An Oral History

with

Deborah Jackson

SSC History Project

Interviewer: Martin Oramous

2006
Biography

Need to get biography of Deborah Jackson.

.
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An Oral History

With

Deborah Jackson

This is an interview by the Stennis Space Center History Office. The purpose of this 

interview is to document the story of key personnel during/after Hurricane Katrina at 

SSC. The interview is with Deborah Jackson and is taking place on January 19, 2006. 

The interviewer is Martin Oramous. Also present are Paul Foerman and Shelia Reed.

MARTIN ORAMOUS: Please start with your name and your position out here, your 

job title.

DEBORAH JACKSON: My name is Deborah Jackson. I’m the Project Manager for 

InDyne, Inc. InDyne is a subcontractor to Mississippi Space Services. They hold the 

FOSS contract here at Stennis. I guess my story begins prior to the storm maybe even

back in July. Up until July I had actually been a shelter manager. There was a storm in 

July. I was shelter manager for B-1105 and didn’t have any negative events occur during 

that storm but I just decided after that storm I had done it enough. It just took too much of 

a toll on me physically because I was the type of shelter manager who believed you 

should stay up all night and walk around your shelter and make sure that everyone was 

O.K. After that storm in July, I said, “I don’t want to be a shelter manager anymore and 

I’m going to resign that position.” So, I did with mixed feelings but never the less I did. 

Then we fast forward to August and we’ve got another big storm headed this way. I’m 

like I’m not a shelter manager. I don’t have to worry about it but I am a Facility Manager 

of B-1200. So, naturally as with every storm I am involved in the preparation of the 

facility with respect to making sure that things are put away and things are covered up. 

We do this with every storm. It was somewhat routine; we weren’t sure what the storm 

was going to do. It seemed like well, is it going to hit us, is it going to go to Florida 

again? We really felt sorry for the folks in Florida because I believed that it maybe was 

going to hit the Pan Handle again and didn’t know what impact it would have on me.

My husband was actually out of town that week and he got home from Montana on early 

Saturday afternoon and I said, "What are we going to do about this storm that’s coming?" 

He said, “What storm?” I said, “Well, Montana is in the United States. Surely you heard 

that there’s a hurricane in the Gulf and it’s coming this way.” So, that was just kind of a 

general attitude that everyone seemed to have. We just weren’t really sure what the storm 

was going to do and didn’t make that big of a deal about it. On Friday afternoon here at 

Stennis, we did make the usual hurricane preparations up to and including making sure 

that everything was secure in the basement of B-1200. We have had flooding in the 

basement in the past and were concerned that if there was any power lost or anything like 
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that that the pumps wouldn’t work. The ground level water would get into the basement 

just not even thinking about what the storm might do. I did call and speak with someone 

in NASA as to whether or not we should be open on Saturday, whether or not 

StenniSphere should be open on Saturday. We had received the information from the 

Emergency Operations Coordinator that StenniSphere would still be open. It was open 

Friday and would be open on Saturday. The Public Affairs Office said yes we would still 

be open on Saturday. As it turns out, I was working on another project that was coming 

up in the next couple of weeks in fact the following weekend, Stennis Community Day. I 

came out to Stennis on Saturday. Spoke with my employees who were beginning to get a 

little bit concerned because the storm was very unclear. We just didn’t know where the 

storm was going to go but we never the less went through our normal operations that 

Saturday morning. About the middle of the day I had some folks that were off-site 

delivering placards for Community Day. They called me from Slidell and said, “We are 

really concerned that we are going to get caught in the contra flow and not be able to get 

back to Stennis.” They had a government vehicle. So, I said, “Well, I’m going to kind of 

make an executive decision myself and tell you to come back and shutdown what you are 

doing there in Slidell and we’ll start preparations here at Stennis to close StenniSphere 

early.” As it turns out, the Emergency Operations Coordinator came by B-1200 and he 

said, “Most definitely. Get your folks back. Prepare to shutdown Stennis and get ready to 

leave the site as if the storm might come before Monday.” Everybody was just beginning 

to get more and more nervous as the day grew on but we got everything tied down, put 

up, wrapped up and left.

I went home and wasn’t really sure what the storm was going to do. I really didn’t do that 

much around the house myself. As I mentioned earlier my husband was out of town. He 

got home. We talked about it. We weren’t sure what we were going to do. He 

reconfirmed, “Now, you are not a shelter manager. You don’t have to go out there do 

you?” I said, “No, I’m not required to go out there but that’s where I want to go.” I’ve 

been going out there for so many years and as shelter manager he never came to Stennis 

with me. He always stayed at our home. We live about 1200ft. from the beach. We’re 

about 29ft above sea level in Pass Christian. He always felt like he just wanted to stay 

there with the house. Well, for some reason I don’t know if it was because he had been 

out of town he said, “I think I’m going to evacuate this time.” We pretty much decided 

late Saturday evening that we would both come to Stennis some time on Sunday. We 

were still watching the storm, didn’t know what was going to happen. 

