Video About Hurricane Camille

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The woman's story blows my mind.

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When will someone listen?
Two days after the Storm, Duckworth's father drove him to Jackson, MS. Several days later, he was recuperating at his best friend's house in Memphis when he sought out a reporter to correct the Richelieu story. "I didn't want Luane's family to believe that she had died in a hurricane party," Duckworth said. "I made the reporter promise that he would put the truth on the national wire so that rumor could be stopped."
The rumor, instead, grew bigger. The telephone wires were down, the Memphis Commercial Appeal story never made it to the Coast, and the Richelieu saga of Mary Ann Gerlach took over.
Gerlach claimed to be the only survivor, and is the one most quoted about a hurricane party on the third floor. Yet, she and her sixth husband were asleep in their second-floor apartment when the building disintegrated and she landed in the swirling abyss. Many Camille survivors would not talk to the media, but she would and remained in demand at Camille anniversary memorials. Her interviews kept the legend alive.
In 1982, when on trial for murdering her 11th husband, Gerlach's lawyer used an insanity defense, claiming her Camille experience and the resulting drug and alcohol abuse caused her to kill her husband. She was found guilty, sentenced to life imprisonment, but was paroled in 1992.
Duckworth does not want a "he-said, she-said" debate, but he wonders why nobody questioned the many discrepancies. “Of the 23 known residents to have stayed the Storm at the Richelieu,” he pointed out, “only eight are known to be dead or missing.”
Billy Bourdin, a Pass Christian historian and retired plumber who rescued many that night, wonders the same thing. He said that Pass Christian Civil Defense Director Parnell McKay went to his grave trying to correct the story, which he often reprinted in the weekly newspaper that he published. McKay's records and editorials, needless to say, were ignored by the larger media.
Bourdin, who has picked up McKay's mantle, tells of a History Channel documentary in which he was interviewed. He explained the Richelieu dead and the false party rumor, but none of that script got into the documentary.
Duckworth himself made another attempt with two Jackson newspapers in the 1990s, but he told his story to columnists, not realizing columns are not sent out on AP wires for distribution. What brought him back to the Coast was the announcement of the new Camille memorial and chairman Julia Guice's search for the correct names to be etched on the black granite walls. In her search, Guice uncovered others who, like Duckworth, lived.
"I can understand why Richelieu survivors aren't coming forward," said Guice, who was Biloxi's 1969 Civil Defense director. "It was such a horrific experience. No one wants to relive it."


Mary Ann Gerlach's Story
Mary Ann Gerlach has often been reported as the only surviving person from the beachfront Richelieu Apartments on Highway 90. Over the years, it has also been recounted that 23 others stayed to "party the night away". The story was mistakenly reported as such by national news media the day following Camille and continues as a myth in commemoration releases by local and national news media.
Some reports had it that Hurricane Camille promoted an excuse for a Hurricane Party.
According to Gerlach, she and her husband Fritz had stocked up on food and booze for the evening. They had worked late the previous night, so they decided to take a nap before partying with the other apartment tenants. She was awakened by the strong gusts of wind and siding boards being ripped off the apartment complex. Leaping forth, she jerked her husband from his sleep. She looked up as the walls cracked open and the third floor above her was about to crumble down upon them. Her husband Fritz didn't want to leave because he couldn't swim. The rising waters gushed around her. Instinctively, she grabbed onto a sofa cushion as the waves thrust her out a window. She noted that the waters were also thrashing against the top floor where the other tenants were supposedly having their Hurricane Party. She couldn't distinguish the people, but she could still see the lights, as she was being washed away. Then the lights went under water. The third floor of the hurricane-proof apartment complex tumbled into the murky swirling waters driven by the Gulf tide.
Gerlach swam and clung to pieces of floating debris and furniture. She was exhausted from being in the water from 11 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. the next morning. She was found bleeding, skinned up, and limp as a rag doll atop a mountain of debris. Her husband's body wasn’t found until more than a week later – bloated and battered beyond recognition – except for a diamond ring that she had given him for their anticipated second wedding anniversary.

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