Mississippi Homecoming Veterans Return Home Five Years after Katrina

More than 400 veterans rode out Hurricane Katrina in the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport, Miss., in the summer of 2005, but Bill Williams wasn’t one of them. The 80-year-old Air Force veteran was on his way to his Texas property after he heard the storm was on a collision course with the Mississippi coast.
Mr. Williams spent about two and a half years in Texas, then left to join his fellow residents, who had evacuated to the Armed Services Retirement Home in Washington, D.C., after Katrina damaged the Gulfport facility.
When a new, larger and more luxurious Gulfport facility opened five years after the hurricane, he only needed to be told once it was time to come home. The morning the retirement home gate opened for residents to return, Mr. Williams was sitting in his camper, where he’d spent the night, to make sure he was first in line.
“I feel like I’m back in my element,” Mr. Williams said. “I was born and raised in the South, so that’s the most comfortable thing, I think. But I think everybody feels the same way: we’re just glad to be home.”
The veterans returned to a welcome from cheering crowds, patriotic signs and flag-waving schoolchildren, but one flag seemed especially meaningful to the Katrina survivors on the day they returned. The flag that flew over the retirement home before the hurricane was raised to the top of the flagpole, then lowered to half-mast to honor the residents who died in the five years since the hurricane.
The $220 million, 800,000 square-foot rebuilt facility offers 582 rooms, with individual balcony views of the Mississippi Sound and the Gulf Coast skyline and a covered pedestrian bridge to the beach. The 456 square-foot rooms, equipped with kitchenettes and showers, are considerably larger than the 90 square-foot rooms in the original facility. The new home is now a city within a city, according to public affairs officer Sheila Abarr.
The hurricane knocked down several buildings at the old facility and destroyed its steel-and-concrete perimeter fence. After the residents were evacuated, resident Henry Pike posted construction photos and updates on a website and on the walls of the retirement home in Washington.
"What we tried to do as an agency was make [the residents] a part of the process, for them to build their home,” Ms. Abarr said. “They have been involved, from looking at blueprints to going through mock-ups of their rooms, so they could put a hand at going back into their home. So, not only was it a special homecoming so they could come back to the coast and be close to their families down here, but it's a part of them."
The facility now offers an Olympic-sized swimming pool, hobby shops, barber and beauty shop, bowling center, indoor bocce court, theater, computer room, library and a wellness center that includes basic dental and eye care. The buildings also are elevated 22 feet and designed to withstand a Category 5 hurricane.
“It’s like living in a resort,” said 20-year Air Force veteran Bill Parker. Mr. Parker was one of the residents who spent the night of the hurricane in the home before he moved into a guesthouse in Gulfport. “It could not be any better. We have a beautiful view of the Gulf Coast and the landscape, and the facility is five times bigger than what we had before the storm.”
The homecoming was an emotional one for many in the first wave of returning residents, Ms. Abarr said.
"You can look at pictures, but it’s really special to walk in with residents when they walk into their rooms for the first time, and a couple of them had tears in their eyes because they were home," Ms. Abarr said. "I told them it's a very grateful nation because this was an appropriation. We consider our veterans our heroes, but for them to walk into their rooms for the first time was what was special."
Both Armed Forces Retirement Home facilities are operated exclusively for enlisted and warrant officers from all service branches. Active-duty enlisted members support the facilities through a 25-cents-a-month payroll deduction. When Mr. Williams enlisted in 1950, the deduction was a dime a month.
“They only have to tell me one time that a storm’s coming to evacuate,” he said. “I don’t want to experience any hurricanes. When I heard it was coming, I left.”
Mr. Williams took advantage of his time in Washington by visiting sights like the Smithsonian Institute and Vietnam Wall in the winter and bluegrass festivals during the summer.
“I believe happiness is a choice, and I choose to be happy wherever I am,” he said as an active-duty Airman helped him carry his carvings from deer antlers, golf balls and wood to his new room. “I chose to be happy to get out and see the town. I feel very privileged to have been able to spend two and a half years in our nation’s capital.”
But he was clearly happy to be back on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, beginning with being the first through the gate the day the home reopened and getting his first look at the water from the eighth-floor balcony of his new room. He expects to enjoy many sunsets with that view while he works on his next wood-carving creation.
As he took in his first view of the balcony, he recalled a conversation with a fellow resident before they returned from Washington. Mr. Williams told his friend, Ed Sullivan, over coffee, that they would soon all have an ocean view, and he was told the Gulf wasn’t the ocean.
“I said, ‘Man, if you’re born and raised in west Texas, that’s the ocean,’” he said. “I don’t care what you call it. Anything bigger than a swimming pool in west Texas is an ocean.”