Bess Corbitt
This is Steve and Bess‘s all-time favorite Mark Ware story as told by our brother-in-law, Joe Monti. It’s classic “Mark Ware”!
FROM JOE:
One of my most memorable hurricane Katrina stories involves your dear friend, Mark Ware. However, the story really began several years prior to Katrina‘s arrival on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Mark Ware worked in Birmingham Alabama and was our Bell South customer service provider for our three wholesale electrical supply stores on the coast. The first time I ever contacted him by phone, he surprised me when he said that he had been to our house in Bay St. Louis a few years before. He remembered my name, but I had no recollection of ever meeting him. Apparently he and his family were in town with their friends and my in-laws, Steve and Bess Corbitt, to attend the Our Lady of the Gulf Crab Festival, which is held every year around the Fourth of July. We were working the food booths at the festival and were not even at home to meet them. When one of the Ware children got overheated, Steve and Bess brought everyone to our house (one block away) to cool down for a few hours. While my wife Kathleen was aware of this, I was not. But Mark remembered. Mark was always very helpful to me and our company over the years and made sure that our telephone service was in good order.
When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, the destruction was widespread and devastating. We lost our beachfront home and two of our three stores were flooded from the storm surge. Coast wide, everything was chaos because of the disruption of electrical, phone, banking and medical services. Weeks had gone by and the only clothing we had were some summer T-shirts, shorts and jeans. Realizing that colder weather was coming soon, Kathleen made a trip to our church where tables of donated used clothing had been sent to help people who had nothing. She was looking for a jacket or coat for me when she found a royal blue men’s jacket in the right size which also happened to be a Bell South issued company jacket complete with logo and a man’s first name embroidered on the front. We didn’t care. I would need a jacket soon.
Our corporate office was in Waveland, where our main server, computers, and everything else on the first floor of the store were destroyed by 5 feet of flood water. We had no Internet nor telephone services, but I managed to get a call out to check in with Mark to see what the situation would be for getting phone services restored for our company. I was told that Mark was stationed in Gulfport where he was managing the emergency operations to rebuild Bell South services along the coast. So in a desperate effort to find Mark Ware, I grabbed my Bell South jacket and headed to the phone company’s emergency command center, which was in the parking lot of the outlet mall near Interstate 10. The Bell South command Center consisted of several huge tents, about three blocks from where our branch in Gulfport was located. Wearing my jacket, I walked into the compound and asked where Mark might be found. They pointed me in the direction of this huge tent and jokingly wished me good luck in trying to get in and talk with him. I stepped inside and there was Mark in the middle of the tent with huge maps surrounding his desk. He had a telephone in each hand, giving orders to people who were directing the phone restoration efforts along the coast. I sat down quietly at his desk and waited a while until he turned around and saw me. When Mark asked if I needed some help, I told him that I was Joe Monti, owner of Monti electric supply. He immediately remembered me from our previous conversations, including the crab festival story. I told Mark how our Waveland store had briefly had Internet service for a day or two after the storm, but that service was interrupted and had not come back on. Restoring our Internet service was critical to the operation of our electrical supply business and getting needed supplies to our customers. I was hoping to find out from him how long our services might be down. Mark said he didn’t know when service could be restored in Waveland and pointed to his maps, showing me all the destruction along the coast. It looked overwhelming and I was glad I was not in his shoes. I told him that I totally understood and as I stood up to leave, I asked Mark, “Is there anything I can do for you?” He quickly shot me a look and asked, “What do you mean?” I answered, “If there is anything I can help you with, just let me know.” He then told me that his mother was living in Diamondhead. She was OK and she had power, but a tree had fallen on her air-conditioning hook-up knocking out service to her house. She was elderly and she was not tolerating the heat very well. I told him that I would see what I could do. I got her contact information and then I left. When I returned to my office, I called my brother, Bill, who had just retired from our company and asked him to find an electrician who might be able to make a service call and repair her air-conditioning. Bill called in a favor and within a few days Mark‘s mother’s air-conditioning was restored. Shortly after that, two men from Bell South walked into our Waveland store and stated that they had been instructed to make sure that the Internet service and telephone service along the highway 90 Waveland corridor was fixed as soon as possible. The next day, both services were fully operational in Waveland and the computers in all of our stores were back online again.
I don’t know if Mark prioritized Bell South’s services to get Monti Electric Supply operational again but I like to think he did. It sure makes a great Katrina story which we often re-tell because we were so thankful for his help.
