For Rob Jackson of Thomasville, the click on the phone line meant one thing.
“We hung up and that’s when the nightmare started,” said Rob, who serves as youth minister at Pineview Baptist Church, Thomasville.
The click meant his parents, Bob and Linda Jackson, and his sister were preparing to spend the night in the attic of their New Orleans home as the flood waters rose steadily.
The Jacksons, who served for 10 years with the International Mission Board in north Africa and Tunisia, had moved back to New Orleans in July.
They were slated to begin working Sept. 1 with the Mission Lab at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
But then, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. The resulting breaks in the city’s levees were the source of the water that threatened the Jacksons’ home.
Instead of evacuating, Rob said his parents stayed in the city to be with his sister, Virginia, who works as a nurse at a local hospital. She was scheduled to relieve those who had worked through the hurricane.
Saying goodbye
But the three became trapped by the flooding. So they called Rob in Alabama Aug. 29 to say their goodbyes and share their love for each other one last time. “I just told them ‘Take care and we’ll be praying for ya’ll,” Rob said. “Dad was optimistic, thinking the water would go down.”
But when the trio woke up Aug. 30, the waters had risen, and they had to leave the house. Walking through neck-high water, Rob’s father found a boat to carry his family to higher ground so they could walk to the seminary.
The 4.5 mile walk on dry ground and through flood waters left all three with chemical burns on their feet and legs from the chemical-laden water. “In all our years in the Third World, I never saw anything like this,” Bob said.
Once they reached the seminary, the trio joined a group of campus police and other seminary employees. But after only one night’s rest, floodwaters forced the group to leave the campus in a caravan of eight cars and vans.
They even commandeered a backhoe to push aside the floodwaters blocking the entrance ramp to Interstate 10 westbound.
After finding clothes and food at Temple Baptist Church, Ruston, La., the caravan turned east to join seminary president Chuck Kelley in Atlanta.
On the way, the Jacksons were finally able to call their son two days after they had last talked and let him know they had survived and would be coming to see him on their way to Georgia.
“To hear that they were alive and OK was a huge relief,” Rob said. “When I finally got to talk to (my mom), she was just so thankful and said she saw God’s grace through the whole ordeal.”
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