Rockport-Fulton High School benefits from HHS donation

Noah Siderhurst, Editor-in-Chief|November 14, 2017

Rockport-Fulton High School students in Rockport, Texas attend a bonfire to start the homecoming week. Junior class president McCauley Duck, number 60, thinks a donation of $5,000 made by HHS helped get homecoming planned. “[The donation] was definitely a kick in the butt to us. Essentially what we were going to do was pretty much just cancel homecoming,” Duck said.

The first images the Duck family saw of their house in Rockport, Texas were from CBS. As, Rockport-Fulton High School (RFHS) junior class president McCauley Duck recalls, at first things seemed alright.

“All appeared okay, but upon returning home unfortunately things were a little worse for wear than they were on TV,” Duck said.

McCauley Duck’s mother, Cindy Duck, also the president of the local education foundation, remembers the drive back in to Rockport from Wymer (where they had stayed throughout the storm) as particularly memorable.

Q and A - McCauley Duck

Where are people in Rockport living?

“A lot of people that I know are either stuck living in RV’s, trying to rough it in their own homes that were semi-destroyed by the hurricane… and some people still don’t have homes. They’re living in cars or on the streets or wherever they can. But then there are those whose houses were somehow completely untouched and they are so fortunate to live in their own homes. All walks of life are going on right now.”

Did you ever consider moving?

“I think what’s been on my and my family’s mind the most so far is just, how are we staying in Rockport and what are we going to do to be able to live here? It’s always been about just trying to pick up and make things normal again. There’s been so much change recently that moving to a new place, it would just seem like giving up to me. And giving up is just not an option.”

Was this storm anticipated?

“I don’t think anybody even considered that their homes would be destroyed, because people just thought, ‘Oh, another storm.’ Being on the gulf coast we’ve witnessed a lot of hurricane warnings like Katrina, Ike, of that sort and they’ve all missed us. I guess everybody assumed that this one would be no different, but how wrong they were.”

Q and A - Luke Michael

Did you ever consider leaving Rockport?

“I didn’t want to leave because I love Rockport and I love everything that it represents… Even if my house did get destroyed, I would find some type of way to stay here, so I can finish school here.”

What did you think when you heard the news about Rockport?

“Listening to the news, you don’t want to think the worst case scenario and think in the most negative way. I did my best to stay optimistic. I told myself, ‘I’m coming back home from Austin and I’m coming back home to a house, I’m coming back home to something I can see, I’m coming back home to Rockport, I’m not coming back home to this wasteland.’ That’s what I kept telling myself to remind myself that everything was going to be ok. When we did come back, it was like a bomb got dropped on the town. Something out of a video game. It was so surreal to think that this actually happened to our town.”

“Driving in, just North of Rockport it’s flat farmland, but [during the storm] the surge came in. So here you are driving this thirty mile stretch to get to Rockport that’s absolutely flat and in the fences are these dead cows that got stuck,” Cindy Duck said. “Now the water’s gone, but there are these dead cows that are upside down and stuck in the fence and there’s furniture and mattresses but there are no houses because this is out in the fields. It was disgusting.”

Immediately after the storm, it would have been nearly impossible for students in the Aransas County Independent School District, which includes RFHS, to go back to school.

“Immediately after the hurricane the main focus was clearing the streets so garbage trucks could come pick up your past life, as horrible as that sounds,” McCauley Duck said. “Right after the storm it was very hard just to pick up the pieces of everything. I don’t know if you have ever been through a large personal tragedy, but a hurricane is something. It’s a force to be reckoned with. Just picking up after everything is lost, I would say it’s my hardest trial to date, but people did it and we’re keeping on.”

For the first three weeks of school after the storm, students would ride the bus to nearby (30 minutes away) Gregory Portland High School.

As recovery slowly began to progress, RFHS was finally reopened. However, what senior class president Luke Michael and others came back to was a sometimes funny, even arbitrary manner of destruction.

“The new part of the school got destroyed and we’re in the old part of the school right now, which is kind of ironic because the new part of the school got built three years ago,” Michael said.

Cindy Duck sees some of the same ridiculous tragedy in it all.

“It’s like a William Faulkner book,” Cindy Duck said. “It’s like one horrific thing after another as we get through this journey, and we’re all in a daze.”

It came as a surprise then when a school in Virginia offered the RFHS student council $5,000 raised at their homecoming.The RFHS student council, up until this point, had basically decided to forget homecoming, but the donation presented an alternative.

“[The donation] was definitely a kick in the butt to us,” McCauley Duck said. “Essentially what we were going to do was pretty much just cancel homecoming… Upon receiving that donation I think we realized that it’s kind of a tradition. You’ve got to keep the tradition and we’ve got to keep that sense of normalcy about us or we’re back at square one.”

Homecoming week for RFHS starts with a bonfire on a local beach Sunday night. From there it continues with spirit days throughout the week, culminating in the Friday football game followed by the Saturday dance.

Unfortunately, organizing the dance this year proved troublesome. The RFHS student council looked at several options for venues to host the dance, but many options weren’t available due to storm damage. Finally, it was decided that the dance would happen in a local middle school cafeteria that was still intact. Arrangements made, the dance was held on Nov. 11.

Michael thinks that having the dance was one of the best ways to boost student morale.

“It’s nice to have something like that so that people can take their minds off of the things that are going on in their life,” Michael said. “I know I need it and I don’t want [Hurricane] Harvey to be the reason why I don’t have certain things. I still want to be able to do as much as possible and do what we usually do throughout a usual school year.”

For Michael, a senior, not allowing Harvey to be the sole defining characteristic of the school year is a major goal.

“It’s important to show that the storm’s not going to weigh us down, we’re not going to let it weigh us down. We refuse to let it be our crutch throughout our year,” Michael said.

McCauley Duck also hopes that having a homecoming will help the school recover.

“The main hope of having a homecoming is to just inspire students to just get back into the swing of things,” McCauley Duck said. “We just want students to be able to kick back and have fun in this whole madness that’s been going on.”

Cindy Duck sees the generosity and empathy of others as a spot of light in everything that’s been going on.

“What [HHS] did, I can tell you for a fact changed someone’s life. I can tell you that for a fact… [HHS] offered them the hope that made them have a better attitude,” Cindy Duck said. “Every bit of hope we get from strangers that don’t know us is just another shot of, ‘Oh my god, we can make it through this.’”

Photo courtesy of Cindy Duck
The bonfire that kicks off homecoming week for RFHS blazes. Each year, freshman, sophomores, juniors and seniors all compete to see who can come up with the best decorations for the bonfire.

Through all of it, McCauley Duck is still optimistic and sees student morale as good considering the circumstances.

“At this point, things aren’t exactly normal, but I think that people are starting to be able to just slip into their normal routine, starting to figure things out. I think morale is pretty high actually. The football team at least is chugging along. We’ve been playing every single game that we can and practicing like normal,” McCauley Duck said.

Michael, who is a captain on the football team, shares an optimistic attitude. Right after the storm, members of the football team would meet after school to do volunteer clean up, an exercise that Michael feels represents what can be gained from the storm.

“It gave us another reason to lean on one another, really just to come closer, to become a close-knit group that relies on the person next to you,” Michael said. “As much as it’s devastated us and devastated the city, at the same time it’s done a lot of good for us, too. It’s brought us a lot closer together and made us realize what’s really important to us and how important the people around us are.”