My name is Douglas P. deSilvey, I’m a native of the Gulf Coast. The story I want to tell today is about my family, the three women in my family, have steered my life for the past 59 years, to the man that I am today and I hope and think that I am a pretty good fella. Every time we had a hurricane we would go over to Nadine’s home. We considered this just another storm, since ’77 when she built this house, we been through every storm in it.

Not knowing what we were in for, we were sitting on the bed and we could hear glass breaking, and I walked to the back of her bedroom ,which was facing the bay, just to measure the water and see how high it was. And in the back the water came up so fast, it was unbelievable. As I turned and told them to hold hands, that we was gonna have to get in the water, the roof came down on all of us…and my lungs started to fill up with water, and I kept asking Jesus, ”Please don’t let me go like this,” I had to get my family out. I got out and they didn’t. I’m a big guy, I’m 268 pounds, I exercise and stay healthy and I just, I could not do a thing. It was just their time to go is the only way I can understand this.

Losing a family is, I don’t think there’s any words for it. It kinda makes you wonder what life’s all about…many, many questions I have not received answers for yet, I just don’t know I feel these days. I wake up and go to the office and do my job and come home, I’ve got the house full of their belongings, that I don’t know what to do about. You know, as a father, and a dad and a husband and everything, you always plan for the future of everybody, and it’s just the opposite now. I have nobody to plan for, or work on retirement for or save for buying a house…it’s just me.