‘Bluest Water’ play recounts tragedy of Hurricane Camille

By Casey Gillis

Published: July 9, 2008

For Wanda Bond, the memories of Hurricane Camille remain vivid.

“I guess it seems in a way like it happened yesterday, and in a way it seems like it was a long time ago,” she says.

- WHAT: Endstation Theatre’s Blue Ridge Summer Theatre Festival
- WHEN: July 9-27 (see below)
- WHERE: Sweet Briar College, Amherst
- TICKETS: $10; $5 for students
- INFO: The festival features two plays: ‘The Bluest Water’ and an outdoor production of ‘Romeo & Juliet.’
Performances of ‘The Bluest Water’ are scheduled for 7 p.m. July 9, 11, 16, 18, 23 and 25 and 2 p.m. July 13, 20 and 27 in the Babcock Auditorium.
‘Romeo & Juliet’ is scheduled for 7 p.m. July 10, 12, 13, 15, 17, 19, 22, 24 and 26, with rain dates on July 20 and 27.
Call (434) 381-6537 or visit http://www.endstationtheatre.org.

Bond was 12 when the storm hit in 1969, devastating parts of Nelson County — particularly Massie’s Mill, where she lived with her parents and four siblings.

According to News & Advance reports at the time, 113 people in Virginia died and 41 more were never found.

In Nelson County, between 25 and 30 inches of rain fell, and the flooding was so catastrophic that communication was cut off from the rest of the state, according to the Virginia Department of Emergency Management.

“We lost friends and neighbors,” says Bond, who now lives in Arrington. “A couple of little girls my sister and I played with, their house was washed away, and they drowned.”

The scars remain. Bond’s mother is rattled by storms and will sometimes seek cover in her hallway, away from any windows, while Bond has an aversion to lightning.

So when Bond picked up a newspaper in March and saw an audition notice for an original production about Hurricane Camille, she was intrigued.

“The Bluest Water” is the cornerstone of Amherst-based EndstatonTheatre’s first-ever Blue Ridge Summer Theatre Festival, which kicks off Wednesday night at 7 (see box for details).

Bond stopped by auditions and wound up trying out, without ever mentioning her personal connection to the storm.

“Wanda had come in, and she’d been really quiet,” says Geoff Kershner, Endstation’s artistic director.

But once he found out she was a survivor, “we thought it would be a really special thing to have her in the show.”

Bond is part of the Nelson ensemble, actors who appear periodically throughout the show with quotes and stories about the storm, which were collected from residentsto help tell the tale of Camille.

During an early rehearsal, Kershner asked Bond to share her own Camille memories with the cast, and he says parts of it were later incorporated into the script.

“It was powerful for them to get to hear that from her firsthand,” he says.

Bond says she most remembers the roar of the rising water and the rain pounding on the roof of her 100-year-old home.

Her mother was the first one in the family to wake up that night when, at about 1 a.m., she heard something banging against her bed, Bond says.

It was a trash can, floating in the rising water of her bedroom.

“When she stepped out of bed, the water was up to her knees,” Bond says.

The entire family hurried downstairs, and her father opened the front door.

“Just like in the movies, the water came rushing in,” says Bond. “We realized we couldn’t leave because by then, (the water) was waist deep.”

Bond’s father and brothers swam through the lower level of the house, opening windows to let the water flow in and out. Then the entire family huddled on the landing at the top of the stairs, where they waited out the storm and watched the water rise slowly up the staircase.

“We stayed there all night, praying,” she says. “That’s about all we could do.”

It was the last night they ever spent in the house.

By the next morning, the storm had passed. Bond and her family ventured outside and were shocked at what they saw.

Bond’s home was near the highway, where the water started receding first. She says that by noon, the water had all but disappeared.

“It was a beautiful day,” she recalls. “It was sunny.”

A neighbor’s house, situated high on a hill, had withstood the storm, and Bond says it became the gathering place for those who could get out of their homes. In the days and weeks that followed, residents put together search parties to look for those lost in the storm, and rebuilding efforts began, albeit slowly.

The entire lower level of Bond’s home was destroyed, so she and her family stayed with a cousin for two weeks before moving to Piney River.