Hurricane Ike no match for three island widows

GALVESTON — It’s hard to imagine what it was like three years ago for this group of senior women, all widows, determinedly taking on a hurricane.

Jo Ann Mulee, 69, rode it out sitting atop the bar in her home on Clara Barton Lane as the storm surge from Hurricane Ike rushed in from nearby Galveston Bay. Esther R. Mancillas, 81, watched and prayed while her coffee table floated into the kitchen and water pushed over furniture in her home near the University of Texas Medical Branch.

Nancy Roach, 77, evacuated from her home on Golfcrest near 65th Street but was first on her block to return. She rigged a makeshift kitchen on a folding table in her bare living room, preparing meals for friends and family. She washed dishes in her bathtub.

All three women quickly set about arranging for repairs, with help from their families.

“Everybody thought I was just going to be so depressed and whiney and feeling sorry,” recalled Roach. “I just knew what I had to do, wrote down a plan and just did it.”

The women have in common a love for the island where they grew up, and a gritty resolve to restore homes that held so many memories.

“I was amazed at how they dug in and started to bring order to their homes,” said Sue Rice, Roach’s oldest daughter and a Galveston reading intervention specialist. “All of these women and many more worked tirelessly day after day working around their torn apart homes.”

Mulee, a Galveston native, had sheltered in place for hurricanes Carla and Alicia, and felt confident she could do the same with Hurricane Ike.

“I never thought water would come this high into the house,” she said.

She ended up on the counter of the bar, her three cats meowing miserably and clinging to furniture, while waters rose to the windowsills. In the aftermath, Mulee slept on a mattress in the house, adopted several abandoned cats, and hired a Houston company to repair the damage.

“It sure changed my life,” she said. “It makes you appreciate what you have, day by day, because you don’t know what you’re going to have tomorrow.”

Roach acted as her own contractor, hiring out local help, standing in line for permits and paperwork.

She moved back in October 2008, and carefully set up a Christmas tree in the window that December, although she was the lone resident on the block.

“Maybe she was lighting up the street for the neighbors to make their way home,” her daughter said.

Mancillas, a Galveston native, had weathered many storms on the island in her 81 years and had never seen water in her home.

“We thought we would be all right,” said Mancillas, known for her quilting skills and quiet faith. She led Bible studies for the Christian Women’s Club, meeting weekly at Roach’s house.

The storm surge pushed 4 feet of water through the house her husband, the late Julio Mancillas Jr., built in 1957.

In the aftermath of the storm, she developed bronchitis.

Mancillas would be out of her home for 10 months, living with her daughter in Bryan while friends and family cleaned out the house and repairs were made. Now, she is once again leading Bible studies and quilting.

She stitched Isaiah 43:1 onto a quilt constructed in memory of Ike — “When you pass through deep waters, I will be with you; your troubles will not overwhelm you.”