When Theresa Cass and her family pulled it up, there were eight Christmas ornaments inside. One, a red and white beaded candy cane, had a laminated tag with the name Brad Berg on it. An Internet search, several phone calls and a trip to the post office later, the eight ornaments are back in Sabine Pass, some 300 miles away.
It s something to make you smile through all the devastation and loss, Scottie Berg, an administrative assistant at the school, said Thursday as she showed off the ornaments and told the tale of their trip. Hurricane Ike sent more than 14 feet of water surging through Sabine Pass on Sept. 13 and pummeled the area with 110 mph winds. Almost every building sitting below 14 feet was damaged.
Berg s home was knocked off its blocks and, like most of Sabine Pass, mud and the marsh grass covered almost everything. For now, she s living with relatives in Port Neches. Berg packed her ornaments in sealed plastic bags and put them in a big plastic tote. When she got back into Sabine Pass after Hurricane Ike, there was only one bag with six ornaments left among the damage and debris left in her home. Three had belonged to her late son, Ryan, who died serving in Iraq in January 2007.
Two were Brad s, who is now a high school senior, and one belonged to her daughter, Marissa. I thought, That s all I have left, she said. That is until she heard about the eight found in Corpus Christi last week. The Cass family had found sports articles on Brad Berg in the Port Arthur News, and a reporter there called the Sabine Pass principal about it. The ornaments arrived Wednesday in Beaumont, where all of the Sabine Pass mail is being directed.