Sunday morning I got up and got dressed and ready to go to church which of course in 

retrospect seems kind of crazy but I went to church. I’m a Sunday school teacher. I got 

there and people were kind of scurrying around Long Beach. The church is in Long 

Beach and they had not called for an evacuation of that part of the city yet. So, church 

was going on. I said, “My family is planning on evacuating. I really need to get home.” 

You could just feel the tenseness at that time Sunday morning. People were really getting 

concerned and almost panicked. I went home. My husband wasn’t even getting ready to 

leave. I don’t know what he was doing but he wasn’t getting ready to leave. I started 

packing up my pictures, my usual thing, for some reason I picked up a hurricane 

preparedness flyer that was lying around the house and it said you needed to take your 
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important papers with you. I went over this stuff with my husband and he said, “Why? 

It’s not going to be that big of a deal. I don’t need to take that. I’ve got it all 

electronically.” I said, “Well, I don’t know. I just think we should take everything that it 

says that we should take.” As it grew a little bit later in the afternoon, he finally after 

watching the weather reports and everything decided that maybe this was going to be a 

little bit more serious than he had anticipated. We were just going to come to Stennis in 

my truck and leave his SUV at home but he rearranged all of our vehicles so that he got 

his SUV in our garage so all of the vehicles were inside. We brought my truck to Stennis. 

We came to Stennis Sunday afternoon. There were already families in B-1200. B-1200 is 

not a shelter. The folks that stayed in B-1200 were employees and employees’ families. 

There were a couple of employees’ immediate neighbors that stayed there. We had about 

60 people in B-1200. Realizing that it was not a shelter there wasn’t necessarily anybody 

in charge so I just kind of took over that responsibility although not officially. 

MARTIN ORAMOUS: Is that what usually would happen when a hurricane comes? 

Being a shelter manager before, there has been a hurricane threatening the Coast in July 

certainly over the year there have been a number of hurricanes that threatened the Coast. 

Was there anything different about coming out here on that Sunday afternoon not just for 

you but for the people who were here? Was there kind of a sense of impending 

catastrophe that wasn’t in the other hurricanes or was it just like any other?

DEBORAH JACKSON: It was different for me because I was not in a shelter and not 

acting officially as a shelter manager. There were some people in B-1200 sheltered that 

didn’t normally come out for a storm. I would say that was the biggest difference but we 

still didn’t know what was going to happen. It was just kind of like we were all out here. 

One of the employees had cooked food all Sunday morning. She had made this big spread 

of food: fried chicken, potato salad and everything. We had all this wonderful food. 

There was somewhat of a party atmosphere. The fact that we were all employees, we 

didn’t have the public with us as you normally would in a shelter. It was kind of like a 

little family gathering in a way. Frankly, I didn’t sense a feeling of impending doom at all 

at that time. My husband and I slept on inflatable mattresses in my office. There is a 

television in my office. We left the television on but I actually went to sleep. It wasn’t 

uncommon to stay awake for a storm always but for this storm I felt like I wasn’t the 

shelter manager. We are going to get a bad storm on our side and then we will probably 

end up coming back to work Monday or Tuesday. That’s the feeling that I had when I 

went to sleep Sunday night. There were people all over B-1200. They were just kind of 

bedded down. There wasn’t this normal sense of sitting around the television which is 

usually what we would do in a shelter during a storm. Everybody would sit around the 

television and watch exactly where the storm was going. We had power, no problem. 

Monday morning, everybody got up and we were just doing our normal thing and the 

power was on in B-1200 but I was speaking to my Corporate Office in McLean, VA at 

about 8:30 Monday morning and the phones went out. Well, that set off my immediate 

sense that this was going to be pretty bad because I can’t remember the last time the 

phones went out here at Stennis Space Center during the storm.

MARTIN ORAMOUS: Could you tell what was going on outside at that point?
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DEBORAH JACKSON: The wind was blowing and it was raining but it wasn’t 

necessarily that incredibly bad in B-1200, that’s the building with the tower at the top. 

There are windows around the tower but the only other windows in B-1200 really are the 

windows to the front door and then there were some windows in the Rocketeria which we 

weren’t actually in the Rocketeria at that time so we didn’t have the opportunity to look 

out those windows. I went downstairs and said, “The phones just went out.” Then 

everybody starts, “Yeah, it’s really bad outside.” We start checking the weather more 

seriously. We even had the weather on the large screen in the auditorium. The projection 

booth was open and we had it on up there so we could see what was going on. I decided I 

just better start walking around the building acting like a shelter manager would act. I did 

have a radio because StenniSphere has radios so we had radio contact with the 

Emergency Operations Center. They knew we were over there. They knew how many 

people we had. They had requested that we just keep them informed about that. 

