It was twenty years ago today, Charleston and Hurricane Hugo
Like The Beatles sang in Sgt. Pepper's, it was twenty years ago today when Hugo slammed into the Charleston Harbor making landfall on the Isle of Palms just before midnight on September 21st and into the early morning on September 22nd wreaking havoc across the Lowcountry and beyond.
In 1989, I was living in suburban Cincinnati, Florence Kentucky to be specific and the driveway of my house faced southeast. As I walked out to get the newspaper that morning (now isn't that a quaint old fashioned thing to do), I thought I saw distant bands from Hugo in the southeastern sky.
Two years later, I moved to Charlotte North Carolina and met friends who talked about their lives before and after Hugo prompting me to ask, "But didn't Hugo hit Charleston, not Charlotte?"
Hugo was big and powerful and roared 200 miles inland with strong enough winds to cause trees to topple across homes, streets and power lines in Charlotte disrupting life there for weeks.
And I remember my first visit to Charleston that same year and saw for myself the damage caused by Hugo. As I walked around the Peninsula noticing the ongoing repairs and the beginnings of renovation, it was clear to me that Hugo was truly one of the big ones, at the time the most damaging hurricane in terms of cost only to be quickly eclipsed by Andrew a few years later and of course more recently, Katrina.
Yet my first memories of Charleston weren't diminished by the destruction and I still saw one of the most beautiful cities I had ever visited. I remember thinking back then that one day I would live somewhere on the Carolina Coast although at the time I didn't know whether it might be Savannah, Charleston or Wilmington and of course today, I feel fortunate to have made the decision to live in Charleston.
Now many of you might think that the twin blows of Hugo and then the closing of the Charleston Naval Shipyard in the early 90's might have dealt a death blow to the Charleston economy but I'll contend that as a result of those two events, the Charleston of today might actually be a better place than it otherwise might have been.
And we can all be grateful for a very uneventful hurricane season thus far this year.