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The Green Dean and Hurricane Gloria, Massachusetts

As told by Robyn H.
Boston, Massachusetts

Story Narrative:

Submitted by Robyn to the Women Mind the Water digital stories project, in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street storytelling website and traveling exhibition "Water/Ways."

This story was recorded at School for the Environment, UMASS Boston.

"Hi, I’m Robyn Hannigan. I’m known as the Green Dean at the U Mass Boston. I was trying to think about a story to tell about water particularly about oceans as I am an ocean scientist. I was thinking back to about 1997, no '77, '78; I was a kid. I was learning how to swim as most kids do growing up on Rhode Island on the coast. I was taking swim lessons in the ocean. There were a lot of rip current things happening. I remember swimming for hours and hours and hours, back and forth along the shore and feeling like my swim skills were pretty good. You know I was eight. Around that time there was a hurricane.

It was Hurricane Gloria coming up the coast and now you can figure out exactly what year it was. And we lived on the coast and everybody was saying you got to evacuate, you got to get away. My brain as an eight year old said, 'I can swim in this because I am a great swimmer.' So I told my mom that I was going out to the beach and going to watch the storm." She told me, “No.” And I told her “Yes, that is what I am going to do.” "It wasn’t unusual for me to go out in the middle of thunderstorms and stand in the rain and watch the storms. And, so my parents, I don’t know what they were thinking, said, 'Fine. If that’s what you want to do. Just don’t go in the water.'" So I went down to the beach. And I watched the storm coming in.

They were huge. And, I thought: “I know how to swim along the coast during calm water. I think I’m going to get in the water and try to get in the water and swim along the coast during the storm because I’m a really, really good swimmer. I’m going to really show them. That I’m going to be like the world’s best swimmer and across the ocean. I’ll show them.” So I got in the water and I didn’t show them. Luckily, nothing bad happened to me other than getting my pants scared off of me. When I realized that I wasn’t actually that good a swimmer, I think I got out to about my hips and the current started to pull me under.

I realized that was going to be the end of me if I didn’t get out of there. I struggled quite a bit to get back to shore. Fell on the sand and said that I’m not that good of a swimmer. I’m never going to do that again. I went home soaking wet. From that moment on, my love of the ocean has been during the calm weather. Not on a boat as I still like to swim. And during storms, that little part of the eight-year-old me still goes bananas and thinks, 'Oh my gosh. I’m going to drown!'"

 

Asset ID: 8011
#water #waterways #WomenMindtheWater

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