Old-timers remember Donna, a different storm in a different way

Reprinted from the Oct. 31, 2005 Daily News

There’s something almost sweet about the stories told by people who lived through Hurricane Donna.

Donna is the storm that hit in 1960, back when Collier County was merely some dot on a map. A haven for fishermen, a treasure not yet discovered by many.

But there was nothing sweet about that hurricane’s devastation. Donna ripped through Southwest Florida, crushing trailers, flooding homes.

Kind of like Hurricane Wilma, but worse.

The people still living in Collier who were here for Donna and here for Wilma say the two don’t compare. They were different storms. Different eras.

It was a different Naples.

“It was a walk in the park compared to Donna,” Joanne Mandeville said. “Donna picked up trailers and threw them right across canals. She took the pier out. A gas station had the pumps pulled from the ground. This one wasn’t even close to being as bad as Donna.”

Finding a Donna “survivor” in Collier County isn’t as easy as, say, trying to find World War II veterans. They are few and far between because Naples’ population was so small back then.

In 1960, there were few houses outside the city of Naples, not as many streets and certainly not as many people. So when those people are found and begin to talk about Collier before developers devoured the woods, it’s like listening to a grandparent talk about his or her time in a war.

Not too many people around here experienced it, but those who did, have so many good stories to tell.

Mandeville was 18 when Donna hit. She lived in a house on Pine Ridge Road, and thought she was invincible, as most 18-year-olds do. She ventured outside during Donna’s eye and walked to the beach in the middle of the storm. She remembers hearing broadcasters on local radio station WNOG say they had to sign off because the water was rising.

Mandeville later moved to North Naples, where she stayed in her home with boarded windows for Wilma.

Merle Harris, in her 80s, said Collier County is lucky that Wilma wasn’t like Donna. She remembers a tidal wave that flooded U.S. 41, 175 mph winds and tornadoes that popped up like summer storm clouds.

Harris cooked fried chicken and roasted duck the morning Donna was expected so she could feed her family after the storm. And she remembers calming her children with a guitar while Donna’s winds were whipping all sides of her house. She played music and sang “Old MacDonald” until her throat hurt.

“Every time I hear that song, I think of that time,” said Harris, of East Naples. “I feel real good about that. The children (now grown) still mention it.”

Mary Prince Lipstate, in her late-70s, said Wilma was so different compared to Donna because there are so many more people in Naples. In 1960, people weren’t waiting in line for ice and water because groups like the Federal Emergency Management Agency didn’t exist, she said.

People didn’t have hurricane shutters, so windows weren’t boarded. Fishermen didn’t take their boats out of the water, but they moved them as far up the bay as they could and hoped for the best.

The only thing Lipstate remembers doing to prepare for Donna is cooking a ham before the storm arrived.

And people who needed things, like help clearing debris or food, found those things themselves, said Lipstate, of East Naples. No one depended on the government or nonprofit groups to help like they do today. The victims of the storm took it upon themselves to make things right again.

“Everybody sort of pitched in and did their own work,” Lipstate said. “You just went with the flow.”