I started walking around the building, a few hours later one of the employees came to me 

and said, “I hear water in the basement.” I said, “We better go down and check.” We 

went down stairs and sure enough water was pouring in, this was 10:00-11:00 a.m. 

pouring in from some of the conduit pipes in the basement. So, I immediately called on 

the radio to the Emergency Operations Center and let them know that water was coming 

into the basement and we needed some assistance over there. I remember Mike McKinion 

said, “Thank you for that report Deborah but right now we’re not allowing anyone to 

leave the building.” By this time the weather had gotten really bad. It was raining 

typically in a storm in sheets. The wind was blowing really bad. Everybody was kind of 

huddled around the front doors watching. We just discussed the fact that we shouldn’t 

stay too near the doors because it seemed that debris was flying around a little bit. The 

storm just got worse and worse. Everybody pretty much stayed in the lobby. I heard on 

the radio that a tornado had been sighted in front of B-1100. Everybody rushed to the 

windows to see that. We tried to keep our radios turned down so that everybody didn’t 

hear what was being reported from the Emergency Operations Center. Somewhere in 

there the power went out. Well, when the power goes out that elevates the concern and 

the fear to a much higher level. Everybody by that time was pretty scared. Things looked

bad outside. It had gotten very dark. The trees were blowing. I remember the trees in 

front of the Visitor Center actually laid down in one direction. Then we heard on the 

radio that the roof blew off of part of B-1100. We started hearing all these horrible things 

going on on-site. Honestly, in B-1200 you didn’t have, except for the front door, you 

didn’t have that sense of what was going on outside. We requested that people stay in the 

Lobby area and in the auditorium area. We couldn’t go in the basement because water 

was flooding the basement. It was pouring in. The folks that had spent the night there the 

night before removed all their belongings. We got what remaining food we had down 

there and brought it upstairs with us because we knew after a point we would not be able 

to go down into the basement. We just kind of all pulled together there in the lobby area. 

Ken Albright and Mark, the security guard who was also staying in our building, started 

walking around the building to make sure that our building was turning out to be secure 

except for the basement. We noticed that water was running down the stairwell. I had a 
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pretty good idea from where it was coming from and I also knew that we’re really not 

supposed to go to the tower during the storm, the tower kind of moves now when the 

wind blows really hard. I got Mark to go with me and we walked up to the tower. The 

elevator had been turned off before the storm which was normal practice. Mark and I 

walked up to the tower in the height of the storm. The tower was kind of swaying. What 

was interesting something that I had never seen before, I had seen water come in under 

the door at the very top, at the observation deck but this time water was coming in, 

pouring in all the way around the door. It was just spraying in. I don’t know that the seals 

have ever been replaced on the door to the observation deck. I told myself that I needed 

to make a mental note. We needed to get these replaced before the next hurricane season 

because the same thing would happen again. Here we were near the observation deck and 

the water was pouring in and running down the stairs. We knew that this would be a 

hazard because we still had people that were staying on the 2nd floor and it was getting 

the stairwell wet. Mark and I went to the Tower area and we got all the mops and 

whatever we could find that the custodial staff used up there including large rolls of the 

hand towels. We placed them all around the door to try to sop up the water and it seemed 

almost like a useless cause but we had to try to stop the water as best we could. Then we 

setup the wet floor signs and walked back downstairs. Some time later in the storm, Mark 

and Ken and I walked back up to the tower and at that time we observed the windows to 

the tower actually flexing and water was coming in around the windows. We got water up 

there of course, water came through the stairwell and down the stairwell and then we had 

rising water in the basement. We had only a couple of other areas where we had a little 

water come in to B-1200. Really and truly throughout the storm, we felt like we were in 

probably one of the safest buildings out here. We just kept saying this building was built 

in the 60’s. It’s very secure and safe. We did have a little water come up through the 

carpet in the auditorium and it was weird. We know that there’s a French drain under the 

floor in the auditorium and the carpet just started getting wet and it started spreading. It 

was a little water down there. We had to move the folks up from the areas that they had 

claimed to sleep in the auditorium. We have a roll-up door in our millennium hall area of 

StenniSphere. Water started coming from underneath the door. In all the doors that 

collapsed during the storm, it never even occurred to me that that might happen with our 

door but it did not. The door held strong. It flexed. The rain came in underneath. The rain 

came in around it. We have a huge curtain in front of that door. The curtain blew. The 

curtain got wet but the door thankfully did not collapse. 

