Hurricane Ike Takes Aim at Houston

The AP and Virginian Pilot are reporting that Hurricane Ike may score a near direct hit on Galveston and Houston. I lived in Houston years ago and am familiar with Houston as well as Galveston - I have swam in the Gulf of Mexico and sunned on the beach beneath the seawall - which is protected by a 17 foot seawall (the photo at left shows spray from waves crashing against the seawall) which could be overwhelmed by a possible 20 foot storm surge. My thoughts and prayers go out to those in the path of the storm. As best I can determine, my Houston based clients and friends have joined the 1 million people who have evacuated. If the storm goes up the Houston ship channel, downtown Houston could flood and major damage occur to the oil refineries on the east side of the city. Here are some highlights:

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GALVESTON, Texas (AP) -- A massive Hurricane Ike sent white waves crashing over a seawall and tossed a disabled 584-foot freighter in rough water as it steamed toward Texas Friday, threatening to devastate coastal towns and batter America's fourth-largest city.

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Ike's eye was forecast to strike somewhere near Galveston late Friday or early Saturday then head inland for Houston, but the massive system was already buffeting Texas and Louisiana, causing flooding along the Louisiana coast still recovering from Labor Day's Hurricane Gustav.

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The National Weather Service warned residents of smaller structures on Galveston they could "face certain death" if they ignored an order to evacuate; most had complied, along with hundreds of thousands of fellow Texans in counties up and down the coastline. But in a move designed to avoid highway gridlock as the storm closed in, most of Houston's 2 million residents hunkered down and were ordered not to leave.

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White waves as tall as 15 feet were already crashing over Galveston's seawall. It was enough to scare away Tony Munoz and his wife, Jennifer, who went down to the water to take pictures, then decided that riding out the storm wasn't a good idea after all.

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Ike would be the first major hurricane to hit a U.S. metropolitan area since Katrina devastated New Orleans three years ago. For Houston - a city filled with gleaming skyscrapers, the nation's biggest refinery and NASA's Johnson Space Center - it would be the first major hurricane since Alicia in August 1983 came ashore on Galveston Island, killing 21 people and causing $2 billion in damage.

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Galveston, a barrier island and beach town about 10 feet above sea level and 50 miles southeast of downtown Houston, was the scene of the nation's deadliest hurricane, the great storm of 1900 that left at least 6,000 dead. But that also was before officials had the ability to warn residents that a hurricane was coming, and before the seawall was built to protect the community.

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If the storm stays on its projected path, it could head up the Houston ship channel and through Galveston Bay, which Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff called a nightmare scenario. . . . The oil and gas industry was closely watching the storm because it was headed straight for the nation's biggest complex of refineries and petrochemical plants. The upper Texas coast accounts for one-fifth of U.S. refining capacity, and many platforms were shut down. Wholesale gasoline prices jumped to around $4.85 a gallon for fear of vast shortages.

My Closet Years - Part Four

In Houston, we never built the extensive number of friends and acquaintances that we had in Mobile. Partly, the sheer size of the city and the distances between home and where co-workers lived made impromptu dinners together less feasible. Similarly, the logistics made it impossible for me to keep going to daily mass to try ever harder to “pray the gay away.” Also, I guess I was unconsciously beginning to figure out the claims that religion and “accepting Christ into your life” simply did NOT work when it came to making one straight. The company I was with was then a subsidiary of what is now Allied-Signal and has since merged with ARCO. Here’s a brief description:

Union Texas Petroleum Holdings, Inc. is an oil and gas company based in the United States. The company explores for and produces oil and gas overseas with its principal operations in the United Kingdom sector of the North Sea, Indonesia, Pakistan and Venezuela. The company has petrochemical interests in the United States. The company also carries on development of an oil field in Alaska. Seismic data, 40% interest in contract area and 30% interest in two blocks of Ghadames basin was acquired in 1997. Oil and gas exploration and production accounted for 79% of 1997 revenues and petrochemicals, 21%.

