The Great Okeechobee Hurricane of 1928

Bessie spent the morning baking bread and a ham, boiling potatoes, and fixing pudding for the kids. With no electric refrigerator, the food she had prepared was placed in an icebox to keep it from spoiling. The family took up rugs and took down pictures, John DuBois tied up the boats and pumped full a large water tank attached to a tower, hoping the weight would keep it from blowing over. Some of the men decided to drive to the nearby U.S. Navy station for the latest weather report. Just as their car had passed under the water tower, the tank slid off its perch and crashed down onto the road, narrowly missing them.

            “The winds galloped over us like a thousand freight trains, accompanied by that high-pitched whine that beggars description,” Bessie wrote. “Huddled on the lee side of the back porch, it was still light enough for us to see the great breakers coming straight across the ocean as if the beach no longer existed.” The water surged into the inlet and up the Loxahatchee River and into the DuBois’ front yard. “The tremendous surges were breaking among the palm trees in our yard. As every new crest swept in, a few more cabbage palms went down. The tide was higher than any of the family could remember, as the foam from the waves crashed against the windows. Papa made a macabre joke by shaving and dressing so that he would make a ‘handsome corpse’… but soon the strain had overcome even gallows of humor. About all that held the house together was the chimney and the concrete back porch…I found myself praying over and over again that the tide would change and that the center of the storm would pass.”    

            The men gathered by the coffeepot while the women stayed in the bedroom with the children. The old house up on the hill, where John DuBois had been born, was vacant at the time, and Bessie had packed food and clothes in a basket for a hasty retreat should the water continue to rise. Susie saw her and asked her mother repeatedly, “When are we going up the hill?” As the winds blew violently, Susie danced on the porch, her eyes showing the excitement of innocence. Bessie had assigned one child to each man. But as she saw them watching the water swirling around the falling trees, she realized even a grown man alone could never get up the hill, let alone one carrying a child.

            The tide had risen so high that seawater ran several inches deep over the home’s floorboards. The winds pushed on the uncovered windows, turning the clear glass at their center white with pressure; fortunately, they held together. The family heard a loud crash, and when they went to investigate it, they discovered the front porch had lost its roof and was separating from the rest of the house. They feared the home would come off its foundation and begin floating off. The children, oblivious to their danger, played happily with crayons and paper.

            According to South Florida resident Jeanne Griffin, her husband’s great grandfather, Willie Williams, was killed in this hurricane. He lived in West Palm Beach and went to play cards at a tavern on the lake. His body was not recovered, but his watch was later found and returned to the family. In another case, dairy farmer Noah Kellum Williams had driven south on Sunday morning to the plant in Kelsey City that bottled his milk. Owners of buildings in the town were preparing for the storm by boarding up the windows and doors. He returned to his farm in Jupiter, around where Florida’s Turnpike now crosses Jupiter’s main east-west road. Normally, Sunday morning would find him in church; however, he stayed home to board up his home, and then went to shelter at the schoolhouse. After arriving there, Noah Kellum Williams was finally able to stretch out on the floor to try to get some sleep. Less than an hour later, he was awakened. 

            An older couple lived in a second-story garage apartment nearby. It turned out they had stayed as long as they dared, then they tried to make it to the schoolhouse, but the winds had knocked them down. They were crouching under a stairway on the side of the building away from the wind. But the second floor had blown off, and the garage had wobbled, trapping the couple. The man had been able to crawl to the school for help. It took several men to remove the stairway off the woman, who was badly hurt, and bring her to the schoolhouse.

            At about 3pm, a neighbor came by. A large fruit company had built a high-powered radio station nearby to communicate with its farms in Central America. Someone at the station had sent word around to the neighbors to get out as quickly as possible before the storm hit the region. The neighbor had no doubt exaggerated his story just a bit at each doorway; so, by the time he got to Williams, the storm had sustained winds of 200 mph and was accompanied by a 50-foot storm surge. Williams knew the ridge on which his home sat was only 25 feet above sea level, but it was five miles inland. The house wasn’t very strong, but the barn was new and sturdy. A tenant said the people who were calling for escape must have known what they were talking about. Williams stepped into his barn and gave his employees the bad news. The men had just milked and fed the first group of cows. He told them to fasten the big barn door open so it wouldn’t blow shut and to unyoke the cattle.

            Williams finally decided the safest place was the area’s new $160,000 schoolhouse. He piled everyone into two trucks, along with bedding and pillows. At the schoolhouse, the winds reached their peak at 5:30pm, Williams recalled. He watched from a giant window as lumber and tree limbs flew and trees snapped. A dog sheltered from the wind against a building suddenly decided to make a dash to safety. When the animal got into the wind, it rolled him over; he crawled back to the wall and was still there when darkness hid him from Williams’ view. Windows and doors were smashed in by flying debris. The group grabbed lumber left by workers on the newly finished building; two men would force a door shut, while others hammered the lumber across the door and frame to brace it. “Strong men prayed who had never prayed before,” Williams would later recall. “Strange to say, those who were not in the habit of praying, prayed the loudest.”