Another kind of funny story, throughout the storm, Ken and Mark and I were 

continuously walking around the building to make sure that everything was O.K. Ken 

called me on the radio and said, “Ms. Deborah, it sounds like the roof has blown off in 

the Hall of Achievements.” I’m like, “Oh, no that’s not possible. The Hall of 

Achievements has been there since 1982. I’m sure the roof didn’t blow off.” Well, 1984 

actually. So, I walked fast to the Hall of Achievements, Ken and Mark were walking up 

one of the walkways, all of a sudden there was this really loud sound and it sounding like, 

in fact it was gravel blowing off the roof but if you can imagine somebody throwing a lot 

of gravel onto a tin building that is what it sounded like. I was walking up behind Mark 

and Ken, they heard this sound and the metal to the metal building was really rattling 

loud. They turned around and ran. This is in the dark. We had flashlights. They ran 
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passed me and I just kind of stood aside and they said, “The roof is coming off, the roof 

is coming off.” I said, “No it’s not.” They said, “Look you can see the light.” The roof 

was actually flexing and blowing up. Air was coming in and it was lifting up and you 

could see a crack of light underneath the roof but it didn’t blow off. It was just funny at 

the time. I said, “I can not believe you guys are running away from this. It’s just wind.” 

What we basically did the rest of the day was just try to keep everybody calm. At one 

point, the eye of the storm came over Stennis. Everybody wanted to go outside as they 

usually do and we did. We let people go. There were smokers in our building. They 

wanted to stand outside and smoke. We let them do that. Then they got a little bit further 

away from the building and further away from the building. We noted all the trees that 

were down and the damage. We had a banner on the front of the tower of B-1200. It had 

blown off. It was in a tree down the road. We saw our banner. We saw just all kinds of 

debris all around. It looked pretty bad. People checked out the fact that some of their 

windshields had been broken by flying debris. The things I remember about the eye of the 

storm was it was never going to leave. It was the longest eye that I could ever remember 

experiencing in my life. It seemed like it lasted an hour or more. I don’t know exactly 

how long it lasted but then the weather started getting bad again. The wind started 

coming from the other direction. We got everybody to come back inside. Then it blew 

and it rained for what seemed like forever. You couldn’t tell by the lightness outside what 

time it was. It seemed like the longest day because it had been dark and it got light and it 

got dark again and it got light again in a little bit.

Finally, eventually the storm was gone. What we noted at that time just in looking around 

outside was that the trees, young magnolia trees, in front of StenniSphere, they had laid 

down all the way flat on the ground. We noticed them during the eye of the storm. They 

were pointing the south direction. After the storm they were laying back down in the 

complete opposite direction. It was clear evidence of the different direction of the wind. 

We thought that Stennis had taken a pretty good hit. We still didn’t have power or 

phones. We couldn’t get our cell phones to work. One of the folks that was riding out the 

storm had a real small generator. I think it was even like maybe a welding machine type 

generator. He was able to hook up a very small screen television. We were able to get a 

very poor scratchy reception from WLOX. Late into the evening everybody was still 

huddled pretty much in the lobby of B-1200. Everybody’s eyes were glued on the 

television. We couldn’t believe what we were hearing about the devastation that had been 

left from the storm. I remember one of the first things we heard was that everything 

South of the tracks had been completely destroyed. There was nothing left South of the 

tracks. We all couldn’t believe it. The folks that lived near Stennis in Pearlington felt like 

their homes were surely flooded. So, everybody began to get really upset, more and more 

upset as we watched the News. The reception was just very, very poor so we would get 

just bits and pieces and that even made it worse. We weren’t getting what we believed 

was the whole story. We couldn’t see what was being broadcast so that just made things 

even worse. No power, it was hot. It was buggy. We had the doors opened and people 

just believed that their homes had been destroyed. Everybody believed that. We were 

getting a little bit of information about New Orleans. Some of the folks that live in the 

surrounding areas had relatives that live in New Orleans. When the word came that the 
7

levees broke in New Orleans, those people got very upset, almost hysterical. We were 

kind of dealing with that sort of thing but of a more pleasant note it was very interesting, 

we had an elderly lady who was the mother of one of the employees in the building. 

Everybody was sitting in their lawn chairs around this tiny T.V. Every time I would pass

by this lady she would grab my hand and say, “I don’t remember your name, wasn’t this 

wonderful for my daughter to have planned this surprise birthday party for me.” The first 

time she told me that, I just went along with her because I could tell that she was elderly. 

