Stuck in Charleyville

The hurricanes' havoc lingers in Charlotte County, where one teen dreams of escaping mobile home 127.

By BRADY DENNIS
Published December 19, 2004

	Florida's four hurricanes: a graphic About this story: Months after hurricanes ripped through the state, people from Port Charlotte to Pensacola still struggle to cope. this is the first of four stories. Coming Monday: On Florida's east coast, the hurricanes changed the landscape in a fundamental way... Photo gallery: Six weeks in the eye of the hurricane. [click]
	[Times photo: Cherie Diez]
	Christmas lights sine on mobile homes in the Punta Gorda park -- known as Recovery Village and Charleyville -- built for families displaced by Hurricane Charley.
	Lennox, 17, sits in his bedroom Dec. 10 in the Punta Gorda mobile home he lives in with his mother and two brothers. Lennox hopes to leave the area for Ohio State University.
	Sandra LaBeach, Lennox's mother, leaves with her sons Onel, 12, (behind her) and Xavier, 6, after volunteering at Deep Creek Elementary in Port Charlotte on Dec. 10.

PUNTA GORDA - It's still dark outside when the young man rises from the bare mattress inside his tiny bedroom.

He slips on a navy McDonald's shirt, black pants and black Air Jordans. His mother's thick Jamaican accent barrels down the hall.

"Lennox, I'm ready!" she shouts. "Let's go!"

He opens the door and steps into a world he never imagined four months ago: a 70-acre mobile home park the government built for families left homeless by Hurricane Charley.

The dirt roads, the Dumpsters, the identical white homes stretching row after row - it's all so new and so temporary. Some people call this place FEMA Park or Recovery Village. Others just call it Charleyville.

Lennox Hall, 17, lives here with his mother and two brothers, 6-year-old Xavier and 12-year-old Onel. They stay in mobile home 127, near the corner of FEMA Eighth and Delta streets.

On this morning, he slumps into the front seat of their worn-out GMC Jimmy. Another long day lies ahead - a morning at work, a jazz band concert, then classes until 6 p.m. Charlotte High is still on double shifts.

He says little on the drive up U.S. 41. As the sun rises he rolls down his window, staring out at the mangled shells of mobile homes, mountains of debris, blue-tarped roofs, boarded up windows.

At 7:01 a.m., his mother pulls into the parking lot at McDonald's, its golden arches still blown apart from Charley. Lennox says goodbye, clocks in and takes his place behind the grill. Grunt work.

One hundred twenty-eight days after the hurricane hit on Aug. 13, thousands of lives in Charlotte County remain in turmoil. Thousands yearn to escape what has become their own special hell.

The boy flipping sausage patties at dawn might just have a ticket out.

Four months after Hurricane Charley, daily life is inching back toward normal.

No more endless waits for gas, ice and water. No more power lines strewn across roads. Stoplights work again. Drive-throughs are open. The Publix is selling sushi again, the River City Grill is back to serving seared tuna and filet mignon.

And yet, Charley's ghost lingers everywhere.

Asplundh trucks still roam the streets, chipping away at the mounds of debris. The smell of tar hangs heavy in the air from rooftops under repair.

Bent, twisted power poles still line Interstate 75, like a solemn gateway into Charlotte County. Bulldozers roam once-occupied neighborhoods. Spray-painted signs still threaten: "Looters will be shot."

The homeless count continues to grow, as many people who stayed in their homes have been forced out by inspectors or by the black mold growing on dampened walls.

Those living in hotels are running out of money, and those sleeping on the couches of friends and relatives are running out their welcome.

"People are living in garages, living in their cars in their driveways," said Rhoadie Ladd, assistant director for the Charlotte County Homeless Coalition. "There are some really ugly stories out there."

She knows a family of six living in a van and people who used to have apartments living in the woods off U.S. 41.

The coalition has nearly run out of money to give away for hotel rooms. Ladd has taken to handing out tents instead.

Just after 10 a.m., Lennox climbs back into the GMC Jimmy.

"God, you smell like McDonald's," his mother tells him. "Open your window!"

He silently chews a sausage, egg and cheese sandwich while she chides him about forgetting to bring home his school progress report. "I just need to know," she says.

Sandra LaBeach is 42, born in Jamaica, raised in the Bronx, with a booming laugh and drill sergeant discipline. Lennox's father lives in Jamaica.

In LaBeach's house, school comes first. The boys do their own laundry. There's no hanging on the block with the other kids. No alcohol, no drugs.

Lennox doesn't even have a driver's license, but she insisted he get the job at McDonald's to pay for his graduation gown, yearbook and other expenses.

