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‘We lost everything we owned that year’
By Lillie Balli Rios
Published July 27, 2003
My memory of the 1943 storm is of fun and excitement (I was too young to know about the dangers of a hurricane).
We had just lost our father and moved to Galveston in 1942. I lived with my mother and siblings with another family on 15th Street between Water Street and Strand.
When the wind began to howl and our high raised home began to shake, we all sought shelter across the alley in a two story brick apartment house.
The adult member of the other family stayed behind to board up the windows. As soon as he finished, he joined the rest of the family across the alley.
No sooner had he come in out of the storm, when our boarded up home came crashing to the ground.
We lost everything we owned that year. The only thing we dug out of the rubble completely intact was a small ceramic elephant, which my brother had given my mother on Christmas of 1942.
I still have that ceramic elephant in my possession (yes it’s trunk is raised). It occupies a special place in my home today.
Lillie Balli Rios Galveston
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