I said, “Yes mam, that was just so sweet. Your daughter is so sweet and thoughtful.” She 

thanked me for coming. She said, “I’m sure you gave me a really nice gift. I’ll be sure 

and send you a thank you card.” It was such a strange experience. This woman has 

Alzheimer’s and she didn’t know where she was. She didn’t know where she was. She 

didn’t know what was going on. Here she was in the midst of all these people that felt 

like their lives had been destroyed. She was in a very peaceful place. She thought this 

was a surprise birthday party for her. It wasn’t her birthday. It wasn’t even near her 

birthday. She just didn’t know what was going on. She knew she was in a strange place 

and there were a lot of people she didn’t know and she believed that they had come to her 

birthday party. It was sad in some ways but in other ways it was a good thing because she 

wasn’t experiencing all the fears and concerns that we were. 

That night some people stayed up pretty much talking, wondering what could have 

happened. What was the condition of their home? We knew the basement in 1200 was 

flooded. We had water in a few other spots in the building. We all pretty much went to 

our respective pallets, and inflatable mattresses and cots and probably didn’t sleep well. 

Slept very fitfully for what was very hot in the building. We had limited restroom 

facilities in B-1200. The next morning people were up before daylight getting ready 

packing their stuff up which is usually the case after a storm. If you are shelter manager, 

people are ready to go before daylight. They want to get home. They want to see what 

happened to their house. That always was a problem being shelter manager because we 

were told in the past we could not allow people to leave the shelter because we didn’t 

know the conditions of the road. If there were lines down, it could be very dangerous for 

them to leave Stennis Space Center. That was a challenge keeping people here when they 

wanted to go home which is something we had experienced with the July storm. 

MARTIN ORAMOUS: But certainly some of those people and maybe you included 

perhaps knew people that they had left behind in their neighborhoods also who had 

decided to ride out the storms in their homes. That had to be of some concern.

DEBORAH JACKSON: Everybody was very, very concerned. They were trying to get 

in touch with people that were not there. They were trying to get in touch with people that

they knew were working as security guards or as fire department in other places away 

from Stennis, just trying to get in touch with all those people not being able to get in 

touch with anybody. We were totally cutoff. That added to the panic, concern and fear. 

We did have other people from Stennis stopping by the building letting us know the 

condition of the roads outside of Stennis. Allen Price from the Fire Department stopped 

by and mentioned the condition of the roads, the Interstates going in both directions and 

the fact that there were trees down. They were trying to get the trees cleared off the 
8

roadway so people could leave. At one point we heard from someone that Interstate-10 

was under water. The look on everybody’s faces, we were in shock. We couldn’t 

comprehend what had really happened. The unfortunate thing was we didn’t even know 

what we couldn’t comprehend. We didn’t know how bad it was going to be on the 

outside. The first folks to leave lived in the Pearlington area. They drove as far as they 

could drive and then came back and reported to their friends and family that they couldn’t 

even see their house. The roads were still under water. They couldn’t get there but that 

they felt that their homes were flooded. There were people that were just breaking down 

crying. They didn’t know what they were going to do. That was all going on. People were 

loading up their cars. My husband and I were of course in shock pretty much like 

everybody else. We sat on one of the benches in front of B-1200 and kind of talked about 

what we were going to do and how we were going to deal with whatever we found. I said, 

“Well based on what we heard on television, I think we need to prepare ourselves for our 

house being a slab. There’s a slab there.” My husband said, “Well, I don’t know what 

would be worse, if there’s a slab or if it just flooded.” So, we agreed whatever it was we 

would just deal with it. We tried as best we could to brace ourselves for the belief that 

there would be nothing there when we got home because we lived so close to the beach. 

The biggest thing was not being able to communicate, not being able to get in touch with 

their relatives. You’re right. There were people that had stayed in Picayune that had not 

come to Stennis to ride-out the storm. The folks here were trying to get in touch with 

them there. We even had people that left to go to Picayune and came back and said their 

house was O.K. but there was total devastation everywhere. When they finally said that

Interstate-10 was not underwater we decided that we were going to leave. This is 

incredibly selfish of me to say but had I been a shelter manager I would not have been 

able to leave. That was my first thought that I need to get home and see what’s left. I’m 

sure that’s the way everybody felt. I did truly feel so sorry for the people that were in 

positions that were not able to leave, knew that their responsibility was here with Stennis 

Space Center. I thought when we left, in fact I told the people in 1200 I was going to go 

home and see what’s there and we’ll probably be back. We’ll probably be back Tuesday 

afternoon because we won’t have anywhere to stay. We’ll just come back and stay here. 

When we left that’s what we believed we would do. That’s what the folks in the B-1200 

thought that I was going to do. That I would be back that afternoon.