In the years I was with the company, revenues were over $2 billion per year. The overseas travel for the Company was wonderful, and even my wife got to go on several foreign trips at company expense. The places I visited on business overseas ranged from Jamaica, London, Paris, Brussels, Milan, Egypt, Morocco, and Athens. For company business, we traveled first class on all overseas flights, stayed in the best hotels (my all time favorite was the Plaza Athenee in Paris pictured above) and generally could almost pretend that we were part of the “Dallas” and “Dynasty” set. Once, due to the air traffic controller strike under Reagan, I even was able to take the Concorde from Paris to New York to insure our group got back to the USA after ten days in Morocco. Domestically, the trips were far less glamorous: Enid, Oklahoma, Midland Texas, Minneapolis, Memphis, and several small towns where the company’s propane gas subsidiary either purchased or sold operations, with me as the company’s sole legal counsel.

During this period, I had two close gay encounters. My wife was in New York visiting family, and while innocently grocery shopping one Saturday, I ran into a cute young attorney – dark hair and bright blue eyes - who was also a UVA law grad. We met while picking out produce and noticed each other’s gold UVA signet ring (the rings are somewhat distinctive) and talked briefly. OK, I admit it – I WAS looking him over because he was cute. He was with one of the big Houston law firms and lived in another neighborhood. He was very nice looking and since I am generally a friendly type, I told him where I lived, about my wife being out of town, and then he asked me if I’d like to go to the beach with him and several of his friends. The offer of going to the beach in Galveston sure beat painting kitchen cabinets, so I said I’d go along. While my sense of attraction to him was in high gear, I convinced myself that I was imagining his attraction to me. Soon after arriving at the beach and rendezvousing with his friends, however, it became obvious that all of them were gay – and very HOT!! Two of them, in fact, were a couple and I recall the secret envy of seeing them kiss each other. Nonetheless, the alarm bells were going off in my head. Had my fellow UVA grad read me as gay that easily? OMG!!!! What had I done wrong to make it so easy to tell?

Since my newly acquired friend, Rob – who I believe thought of me as his date – had driven, I had no option but to spend the day and evening with the group. After hours on the beach – with one of the hotties wearing a Speedo to my great distraction – we went to get some dinner at what turned out to be a gay bar. The combination of terror and excitement in my mind was crazy. I was so attracted to these guys and they were so nice (none of them were the stereotype of what up until then I thought it meant to be gay), but I was afraid where the evening might be going. Ultimately, we ended up heading back to Houston, and due to the horrendous traffic, it was very late when we got back. Rob dropped off at my house and, in retrospect, I think had hoped that I would invite him in. In terrified closet case form, I did not. I sometimes wonder where my life would be if I had.

My second gay experience was going to a big gay club with a bunch of people from the Company’s law department. My secretary was quite a character and lived in the Montrose area of Houston, which was and still is the City’s gay neighborhood. She convinced us that we should go to one of the big drag show competitions. My wife, who was pregnant at the time, stayed home and the rest of us went to the club – the Copacabana - for the show. The drag queens were amazing and there were a lot of gorgeous guys at the club. (I still clearly remember the men’s room- the urinal was a stadium type trough, except it had a mirror positioned above it so everyone at the urinal could check out your equipment.) I was terrified that I might run into one of the guys from the Galveston adventure or somehow my secret might otherwise be discovered. While it was a fun evening, I was relieved when it was over.

In Houston, my oldest daughter was conceived and born. For some time my wife had been after me to start a family and, although I was terrified at the thought of the responsibility involved, not to mention the fear that at some point my “secret” might come out, I acquiesced. Once my daughter was born, it was the most wonderful thing. Words cannot describe the wonder of seeing a child born and the love one feels for their child. She was in some ways the baby from Hell, since she required very little sleep, but she was smart and adorable (she still is). In any event, now with a child I knew I had to really suppress my attractions and strive to make the gay go away. After two years in Houston, my wife was again arguing to move closer to home. By chance, I got an interview with an up and coming law firm in Virginia Beach and I accepted the firm’s offer. Thus, I was about to embark on the longest phase of my closet years back in Virginia.