Jay Toups

I grew up in Gulfport, Mississippi, attending high school in Gulfport and college at the University of Southern Mississippi. And to illustrate the span of time I spent in the area, I also went through Hurricane Camille in 1969. I was 13 years old. I left southern Mississippi in 1980 to move to Utah, but until recently my mother and two sisters lived there, providing many reasons to return at least once a year.

My most recent trip was in late August 2006, when I attended a College Park neighborhood reunion. It had been exactly one year since Katrina sucker punched a 200-mile stretch of coastline from Mobile, Alabama to well past New Orleans.

As luck would have it I also happened to be on the “Coast” to attend my 30th high school class reunion in late August 2005 when Hurricane Katrina struck.

My family’s home was, from 1972 until it sold to a real estate speculator in October, 2006, located just over the railroad tracks, directly north of the now-condemned US Naval Retirement Home on the Service Drive in east Gulfport.

What strikes me now is the utter devastation that still remains in the form of thousands of broom-clean slabs, although considerably tidier without the mountains of debris beside them. But in places like east Biloxi, Point Cadet? The Imperial Palace was open. Beau Rivage opened on the 1 year anniversary date to a packed house. Inland one block, I could not orient myself in this place where I had spent so many happy years. Just piles of concrete, torn-up streets, no white, slate-sided shotgun houses, no street signs.

Working people won’t return to these former neighborhoods. The land’s value has actually increased because multiple lots can be bought by developers. Boomtown. Hurricane-aware, hardened, battened down.

Maybe the Ocean Springs bridge shouldn’t be rebuilt. Turn east Biloxi’s nascent casino row into an intentional destination accessible via the Interstate 10 just north and Highway 90 to the west.