So, we left and were just shocked and amazed. We’d never seen so many trees down, had 

never seen the type of destruction that we were seeing. One of the first things that we saw 

totally unbelievable on Interstate-10 headed East, one of the fuel tanks from the Stennis 

Airport that I believe is normally underground or very near underground was crossways 

of Interstate-10. I said, “What is that?” My husband said, “That’s a fuel tank from the 

airport.” I said, “How did it get here?” He said, “It floated here.” You couldn’t imagine 

that there could have been water deep enough to float something like that. There were a 

couple of cows on the side of Interstate. That didn’t make any sense. We don’t know

where they came from. They were just kind of standing there all by themselves on the 

side of the Interstate. There were not very many cars. We made it to Long Beach and 

interestingly enough did not go to our home first. My husband wanted to go to his office. 

My husband works at Triton so we went by his office and saw that part of the roof had 
9

been blown off and checked out that facility. We went to the other Triton facility, then 

went by a couple of Triton employees’ homes to make sure that they were O.K. and then 

eventually got to our house. As we were driving down railroad street in Long Beach we 

were looking South over the tracks. I said, “Bill there’s a roof in the middle of that street 

that’s not supposed to be there.” We could see all this other stuff that later came to be 

known as debris had completely filled up the streets. We just knew our house was going 

to be gone. It had to be because of where it was located. As we approached our house we 

turned the corner. We weren’t saying anything. We were just holding our breath. From 

the outside, our house looked like it was O.K. The debris from our street filled our yard 

and actually came up to our front door. We walked through the debris around the house. 

We had roof damage. We had a broken window. Screen enclosure was down in the pool 

but from the outside the house was standing and didn’t appear to have any water inside. 

We went inside and there was just a little bit of water around either door but the house 

was O.K. It was like this is not possible. We walked back outside and there were about 

four other houses on either side of us that were remaining, standing on our street. There 

were two roofs in the middle of the street in the piles of debris, our neighbors’ roofs. The 

rest of the street were slabs. I just cried. I cried. I said, “Why us? Why were we saved? 

Why wasn’t our house destroyed?” That probably was my first really strong sense of 

what I later learned to be survivor’s guilt. I felt so guilty because our house was O.K. We 

spoke with some of our neighbors who rode out the storm in their house. They mentioned 

to us that some of our neighbors were missing. They knew that they had planned to stay 

in the storm. We later found out that they did drown. We had walked through the debris 

and around the debris for about a week and a half before they found their bodies. Then 

right around where we had been walking, they found their bodies under the debris. The 

folks that rode out the storm got two inches in their house and ended up riding out the 

storm in their attic fearing for their lives. I just didn’t think it was right. I just felt so 

guilty that our house was O.K.

We went from there to my brother-in-law’s house, my husband’s brother’s house. On the 

outside it looked like it was O.K. They lived in Pass Christian Isles. It had gotten 8ft of 

water in it. It didn’t move off its blocks as some of the houses did in that neighborhood 

but it was filled with water. The furnishings on the inside were just all swirled around. 

The water had moved into the house and just swirled everything around. We walked 

across the golf course to take a look at my husband’s boss’s house and it was near the 

bayou in Pass Christian Isles also. It got probably 12ft of water and was totally, 

completely gutted. The furnishings had just been washed out of the house. We again were 

just in such shock and felt so bad. Everybody had suffered all this and our house was still 

O.K.

We went back home. We couldn’t get in touch with anybody. The one couple on our 

street and there was nobody else there. Our street had been impassable. The people that 

stayed had taken chainsaws and cut a very small, narrow path just to our driveway and 

that was as far as you could go because of the debris. I probably have never felt so 

isolated in my life. We didn’t have electricity. We didn’t have a generator. The cell 

phones didn’t work. We knew because there was no electricity we wouldn’t be able to get 

gas. My husband immediately started thinking of ways he could get gas and planned to 
10

siphon gas out of our boat which was in a storage facility and was also safe. That was the 

first thing that he started figuring out how to do but for those first few days after the 

storm, I stayed at home. He wouldn’t let me leave because we didn’t have enough gas 

and we didn’t think we would be able to get gas. We didn’t know what was going on 

anywhere else in the world. Eventually we were able to have a very short conversation 

with my mother and just gave her a list of names of who to call. I didn’t come back to 

Stennis until the following Sunday. I had been able to by sitting on my roof get a 

telephone signal and found out that there was gas here at Stennis. So, that was all I 

needed. It was like I’ve got to get back to work. I’ve got to get back to work. When I 

drove up that day the folks that had lost their homes and returned to Stennis to stay, 

rushed up to me in B-1200 and said, “What happened to you? We thought your house 

was gone and you just left. You were going to come back Tuesday afternoon.” There I 

was again, I felt so bad because I didn’t go back and they didn’t know. We couldn’t 

communicate. You just didn’t know what to do. 

