If you remember Fernwoodstock, you will want to forget it
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This vacant property in Biloxi was once the home of Fernwood Junior High, a Camille shelter in 1969.
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By JOHN E. BIALAS
Broadmoor Bureau Chief
I was 17 years old and my brother, Mike, was 15. Our Dad was 49 and our Mom was 47.
It was the summer of 1969, and on Aug. 16, we rode in the car and went a mile or so to Fernwood Junior High in Biloxi because Hurricane Camille was coming and the school was a storm shelter.
We spent the night on the floor of a hallway during the Category 5 storm and it was our first serious hurricane experience since moving back to Mississippi from the Far East in 1960. It was also our fifth year living in a home on Venetian Gardens in Gulfport, where Mississippi's oldest golf course served as our backyard.
The fairway of the second hole was great for playing touch football with our friends on Saturday afternoons, as long as the golfers didn't get in our way, but I doubt anyone thought of football or golf the Saturday before Camille.
Snoopy, our 4-year-old dachshund, was left at home and stayed on our long screened-in back porch, a place where I enjoyed playing one-man baseball by hitting a tennis ball from one end of the porch to a wall at the other end. The porch was also the stage for the one and only Beatles concert Mike and I performed with two of our neighborhood friends by lip-syncing records before a crowd of four or five boys and girls while our parents were at work.
I 'll refrain from writing about Camille's pounding rain and howling winds because my hours-long boredom with the dark environment and crowded situation in the hallway pretty much blocked it all out.
Like all the other families, I just wanted ours to get home, and we did in the early morning of a hot and sunny Monday, Aug. 17, 1969. Dad drove down DeBuys, the Biloxi-Gulfport dividing line, which was no clear path and more like of forest of downed trees everywhere, and he took a right on the Highway 90 service drive across from the beach. From there, it was only a couple of blocks west to Venetian Gardens.
My worst memory of going back home was seeing the destruction of a beautiful white cottage on the west corner at the foot of the street. Our home up the street was pretty much spared. I believe there was minor roof damage on the south side and we found Snoopy safe but perhaps unsound because he had a hard time recovering from the trauma and he died just a few years later.
I commemorated the 50th anniversary of Camille by driving up DeBuys on Saturday around 6:30 p.m. to take a picture of the vacant property that was the home of Fernwood, which was a middle school when my daughter Kristin went there in the mid-1990s.
Fernwood, which was at the corner of DeBuys Road and Pass Road, closed in 2009 and was demolished in 2011.It was built in 1928 and was the westernmost school in Biloxi. It was so far west, it was almost in Gulfport.
I wish I had taken an American flag with me and I wish I would have heard Jimi Hendrix playing "The Star-Spangled Banner" during my brief stop on Aug. 17, 2019.
Woodstock in 1969 was the same weekend as Camille. Our weekend was Fernwoodstock.
If you remember Fernwoodstock, you will want to forget it.
Broadmoor Bureau Chief
I was 17 years old and my brother, Mike, was 15. Our Dad was 49 and our Mom was 47.
It was the summer of 1969, and on Aug. 16, we rode in the car and went a mile or so to Fernwood Junior High in Biloxi because Hurricane Camille was coming and the school was a storm shelter.
We spent the night on the floor of a hallway during the Category 5 storm and it was our first serious hurricane experience since moving back to Mississippi from the Far East in 1960. It was also our fifth year living in a home on Venetian Gardens in Gulfport, where Mississippi's oldest golf course served as our backyard.
The fairway of the second hole was great for playing touch football with our friends on Saturday afternoons, as long as the golfers didn't get in our way, but I doubt anyone thought of football or golf the Saturday before Camille.
Snoopy, our 4-year-old dachshund, was left at home and stayed on our long screened-in back porch, a place where I enjoyed playing one-man baseball by hitting a tennis ball from one end of the porch to a wall at the other end. The porch was also the stage for the one and only Beatles concert Mike and I performed with two of our neighborhood friends by lip-syncing records before a crowd of four or five boys and girls while our parents were at work.
I 'll refrain from writing about Camille's pounding rain and howling winds because my hours-long boredom with the dark environment and crowded situation in the hallway pretty much blocked it all out.
Like all the other families, I just wanted ours to get home, and we did in the early morning of a hot and sunny Monday, Aug. 17, 1969. Dad drove down DeBuys, the Biloxi-Gulfport dividing line, which was no clear path and more like of forest of downed trees everywhere, and he took a right on the Highway 90 service drive across from the beach. From there, it was only a couple of blocks west to Venetian Gardens.
My worst memory of going back home was seeing the destruction of a beautiful white cottage on the west corner at the foot of the street. Our home up the street was pretty much spared. I believe there was minor roof damage on the south side and we found Snoopy safe but perhaps unsound because he had a hard time recovering from the trauma and he died just a few years later.
I commemorated the 50th anniversary of Camille by driving up DeBuys on Saturday around 6:30 p.m. to take a picture of the vacant property that was the home of Fernwood, which was a middle school when my daughter Kristin went there in the mid-1990s.
Fernwood, which was at the corner of DeBuys Road and Pass Road, closed in 2009 and was demolished in 2011.It was built in 1928 and was the westernmost school in Biloxi. It was so far west, it was almost in Gulfport.
I wish I had taken an American flag with me and I wish I would have heard Jimi Hendrix playing "The Star-Spangled Banner" during my brief stop on Aug. 17, 2019.
Woodstock in 1969 was the same weekend as Camille. Our weekend was Fernwoodstock.
If you remember Fernwoodstock, you will want to forget it.
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