 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Danny
Gilleland/he Macon Telegraph |
| John Alton Hurley Jr. and Carolyn Hawkins have begun life anew with their 2-year-old son Johnathan Al'Kourdrick. |
Within the flash of floodwaters, 2 families fell; years later, 1 emerges
By
Mara Shalhoup
The Macon Telegraph
AMERICUS - John Alton Hurley Jr. and Carolyn Hawkins know water has power - a force that can take away your spouse, your children and your last trace of hope.
They know, too, that it has the power to give those things back.
From disaster, a baby was born.
Hawkins and Hurley named him Johnathan Al' Kourdrick, a hybrid of the three sons they collectively lost to the Great Flood of '94.
They call him a godsend.
He arrived the morning before Mother's Day 1997, two-and-a-half years after his parents found friendship in grief.
"It was hard for John to let out his feelings to anybody," Hawkins said. "But he did to me."
Together, they lost five members of their families, a third of Americus' 15 casualties of the flood that severed the city from the rest of the world for days.
It severed Hawkins forever from her husband and two sons, Hurley from his wife and toddler.
Just after midnight July 6, 1994, water grumbled on the surface of Lake Hancock, punched a hole in the dam and barreled down Town Creek toward Mayo Street. It rode the railroad tracks, eating the earth beneath the ties and rails, leaving their skeletal remains suspended over emptiness.
Its power killed, and like the tracks left hanging, so were the two sole survivors.
Until they met.
"He's somebody who's been through everything I have," Carolyn Hawkins said. "I know when he's hurting. I know how he feels."
A few hours after the first dam broke that Wednesday, John Alton Hurley Jr. was halfway out his car window, creek water swirling around the Chevy Cavalier's hubcaps. He was fumbling to find help in the 3 a.m. blackness.
"I'll be right back," he said to his wife, Kathy Renea, who was tired from working a night shift at the Cooper Lighting plant. Little John was curled up asleep in the backseat.
Then came the wave, traveling uphill and carrying Hurley away from his wife and son. He bounded off a nearby building and began swimming back to the car, to Magnolia Street, where the Cavalier's taillights were sinking into the water.
Hours later, on the other side of town, Carolyn Hawkins slipped a nightshirt over 8-year-old Kourtney's head. It was 6 a.m., and he'd go to sleep as soon as he got to Grandma's. Her other boy, Kedrick, 16, would catch a ride from there to the high school, where he taught swim lessons. Her husband, Freddie, planned to drop the boys off and then drive on to work at the Mulcoa mineral plant.
"Mama, I'm going," Kedrick said as he, Kourtney and Freddie climbed into the Datsun pickup.
The swim coach called a minute later. Lessons were canceled, "due to inclement weather."
She tried to stop them. But they were gone.
Ten minutes passed. Carolyn called her mother. "Tell Kedrick he doesn't have practice."
But Kedrick, his daddy and brother hadn't gotten there yet. Carolyn waited, called back. They still weren't there.
She got into her car and began the seven-mile drive into Americus. She had crossed the bridge on Ga. 27 six hours earlier on her way home from the late shift at the paper mill. It had been raining then, hard.
But it hadn't been like this.
Water lapped the highway.
The power of it picked up her husband's small pickup, carrying 14 years of marriage and 16 years of child-rearing, and tossed the Datsun from the highway.
Rescue workers found her husband's body that afternoon. Freddie Hawkins was still in the truck. Her babies weren't.
They found Kourtney Hawkins the next day, around Lime Creek.
A day later, John Alton Hurley Jr. was still searching the waters for his family.
Kathy Renea Hurley, carried almost two miles from where Town Creek overtook the Cavalier, was discovered Friday.
On Saturday, the day the Hawkins family had planned to leave for Disney World, Kedrick was found dead.
Later that day, on what would have been John Alton Hurley III's third birthday, rescue workers found him, too, in water circling Americus.
His father was left trying to make sense of the power that took his wife and son.
It would take a while, but he would forgive. He would receive.
He would find a family, without feeling he had abandoned the one he lost.
Carolyn Hawkins wasn't trying to make sense of anything. Not yet.
They gave her a shot at the hospital to make her not think about the fact that her family was gone.
After the funerals, she piled into a spare bedroom all recent photographs of her husband and sons, Kedrick's basketball and jersey, the red toy truck Kourtney called "Big Bubba."
She closed the door for weeks but eventually went back in.
The picture of Kourtney, his second-grade school photo, forced her out again.
"It was the kind of picture where the eyes move wherever you move," Carolyn said. "I knew right there I needed help."
She heard about a man, much like her, who had lost his family. He was bringing survivors together.
She went to meet John Hurley.
"I used to say I never wanted to be happy again," Carolyn said. "But then John made me happy."
John Hurley was the only person who would never ask, "You're still not over that?" He was the only person who would understand the answer: "No, and I never will be."
Neither of them thought a baby would make things easier. They weren't looking for replacements.
But when he came, they looked into the waters of their past and found the meaning of rebirth.
"When he was 1 and started talking, trying to say so many things, I thought, 'He's got his three brothers wrapped up inside of him,'" Carolyn Hawkins said.
Now that Johnathan Al' Kourdrick is 2, he's better able to convince her.
Now when he says, "I'm here. Don't be sad," she believes him.
So does John Hurley. But he wouldn't have five years ago.
"Back then, I refused to think ahead," he said, shaking his head, watching Johnathan cuddle a stuffed dog and Carolyn clasp her hands. "I never would have thought I'd get this far."