; Costco Katy Freeway at Bunker Hill, 1150 Bunker Hill Road; and Costco Willowbrook, 12405 N. Gessner Road. The book also can be ordered at amazon.com.

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Book Promotion Events

Tuesday: Interview on KUHF, Houston Public Radio, 88.7 FM. Visit http://app1.kuhf.org/main.php, to listen.

Friday: 4 to 7 p.m., reception for the authors, Galveston County Daily News, 8522 Teichman Road. (Books will be available for purchase.)

Saturday: Noon to 4 p.m., book signing, The Admiralty, 2221 The Strand, Galveston

Saturday: 7 p.m., Q&A and book signing, Moody Gardens, 1 Hope Blvd., Galveston. Proceeds will be donated to the Galveston Island Tree Conservancy.

June 20: 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., book signing, Murdoch’s, 2215 Seawall Blvd., Galveston

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About the book

The title is based on a quote from the diary of pastor William Mercer Harris, Fletcher Harris’ grandfather, describing the 1900 Storm — “It was a sort of infinite monster, tossing its million heads and frothing at its million mouths as it hungered to devour the city.”

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About The Authors

Leigh Jones, 34, and Rhiannon Meyers, 27, were part of a The Daily News team that won the 2009 Star Breaking News award from the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors for its coverage of Hurricane Ike. Meyers covers the city of Galveston for The Daily News. Jones now lives in Atlanta, where she is the web editor for a legal newspaper.