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Neighborhood pulls together

After the twister on Christmas, neighbors pitch in to do whatever they can to help.

By MOLLY MOORHEAD
Published December 27, 2006

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Lance Aram Rothstein] Marilyn Bogucki starts packing up her Christmas decorations on Tuesday. The tornado spared the tree, but her home has major damage and is unlivable right now.

SAN ANTONIO - Ben Bogucki left his wind-ready hurricane shutters up all summer and didn't end up needing them.

But after a tornado whipped through his house on Christmas Day, taking several windowpanes with it, the shutters came in handy.

"I put them back up just to protect what I can of the house," said Bogucki, 66, whose home was one of 15 with major damage in Tampa Bay Golf and Country Club after Monday's freak weather event.

Outside his house on Moshie Lane, chain saws buzzed and work crews crowded the street as a cold wind whipped up the morning. Neighbors passed by on foot and in golf carts checking on one another. One of them deposited a wayward plastic shepherd in Bogucki's yard.

Such random acts typified the day, as residents expressed appreciation for their neighbors and thanks that not one of them was seriously injured.

Bogucki and his wife, Marilyn, can't stay in their house as it is. Tiny shards of glass are embedded in the carpet and furniture, and there are no windows to protect them from the elements.

"It's just one heck of a mess," he said.

Marilyn Bogucki, 68, spent much of Tuesday boxing up delicate ornaments and gold garland, which were spared by the tornado.

"It didn't touch the Christmas tree, but I might as well take it down," she said.

They were home when, as Bogucki described it, a "terrific suction" tore through the house. It lasted barely two minutes.

Next door, John Buelk watched his newly enclosed Florida room fall victim to the twister. But he believes it spared damage to the interior of his house.

"This was our barrier here," he said. He went outside to do a quick survey, and met up with Bogucki. He, Buelk and Ken Brown, who lives across the street, all put up the hurricane shutters.

"That's what this community's all about," Buelk said. "Everybody helps everybody."

Brown, who lost a few roof shingles but little else, was back outside Tuesday wearing a navy windbreaker and suede work gloves.

"I knew they had more trouble than I had," he said of his neighbors.

Including Tom Altenburg, who rode up on a bicycle from his house on Golf Cart Way. "How bad you get it?" asked Altenburg, whose house may need a new roof.

But like everyone whose Christmas was dampened by the storm, Altenburg also got a taste of neighborly kindness a day later. His golfing buddies formed a de facto work crew.

"They cleaned up the whole yard while I was trying to make phone calls," Altenburg said.

And in a far-off area of the subdivision where hardly a grass blade was out of place, Donna and Ron Golding prepared for another night with houseguests. A night earlier, they brought plates of ham and scalloped potatoes to the Boguckis. The Goldings put them up for the night, and they were ready to do it again.

"In a retirement community like this, everybody's from out of state," said Donna Golding, 56. "So you become like family."

Molly Moorhead can be reached at 352 521-6521 or moorhead@sptimes.com.

[Last modified December 27, 2006, 06:54:31]