Alex Redfearn had nothing but a toothbrush and some light summer clothes when she came to Southampton in August 2005. Hurricane Katrina had barreled in, disassembling the infrastructure and taking lives along the Gulf Coast from central Florida to Texas, most notably in New Orleans.
Ms. Redfearn and her siblings safely evacuated the “Big Easy,” where she had grown up, to Alexandria, a nearby small country town. She returned to find her house sitting in four and a half feet of water. “The first time I went into the house I went in my boat,” she said over the phone last Wednesday.
This week marks the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and in honor of that, Ms. Redfearn felt compelled to write a letter to The Press, thanking the Southampton community for its warm reception during her brief stay. “I want to thank everyone here in the Southampton area for helping me through such a difficult time,” she wrote. “Your support and encouragement during the three months that I lived here gave me the strength and time to put my life back together.”
Ms. Redfearn was born legally blind, hard of hearing, and with a speech impediment. She is also fiercely independent. She may not have a driver’s license, but she does have two master’s degrees and before the storm, had a successful career working with special needs children.
In New Orleans, access to public transportation made independent living easy. But life after Katrina meant a temporary relocation to rural Alexandria while her house underwent construction, and she had to rely heavily on family to get around. It didn’t take long for that dependency to feel intolerable. She reached out to her childhood friend Erin Grismer in Hampton Bays.
“Alex is more like a sister to me. I said, ‘Fly out, come to New York, and we’ll help you,’” said Ms. Grismer, who, with her husband and four children, was also housing her parents, who had been displaced by the storm in New Orleans.
The first few weeks were tricky, and when fall set in, Ms. Grismer explored this area’s resources to help her friend. “Alex only had summer clothes, and it was starting to get cool at night; she was freezing,” she said. Southampton Village Mayor Mark Epley led her to Sacred Hearts Church on Hill Street, where Ms. Redfearn could affordably restock her wardrobe with attire suited for the changing temperatures.
Ms. Grismer isn’t quite sure how the rest of it fell into place, but believes word must have spread through the small town about the woman who, displaced by Katrina, was forced to start over.
A landlord in the village with an apartment near Waldbaum’s offered her furnished space to Ms. Redfearn for a fraction of the price she was originally seeking. A preschool just a few blocks away offered her work that she could walk to, and residents in Hampton Bays donated money to help her get back on her feet.
“Mayor Epley was a leading force to help her, and Southampton as a town really came together,” said Ms. Grismer.
Eventually, Ms. Redfearn’s house was rebuilt, and she returned home. “I came up with nothing, not even a suitcase,” she said. “I came back three months later with shoes, shirts, jeans.” But life proved more difficult than anticipated. Public transportation was still spotty and work was quiet, as most of her clients—no less her friends—had not returned.
“The first two years it was hard getting around New Orleans,” Ms. Redfearn admitted. Eventually, she knew something had to change, and nearing 50 years old, got her second master’s, fulfilling her “dream” in social work.
In the end, the storm forced its survivors to reinvent themselves and inspired them to buoy each other. “It made people who lived in my neighborhood closer,” Ms. Redfearn said. “Those of us who went through it are connected by that story. We’re no longer isolated communities.”
But this time every year, Ms. Redfearn thinks about her stretch in Southampton. “I wouldn’t have been be able to do it without the kindness and support from everybody up there,” she said. “Not just my friends, but the people in general. They couldn’t have been nicer, couldn’t have been more encouraging. I’ll never forget it.”
Carey London on Aug 31, 2015