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Surviving Life’s Storms Eastland scholars come through turbulence stronger, wiser
“There was very little information coming out of Pass Christian except that the town was devastated,” she said. “We just knew the house was gone. We’d been talking about where my parents were going to live that night.” After the rest of the family was asleep, Harris was plagued with questions, and she started surfing the Internet, looking for any piece of information about the state of the coastal town. Happening upon some aerial footage shot by a Jackson television crew, Harris watched the video clip intently. “At first I was just amazed at the devastation. It was surreal,” she said. “But then, there was a skip in the tape, and I saw something I recognized. I used to walk down Scenic Drive [in Pass Christian] every day, and I knew the houses by heart. I saw one I recognized. Then there was nothing, nothing, nothing, and then I saw another house. I knew our house was near the next block.” Harris leaned in toward the screen, nervously watching until she glimpsed a familiar sight. “I just started saying out loud, ‘I think the house is still there! I think the house is still there!’” she said. “I got everyone up at 2 a.m., saying, ‘Look. Look. It’s still there!’ Of course, we couldn’t tell what was inside, but it gave us hope. It kept us going.” Harris, who received her undergraduate degree in finance from the University of Alabama, is one of three first-year law students to receive the James O. Eastland Scholarship in Law. Like Harris, Blake Adams and McLain Walker have survived personal storms and turbulence during their journeys to the halls of the Lamar Law Center. Digging out from the Debris But for Harris, the storm was all too literal. As a native of New Orleans and resident of Pass Christian, her life changed along with thousands of others on Aug. 29, 2005. It was more than three weeks before the residents of Pass Christian were allowed to return home. When the Harris family did return, it was clear that the house would be uninhabitable for some time. The family had taken very little, fleeing their home in the middle of the night as Katrina drew near. News reports through the weekend had placed the storm farther east. As the hurricane hooked to the west late Sunday night, Harris and her family packed up their car and headed to Alabama.
“It’s strange, the things people took with them,” she said. “Everyone knew that there could be nothing left, but we didn’t really expect the amount of devastation.” A friend of hers reported grabbing his wife’s Gucci bag before evacuating. Harris found herself grabbing a hand-carved Noah’s Ark, made from exotic wood by one of her four brothers. The ark contains drawers holding miniature animals in twos, just as the Bible story describes. “I’m not sure why I grabbed it, except that I was thinking, ‘My brother will really be mad if this gets destroyed,’” she said. “There were still so many things we lost—pictures of my great-grandfather on his ship, family silver.” Signs of Progress Also lost in the storm were five weaving looms used by Harris’s mother, who is a member of the Weaver’s Guild on the Coast. All of the weavers in the guild lost their looms and materials to water damage from the storm, said Harris, who also is a member of the guild. More than a year later, the entire city, including Harris’s parents, is still recovering. They hope soon to move out of the efficiency apartment over their garage and into the main living space of the house, which is still being rebuilt. “There’s still so much to be done, still a long way to go,” Harris said. Even so, she agreed that the storm made her family, her community, her state and even her nation stronger. From masses of volunteers to an outpouring of supplies and money, people from all over the country are helping pull the Gulf Coast out of the storm’s wake. For that and many other things, Harris is grateful. “There were 6,000 structures in Pass Christian before the storm, and only 125 made it through,” she said. “We were lucky that the house survived, lucky that we had each other, lucky that some progress has been made.” Harris had planned before Hurricane Katrina to apply for law school, but her plans were delayed by the weeks of cleaning and work that followed the storm. Several months later, after starting back to work for a financial company in Gulfport, she filled out the application. “I didn’t tell anyone that I was applying. Things just seemed too chaotic then,” she said. “But I’ve learned that sometimes you just have to take a blind leap of faith.” McLain Walker saw a time of inner turbulence following graduation from undergraduate school at Ole Miss. The biology major from Vicksburg accepted an internship with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium after graduation but did not enjoy the work. The following years included a host of different jobs for Walker, who was still searching for his calling.
“[Marine biology] did not suit me well, so I moved back and worked in construction,” he said. “While doing that, I started bartending and later catering for a company in Baton Rouge. In 2003, I moved back to Vicksburg and began work as an airplane mechanic, which led to work as an aerial photographer and surveyor.” The surveying job took him from Hawaii to New Hampshire, and to Mexico, Puerto Rico and Barbados. Even so, Walker did not feel he had found his ideal career, so he decided to apply for law school, which had been a longtime dream. “While in high school, I became interested in the law and government,” he said. “Somehow that interest stuck with me, even after pursuing an undergraduate degree in biology and having a varied employment background.” Though he has taken a winding path to law school, McLain said he feels his experiences gave him a well-rounded outlook on life. The jobs also allowed him time to read and develop his own views and opinions, lessons that he hopes impact his law education. Blake Adams endured a “life storm” of a different form when he lost his father. Adams graduated summa cum laude from Mississippi State University with a degree in business information systems. He points to his father, who died when Adams was 12, as his chief role model.
“My father was a farmer, and he always emphasized the importance of education and hard work,” he said. “I loved to go to work with him.” The unexpected loss at such a formative age affected Adams deeply, and directly impacted his decision to attend the Ole Miss law school. “My father died without a will, and it took several years to probate the farm and equipment,” he said. “This was very difficult on my mother, but made me realize how much of an impact the law can have on people. I realized the impact the law has on everyone, even in indirect ways such as government regulations.” And at a young age, he learned an important lesson. “I don’t know if I would characterize myself stronger or wiser from the experience, but it reaffirmed how much you should value every day you get to spend with your loved ones,” he said. —Jennifer Farish is editor of UM Lawyer and a communications specialist in UM’s Office of Media and Public Relations.
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