For years, Lamar University has been building momentum. Now, in the aftermath of Hurricane Rita – the most devastating blow in its history – President James Simmons is adding another attribute to the formula:
Resilience.
“We have great momentum, and I’m telling you right now, we’re going to come back stronger than ever,” Simmons told faculty and staff attending a convocation marking the return to the fall semester. “As we say, we’re reinventing this university. This gives us a great opportunity to reinvent and rebuild.”
A capacity crowd of more than 500 turned out Wednesday morning for the presentation in the University Theatre – made ready for the event despite sustaining some of the most severe damage from the storm.
Exactly four weeks earlier, on the morning of Sept. 21, Simmons announced plans to conclude classes and evacuate the campus as Hurricane Rita approached the Texas coast, then forecast to make landfall near Matagorda Bay.
“That’s probably the smartest decision made in the history of this university,” he said.
“And then,” Simmons recounted, “there was that horrifying moment we all went through.
My wife, Susan, woke me up about 5 o’clock Thursday morning and said, ‘Guess what, it’s not going to Matagorda, it’s heading right for us.’ We really suffered through a catastrophic storm.”
As Simmons chronicled the weeks since Rita dealt what might have been a death blow to campus, he talked about heroes. He talked about how hundreds of people rallied to accomplish a seemingly unsurmountable task.
“Our problem right now is people come back and say, ‘It looks so good. What hurricane?’
But we all know it was a traumatic and terrible event.,” Simmons said.
In all, 80 percent of Lamar’s 155 buildings received hurricane damage.
“Thank goodness, we had no loss of life. That was one thing we were all grateful for,” Simmons said.
Beginning with his first communication with campus hours after landfall and continuing with initial damage assessment Sept. 26, Lamar had a singular goal.
“Our top priority was to get back as soon as we could and finish the semester,” Simmons told the faculty and staff members. “Our future depended on coming back and finishing the semester. So we want to apologize if we’re not up to par. I ask your patience and indulgence with your facilities.
“The key message I have for you today is patience. We have all suffered through a great deal of stress. Imagine our students’ coming back. They’re going to also suffer through many of the same issues and maybe even more than faculty and staff. This is a great opportunity for us to show compassion and patience with our students to make sure they can continue their educational journey.”
Saturday afternoon, Sept. 24, Simmons received his first description of the damage and contacted key players in the recovery, on and off campus. He conferred early on with Charles Matthews, chancellor of The Texas State University System, who toured the campus twice during the recovery.
Early Monday, Sept. 26, damage assessment was underway. With no electricity, facilities management and operations personnel braved dark buildings and stairwells with flashlights to assess every inch of every building. Joining them were outside contractors and consultants.
By noon Monday, about 500 people here already on campus. “They were on roofs, they were in buildings, they were beginning to dry out the campus. It was really an amazing process to watch,” Simmons said.
By Wednesday, Sept. 28, more personnel were back on campus, and things were coming together. By the weekend of Oct. 1, electricity was restored. “Joe Domino (president and chief executive officer of Entergy Texas) and his staff put us on a top priority, and that really helped,” Simmons said. “We had our systems up, and we were running.”
The Mary and John Gray Library and the Maes Building were the hardest hit, Simmons said. The University Reception Center on the eighth floor of the library was virtually destroyed when the ceiling collapsed and rows of floor-to-ceiling windows blew out. Simmons’ first view was of bare walls. “I said, my gosh, all of our history is gone. All our pictures are gone.” He soon learned the center staff had secured precious portraits and other historical articles.
Cardinal Village lost almost every gable, and water soaked most rooms. But, Simmons said, “Every room has been dried and painted. The students’ clothes have been washed, their dishes cleaned and their trash cans emptied. Parents said they had never seen rooms so clean.”
Despite substantial roof and window damage to the Montagne Center, the Lady Cardinals returned to the volleyball court there Tuesday night – and won.
Vincent-Beck Stadium lost its press box, but all the seats survived. MLK Jr. Parkway underpasses and Cardinal Stadium turned into lakes.
At one time, 2,200 utility workers were living on the Montagne Center parking lot, most of them in tents. “Can you imagine with the temperature 105 degrees during the day, coming home to this?,” said Simmons.
He told the convocation audience about many heroes who emerged on the route to recovery, among them:
* Police Chief Dale Fontenot and four members of his staff remained on campus throughout the hurricane and its aftermath. “They were on the second floor of the library. When the eighth-floor windows crashed in and water started coming down the stairwells where they were camped out, they decided they’d better get over to the police station because it might be a safer place,” Simmons said. “In the middle of the hurricane, they held hands and went across to the police station. And then as soon as the storm is over, they were out there protecting us from looting, and as far as I know, we had none. That’s what a great job they did.”
* “I can’t say enough about Gerald McCaig (associate vice president for facilities management and operations). He was here 24 hours a day. Everyone told me what a great job Gerald had done. When a team of consultants arrived, the Tuesday after the storm, they looked at Gerald and his staff and said they couldn’t believe how well organized they were.”
* “Barry Johnson (vice president for student affairs), being an old band director, decided to handle it like a marching band show. He got a flip chart for every campus building. In the room right next to the police station, where it was 105 degrees, we taped up a flip chart for every building. As people went through these buildings, under Gerald’s supervision, they came back and reported three times a day what they found. The tape started slipping off the wall in the humidity, so we had to go back and nail all those charts.”
* Stephen Doblin, provost and vice president for academic affairs, and Kevin Smith, associate vice president for academic affairs, put together a scenario, or schedule, extending through November. “I asked them what they could do to see that we finish. And they’d work on it and work on it and say, no, no, no,” Simmons said. “They reworked and reworked it so that when we came back, we had a definite schedule.”
* “Mike Ferguson (vice president for finance and operations) came right on and made sure our payrolls were out and done.”
* Brian Sattler, director of public relations, worked with webmaster Santosh Tiruvanelluru to get the lamar.edu website up from a site off campus.”People thought we were up and running (on campus). But we weren’t,” Simmons said. “For some strange reason, the only access we had to the outside world for about a week was DSL in the president’s home. You tell me how every pole was down in this part of town, and my DSL was working. Brian stayed on that day and night, got the press involved and got the word out about Lamar.”
During the recovery, the president’s home on Iowa Street served as Ground Zero, with as many as half a dozen key officials staying there.
“We had no electricity and we went for a while without a generator, and we had a gas grill to cook on. It was really kind of like going back to Boy Scout camp,” Simmons said. “We’d sit out in the evenings on the front porch, and you’ll never know how dark this place is when there’s no electricity and no moon. But it was an exciting time.”
During the storm recovery, Simmons said, Kevin Smith coined a term called management by the moment – “and that’s what we’re in right now. But things will change. We will move forward.”
By 1:25 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 19, classes had resumed. at Lamar University. At 6:30 p.m. Dec. 22, the commencement processional will begin in the Montagne Center.