There was some people here. Stennis was still a shelter. There were tons of people here, 

public people. Some people had left. You just didn’t know what was going on, what was 

going to happen. The first thing we decided to do was to try to get in touch with all of our 

employees and find out who was where. We didn’t have phones here at Stennis. There 

were a few places you could get a line on your cell phone just for a few minutes. You 

would try to call and that would work for a few minutes and then you couldn’t get in 

touch with people. There was still that feeling of total isolation. You were here in another 

spot but you didn’t know what was really going on anywhere else in the world. You

couldn’t get in touch with folks. The Emergency Operations Center was trying to 

determine how many Stennis people were still alive and still around and who was where 

and who had lost their homes. People that could call in, the people that evacuated were 

calling in and notifying them. That was a source of information. My corporate office was 

calling from their end. They were calling on the phones that they had trying to get in 

touch with people on their cell phones. That seemed to be the very, very first order of 

business after the storm here at Stennis was to locate all the employees and their status. It 

was grueling because of the lack of communication. There was just no way to get in 

touch with people. Finally, we were able to compile a list but once we started getting that 

going then the next thing was we’ve got to get the site back up and running. We didn’t 

know how long the evacuees were going to be here at Stennis. We didn’t know when we 

would be open for operations again. Our instincts told us there were things that needed to 

be done. In some cases we could not get in touch with our NASA counterparts to get 

information from them or direction from them as to what we should do. You felt helpless 

because you knew there were things that needed to be done with regard to documenting 

what was going on and yet you didn’t know if that’s what the government wanted you to 

do so in most cases we did the best we could. My contract is responsible for working very 

closely with the Public Affairs Office. One of the other employees whose home was also 

not damaged returned to Stennis. She and I that first week after the storm did as much as 

we could do from a standpoint of fulfilling NASA’s requirements on a Public Affairs 

front based on the information we could get. It was crazy. It was almost chaotic. People 

were bumping into each other in the hall and everybody of course wanted to know 

immediately what their status was what their condition was and yet we needed to get this 
11

information out. We needed to let the folks that had evacuated from Stennis know to call 

into Stennis and let us know. I was actually running and delivering press releases to 

places as was another employee because there was no other way to get information out. 

We did have access to some computers but information just wasn’t available that we 

needed to successfully communicate with our folks and with the rest of the world even to 

let them know that we were O.K.

The biggest thing I guess for me was just not having ever imagined a situation like this, 

not even in my wildest imaginations. If you haven’t lived through something like this, 

there’s no way you could dream it up I don’t think. I have to also admit that prior to the 

storm, I had somewhat of a cavalier attitude about storms not so much that it couldn’t hit 

here but if it did, we would just deal with it and get on. You would just do what you had 

to do but for the type of storm this was the devastation that it created, I think it rendered 

people almost helpless to the point of not knowing what to do first. Really it seemed like 

there wasn’t anybody around to tell us what to do first either. I think everybody was in 

that situation. I know eventually after about a week and a half, I located all of my 

employees somewhere or else spoke with someone who knew that they were O.K., then 

just not knowing what to do about work. When were we going to come back to work? We 

had received communication from my corporate office that the folks were going to be 

paid. They didn’t have to worry about a paycheck. The company was just going to pay 

them. That wasn’t really everybody’s first concern. Naturally, in most cases, they had lost 

their homes or knew someone who had lost their home so they were in unique situations

and were just dealing with that. It was the shock and the fact that you just didn’t know 

what to do first was amazing to me. 

MARTIN ORAMOUS: No one around this area has every experienced anything like 

that even though they may have gone through Camille. Considering that, what would you 

tell someone who might face the same?

DEBORAH JACKSON: I would not be a good person to advise anybody what to do. 

Right now, I personally, I don’t know if it is appropriate to say shell-shocked, it may be 

more appropriate to say storm-shocked. I have repeatedly said, “I don’t want to go 

through another hurricane season. I don’t want to deal with it.” Even as recently as last 

night, I told my husband I don’t want to go through another hurricane season. I’m 

probably not in good shape myself and then to experience some of the things that 

everyone else did, I’m still very angry and mad. I still get upset. It helps coming to 