LaBeach used to work long hours as a nurse's assistant, saving for new furniture and toys for the kids. They lived in a stucco three-bedroom, two-bath house in a deed-restricted neighborhood in Port Charlotte.

She had always had a place to live until the day they huddled in a bathroom as Charley ripped apart their home. Now the family has moved four times in four months, first to a shelter, then with a family who offered to help, then to a small FEMA travel trailer and, recently, to Charleyville. Not that it's all bad.

"This hurricane made me a stronger person. It made me a better mother," she says. "Charley just downsized my life. We were too busy being taken up with material things."

She's trying to hammer home the same point to her boys: You're alive. Be thankful. But it's tough at Christmas, when they pass through the living room and see nothing under the $29 artificial tree from Wal-Mart.

This year, Lennox wants something she couldn't give him even if she weren't drawing unemployment. Months ago, he filled out an early application to Ohio State University. He wants to discover another place, far from the reach of hurricanes.

Now he checks the mail each week, waiting for a reply.

His mother expects her sons to go to college - "or I'll kill them" - but she shudders to think of him so far away. She says he's still "a sheltered kid."

To which Lennox replies, "I'm outta here."

He has never even been to Ohio, but he was star-struck since his first glimpse on TV of the school's marching band, nicknamed TBDBITL: the Best Damn Band in the Land.

He can picture himself there, maybe playing percussion the way he does in his high school marching band. He wants to study music, perhaps direct a marching band of his own one day, or produce CDs like the ones he keeps in his room: Method Man, Nelly, Tupac, Jay-Z.

On this day, it's music that brings him to the cafeteria inside Fawcett Memorial Hospital just after 11 a.m. Gone is his McDonald's shirt, replaced by a dark polo.

The 13-member group eases through jazzy versions of holiday songs - Jingle Bells, Joy to the World, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. Lennox works the slide of his trombone back and forth, the notes drifting down the sterile halls, past radiology, past outpatient surgery and faintly to the doors of the emergency room.

The music brings smiles to the faces of the staffers who sit down for lunch. Several nurses stand to dance. Everyone applauds after each tune.

The boy in the second row smiles shyly and turns to the next song in his music book. They have no idea of his dreams, or the place he will go home to that night to dream them.

At first glance, Charleyville seems a sad and desolate wasteland.

Its 70 acres border the county jail, a cow pasture and a roaring strip of Interstate 75. The rows of barren, white mobile homes stretch along rows of barren, white sand streets.

Four months ago, this was empty county land. Barely a blade of grass or a tree grows anywhere in sight, so children are left to play in the dirt ditches that line the roads.

At night, you can hear conversations next door and smell what the neighbors are cooking, so close are the homes.

Day after day, the park's residents see the same familiar faces. The guy who sits shirtless on his porch, smoking. The boy who plays with toy dump trucks in the sand. The man who drives the Coca-Cola truck.

But for all its outward gloominess, the park represents a step up for its more than 1,200 residents.

To someone living in a shelter or a car or a travel trailer, a furnished, 14-by-70-foot, three-bedroom mobile home with a kitchen and living room can seem like paradise. Charley changed a lot of perspectives that way.

FEMA already has placed families in 349 mobile homes at the site, with plans to add 202 more homes in coming weeks. It's easily the largest park of its kind in the state. The agency plans to house people here for at least 18 months, rent free, or until they can find permanent housing.

The holiday season has brought a touch of color to this endless sea of white. Christmas lights hang from the eaves of several mobile homes. Red and green plastic candy canes dot the otherwise bleak landscape. One woman tied an inflatable Santa atop her roof.

At night, cars passing on the interstate can see the Santa and the glowing lights and the candy canes, signals of resilience from a few souls who refuse to surrender their holiday spirit.

The drivers glance out their windows and keep driving, someplace else.

Another day, and still no word from Ohio State. Lennox shuffles down Beta Street to the bus stop at the entrance to Charleyville.

He's the first one there, waiting to begin another afternoon of school, followed by a late-night shift at McDonald's. He sits alone on a bench in his Philadelphia 76ers jersey, his cornrows pulled back tight, his forehead perspiring in the warm sun.

His portable CD player sits on his lap. Through the headphones, Eminem's voice shouts a song called Mockingbird:

But it's just something we have no control over

And this will all just be a dream.

The yellow school bus emerges over a hill and turns into Charleyville. Lennox climbs the stairs. The doors shut behind him.

The bus pulls away slowly, stirring up the dusty street and carrying him away, if only for a while.

Brady Dennis can be reached at 813 226-3386 or dennis@sptimes.com.

[Last modified December 19, 2004, 00:17:10]