Viola’s story

Evanston RoundTable, May 30, 2024

Something good often comes from something bad. Sometimes you just have to search for it.

Case in point: my recent trip to Austin, Texas, to visit old friends. Since my first plane flight as a teen, I’ve been blessed with good luck and good weather. Not this time.

The plane left the gate on time, but after taxiing for 10 or 12 minutes, we found ourselves shunted onto a side runway where we were informed there was a “software problem” and we’d have to return to the gate to have it fixed.

“I know when you’re down here you want to get up there,” the captain told us as we sat, somewhat disgruntled, on the runway. “And when you’re up there you want to get down here. We’ll do our best to accommodate both.”

After having to deplane at the gate and wait an hour, we got the good news the problem had been resolved and, with a new crew installed, we could get going.

Turbulence inside and out

But about halfway through the two-and-a-half-hour flight we began to experience considerable turbulence, with sudden stomach-churning dips and darts. This didn’t sit well with a number of passengers, including two screaming infants who were seated nearby. (“Aw, it must be the cabin pressure on their ears,” said someone in the row across from me, in a show of empathy I was unable to muster.) We landed, considerably frazzled, three-plus hours late.

As always, Austin was a blast and being with my friends was the best, especially the little kids – my former neighbor’s grandchildren, five kids ranging in age from 7 to 3.

The train ride back, on the overnight train known as the Texas Eagle, from San Antonio to Chicago, was another interesting travel saga.

About 70 miles north of Austin, in Temple, Texas, the train came to an unscheduled halt and we were informed that due to recent flash floods that had “washed out the tracks” we’d have to detrain and take a bus north to Fort Worth, where another Amtrak train would meet us for the overnight ride to Chicago.

At this point I was beginning to think the transit demons were having their fun with me. Or as Shakespeare put it somewhat more melodramatically in King Lear, “As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods: They kill us for their sport.”

Viola tells her story

But here’s the lemonade-from-lemons part. I took a seat up front, just behind the driver, the better to view the passing central Texas landscape from the bus’s big windows.

As I was settling in, someone tapped me on the shoulder. “Why don’t you let this old lady sit next to you,” suggested the woman behind me. The lady in question was Viola, as I soon learned. She was a lovely 81-year-old African American woman with a story to tell that didn’t take much coaxing. As related over the course of our two-hour bus ride, it was this:

Viola was born and raised in Galveston, Texas, in a segregated community on the island. She didn’t know what life was like in the larger world, “We just thought this was the way things were.”

She learned she was her high school valedictorian when she saw her picture in the local newspaper. She got a partial scholarship to Tuskegee University, but her mother, who had only a third-grade education, insisted she had to stay home to help look after her five younger siblings. It was a case of “if it was good enough for me, it’s good enough for you.”

Like her mother, Viola was strong minded and just as determined – to attend college. She and her mom got into a violent argument and, shockingly, her mother slugged her, resulting in a large cut under Viola’s eye. Viola stormed out of the house and proceeded to the local hospital, where she was patched up.

The nurse who attended her was obliged to report the incident to the local authorities and when Viola got home, her mother, who had apparently received a phone call, was subdued. They never talked about the fight again.

Off to college

Viola got an after-school job and saved up enough money to help with college expenses. But when at the end of the summer her mother still said she couldn’t go, the woman’s ex-husband took Viola’s side and explained that she had already registered and sent in a down payment.

So in a kind of strange about-face, her mother insisted she would accompany her on the bus, even though she had brought no extra clothing and had no place to stay in Tuskegee. Worse, that would mean leaving the five younger siblings, the oldest of whom was 15, on their own – with Hurricane Carla barreling down on the area.

Viola’s mother made it as far north as Houston, where she finally realized she had to turn back. But the Galveston causeway was flooded, Viola informed me – no cars or buses could get in or out. Ultimately, her kids were removed to a local high school on higher ground, where their father took care of them.

Viola loved college, and proudly showed me a quarter with George Washington incised on one side and the Tuskegee airmen (“They fought two wars”) on the other.

She took her degree in education, and after getting married to an Army helicopter mechanic, taught kindergarten and first grade for several years at Fort Hood, 70 miles north of Austin. She loved the school children and they responded in kind. She later taught fifth and sixth grades in Austin. She and her husband raised two children, a son and a daughter.

One morning in Onion Creek

After teaching for many years, she retired and took a job in a Social Security administration office in Austin. It wasn’t as challenging and certainly not as rewarding as teaching, but the money was better and with civil service there was more security.

For 20 years, she lived in a lovely part of southwest Austin called Onion Creek. It was a highly integrated and tight-knit community. Neighbors would have block parties and celebrate weddings, attend funerals and gather together for other occasions. However, developers were circling the area, trying to get residents to sell so they could replace the small homes with large developments.

Viola had no desire to sell, but during a freak storm early one morning of November 2013, the neighborhood, which was located on a flood plain, was quickly flooded. A neighbor called to urge Viola to get out of the house. When she opened the door water rushed in, and she was barely able to get out, making it only as far as the end of the block, where she was almost swept away, barely grabbing onto a stop sign, which, she informed me, she had only managed to have the authorities install just weeks before.

With water rising rapidly past her shoulders and almost over her head, she was just able to hold on. She knew if she let go she would drown. After a time she began to weaken and had even made her peace with dying, thinking that at least she would see her parents, husband and best friend on the other side. When she opened her eyes and realized she was still hanging on, she thought “Shoot, I’m still alive!” Finally a helicopter arrived and pulled her up on a ladder.

“They were caught in a historic flash flood with more force and volume of water than the city has ever seen,” reported USA Today. “The flood killed at least four people – including a woman and her 8-month-old son who were swept away in their car – damaged more than 1,200 homes and sent hundreds of residents fleeing to higher ground.”

Viola said there was some controversy as to whether Austin could have prevented the catastrophe by shutting off floodgates. The city blamed the county and the county blamed the city. In any case, her home was ruined. Viola was offered more than $200,000 from the city for her home, which enabled her to move into her present condo, about 20 minutes outside of Austin, where she says she is very happy.

She cried talking about her mother trying to block her path to college. All of her younger siblings followed her into higher education, she believes in good part because she led the way. But it took a terrible emotional toll on her, poisoning her relationship with her mother. But still, in a terrific demonstration of empathy, she was able to understand to some extent her mother’s perspective that “You can read, write and do some arithmetic. What more do you need to learn?”

We parted company in Fort Worth, where she was meeting her daughter-in-law for a few days’ holiday, and I proceeded back onto a waiting train to resume the trip to Chicago.

Viola hopes someday to write a memoir about her life story, but said she gets too choked up when she starts documenting it.

However she was OK with my telling it, in part to celebrate her long and varied life and resilient spirit, and in part to remind people that bad luck (in this case a long-distance bus detour) can be good luck when reframed and viewed through a positive lens.