Stennis and it helped me after the storm coming to work because as bad as things were 

here, they didn’t look like they did on the Coast. I would cry every afternoon going 

home. I don’t do that anymore but I can still drive down Highway 90 today and get upset 

again almost like it had just happen. Weird, psychological things happen to you after a 

storm like this. Right after the storm, I thought, “I need to make a list.” I don’t know if I 

was still in a survival mode or what but I needed to make a list of what I was going to 

take the next time because I would take different things the next time believing that it 

could be my only chance to take stuff. I think I’m going to have to move the next time. I 

don’t know. My husband and I have agreed that we’re not going to live in our house. It’s 
12

not up for sale right now but we are going to move. Right now, we have a clear path and 

a clear shot to the beach. Prior to the storm, there were several homes, condos in front of 

us. Those are all gone. The next wave is not going to just come up to my front door, it’s 

going to come through my front door and I don’t want to be there then. My husband said, 

“We won’t get another storm like that for 30 some years.” I don’t believe that. He never 

believed we would get that kind of a storm. I don’t know how to tell people... I think 

everybody should move to the mountains. Certainly, if you do choose to live near the 

beach and you’ve been through this storm, then you might be better able to say I can deal 

with it but if you haven’t ever been through a storm like this or any other kind of 

devastation like this, I would think a tornado might be similar if your house was struck. I 

don’t think you can honestly know how to prepare for it and react. I don’t know that you 

could ever tell anybody that. I mean we could tell people and warn them but I just don’t 

know that you could ever be prepared for something like this.

MARTIN ORMAOUS: It has been almost 5 months since Hurricane Katrina hit. Do you 

still have survivor’s guilt? 

DEBORAH JACKSON: Oh yeah, terribly, terribly so. You feel like well O.K. there 

must have been some reason that you didn’t have to experience what everybody else did 

so until you ever really know what that reason is the only thing you can do is help people 

in whatever way that you can. That’s still not enough. I would like to just stay home from 

work and just go around and help folks but I’m not sure that that’s the right thing to do. I 

feel like that maybe the best thing I can do is to be here and to encourage my folks and to 

hopefully make sure that they have a job. 

I will tell this one story. It’s a little funny. The first day that the majority or a lot of the 

employees came back to work, when MSS said, “O.K. if you can, get back to Stennis,” I 

was meeting with the Visitor Relations Specialists in the lobby of B-1200. Some of the 

folks still lived here on-site. Some of them lived at 1200 at that time. They were kind of 

sitting around on the floor. We still didn’t have power in that building. It was dark. We 

still had our flashlights. Wendy Lesieur asked the question, “Miss Deborah, do you think 

we will ever reopen StenniSphere?” I don’t know, I guess I was just trying to survive at 

that time. I said, “Oh, Wendy, you know Linda Theobald. She’s going to dream up 

something. We’re going to have StenniSphere open in two weeks. You just wait. We’re 

going to be back up and running. Don’t worry. You don’t have to worry about your job.” 

I believed that and I said it with such conviction because I truly believed it. That didn’t 

exactly happen. Today is January 19th and StenniSphere reopened yesterday, January 

18th. So for these 4 long months I have been repeatedly trying to encourage the 

employees and let them know that I believed StenniSphere would reopen and that they 

would have their jobs back and things would be back to normal. One of things that we’ve 

learned, I believe I’ve learned after the storm is that we will never experience the normal 

that we knew before. That normal is gone. It will never be back. We’re still learning to 

adjust to the way things are now.

MARTIN ORAMOUS: Is there anything you can think of that we haven’t talked about 

that you think might be pertinent? Anything that particularly surprised you, was an 
13

obstacle that you never ever imagined you might have to face or something that touched 

you? Something someone did or said?

DEBORAH JACKSON: One thing I will mention. Because I would never have been 

able to imagine devastation of this magnitude, I also never even considered or really gave 

any thought to the outpouring of support that the Coast has received from I think the 

phrase is “Faith Based Organizations”. I never thought about that before. I’m not the kind 

of person that wants or expects the government to take care of me and I will say that 

emphatically. So, therefore I never thought about FEMA but to see the people that have 

come from all over the United States and experience their love and their willingness to 

give and do and give up their own time from their job, their own money, it’s just truly, 

truly amazing.

One example I’ll mention, my boss, Skip Olson, is in Florida and they’ve experienced 

storms. His sister lives in Atlanta and once she heard of the number of InDyne employees 

that lost their homes, she wanted to do something. She has a prayer ministry and what she 

does is she actually creates quilts for people and over each quilt she prays for them. She 

wanted to do that for the InDyne employees that lost their homes. That’s just a tiny, tiny 

example of the way people all over the United States have just come to our aid and our 

assistance and to me it has been remarkable. I couldn’t imagine the devastation but I 

never would have imagined that people would have been so supportive and so willing to 

give and so concerned and cared so much about us. I just think that was an amazing thing 

that came out of the storm.

MARTIN ORAMOUS: We’re good.

DEBORAH JACKSON: O.K.

(End of Interview)