Gentler Side in Hurricane Andrew’s Aftermath

On Aug. 23, southern Dade County was a sprawling mass of tract housing interrupted by shopping malls. Families limped through the recession. Crime, domestic violence, divorce and drugs divided people.

Illegal immigrants for the most part lived apart from legal immigrants, blacks from whites, middle classes from lower classes. As in most American communities, there was a social order to things.

On Aug. 24, a furious hurricane blew the slate clean.

“All of us were equaled,” said Eliza Perry, a city council member and longtime resident of Homestead. “It didn’t just pick those who were poor or who had a certain color skin or accent.”

Suddenly, people separated a day before by walls of all kinds were in this mess together. Their homes were gone, businesses smashed, supermarkets closed, parks and streets ravaged.

Many have snatched a silver lining from the rubble, seized the chance to make a better life, or at least to try.

W.T.’s Gang

The crew doesn’t mind that W.T., as the man himself puts it, “don’t take no bull-skating.” Sure, he plays the taskmaster, growling orders and giving them hell when they screw up.

But the guys know it’s a show of respect, that W.T. just wants them to be the best roofers in all of Dade County. No matter that they are felons, or that they’re re-roofing their own prison cells.

William T. Turner isn’t interested in coddling these guys, all of them veterans of the streets and the state prison system. They’re in for pimping, drug trafficking, theft and assault.

Not that they’re all bad.

“A lot of ‘em, they want to work. But the system won’t let ‘em,” said W.T., his face leathered by decades of work under the sun. “I ain’t bragging on myself, but I’m giving them something to learn. Like a daddy would.”

Contracted by the Florida state prison system, he handpicked his crew: 12 men who don’t have too much attitude to take directions and work hard in 90-degree heat. It’s a gut kind of thing, W.T. said, a look in the eye. He can smell the ones with some heart left.

Before Hurricane Andrew barreled through this tropical flatland, corrections officers moved 1,100 inmates from the prison and work camp to secure locations outside Florida City. The ones here now are rebuilding the damaged prison, and picking up new skills along the way.

It’s hot up on the roof, the tar soaking up a blazing midday sun. The men swing pickaxes and hatchets, smooth the wind-torn area for 4-by-8-foot sheets of insulation laid with 30 pounds per square foot of asphalt.

“The boss is a good man. A real good man,” said Jerry Duckworth, 36, grinning like a cat with his mouth full of feathers. The crew’s No. 1 sweet-talker is zeroing in. “So you got a cigarette, boss?”

W.T. doesn’t mind laughing along. It’s part of the patter, but that only goes so far. Everyone knows the line, and when it’s time to get serious.

“This is on-the-job training, the best you can get,” said Anthony Bush, a sweet-faced guy with two years left on a drug trafficking conviction. “Now when I get out, there’ll be something I can do. Otherwise, I’d go back to the dope. That’s what I’d do.”

That’s what a lot of these young, black men do. They get out of prison with little skill or experience, often only to end up back behind bars.

“Part of it is that society doesn’t accept them,” said Supt. Willie Floyd. “People don’t always give them a chance. And with the budget so tight, it’s tough to give them good training.”

When his crew is through, W.T. plans to bring them down to a nearby lake for some fishing and barbecue. Some of these guys have as little as a month left before moving out, now with some hope of earning more than minimum wage.

“It all boils down to choice. We all made bad choices when we were young. But now we can choose something good,” said Kenneth Budgett, a sometime philosopher who’s been in more than a decade.

There’s surely plenty of roofing work to be done these days.

“Some of them, when they leave they come up and hug me. Don’t you know they start crying?” said W.T., who has trained hundreds of inmates over the years. “Then I start crying. I hate that. But it’s a damn good feeling.”

Off the Streets

Just off U.S. 1 heading through Homestead, Dan Dubay is one of many people trying to rebuild a broken business. But because his business is rebuilding, it’s never been better. He needed help at Scotty’s home supply.

A few months ago, many of his new stock boys might not have made the cut. “I might not have hired them because of their appearance, because they weren’t well-groomed or maybe had a stutter,” said Dubay, who manages the franchise.

But after the storm, it was all hands on deck. “It takes you back to the old school. I had to go with my first impressions. There wasn’t time--or phone service--to do a background check on all these kids.”

As it turns out, Dubay probably wouldn’t have liked what he found in some cases, the story on guys like Luis Melendez. Under Melendez’s baseball cap is a scalp scarred by street fights. His eyes are crossed and his clothes nothing fancy. But he’s got a winning smile, and a salesman’s way with people.

At 19, he was a dropout who hadn’t been up to much except hanging with his gang, the Imperial Gangsters. The hurricane changed all that.

Melendez and his brother watched the world their single mother had worked so hard to make blow away in a matter of minutes.

“In one night, it was all gone. That there hit me hard,” said Melendez, whose brother also got a job at Scotty’s. “Before people were for themselves, but now everyone is helping out. And helping out feels good.”

“A lot of my friends are locked up for life. Forget the gangs. I’ve got to do something,” said William Herrera, 18. His family, like so many in this hurricane-flattened area, needs help remaking a life.

“These guys are finally realizing . . . that you’ve got to work to make something of life. This garbage of going around robbing and beating people up, they’re seeing it’s no good,” said Grover Brown, 18, a straight-laced Jehovah’s Witness who knew some of the guys from school.

They are all on common ground now, making six bucks an hour and proud of the paycheck honestly earned. Dubay is teaching them how to run forklifts, a skill they can put on their resumes. Melendez is back in school mornings, working toward his high school diploma.

“In better times, we wouldn’t have hired them,” said Oscar Ortiz, who screened a lot of the new workers. “But we put prejudice and differences aside. People around here are coming together now, as they should.”

The Boys Out Back

You can’t miss the Last Chance Saloon. On the way out of Florida City, it’s the last stop for a cool something before the dry run south to the Keys. Years ago, it was called the Gateway. These days, both names are apt.

For the ragtag band of out-of-town workers living out back, it’s both a chance at something new and a gateway to possibility. The group of about 18 have come from Virginia, Washington state, the Carolinas and elsewhere.

They were guys out of jobs, guys with troubled marriages or an itch to get on the road and make a new start. They came down because there was work to be found, though housing is scarce. They stopped for a drink at Skeeter Dryer’s place and found a home, or at least a lot to camp out in for a while.

“He’s been like a daddy to us all,” said Jerry Mattison.

“Yeah. That’s it, like a daddy,” chimed in a few others gathered around a picnic table laden with dry cereal, empty beer bottles and cans of dog food for Yogi and Dog.

“Most of us out here are running from something,” said Terry Springer, a soft-spoken carpenter from the Pacific Northwest.

Their makeshift work camp is not unlike many that dot the area. Some of these men were living in local parks, until their random restrooms and makeshift tents earned them an invitation to move on.

Some out-of-towners are here to make a quick, rather than honest, buck. Skeeter Dryer has a way of sniffing out the good ones--his own way, and his own definitions.

“This is not a fern bar I have here. It’s a redneck, country boy’s saloon. Most of us have been kicked around, and our principles are a little different than those of ordinary, ‘sane’ people,” Dryer said.

Like a lot of his “outback boys,” Dryer is a veteran. The guys, many of whom served in Vietnam, find comfort in this. They aren’t touchy-feely types, but there is something to this new bond.

“We felt welcome at Skeeter’s place. We felt like we fit here,” said Gary Nixon of Virginia Beach, Va.

“In a lot of ways, the hurricane was a real fine lesson,” he said. “We’ve all found ourselves looking at our belongings and realizing we can do without. People count--any kind of people, so long as their handshake still has value.”