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Horrific Florida Keys Hurricane, Labor Day 1935
A hurricane can vary its path sharply in a short time. (1) A horrific example of this reality occurred on Monday, Labor Day, September 2, 1935, when the “Labor Day Hurricane” suddenly switched direction, surging over inhabited Windley and Matecumbe Keys in the Upper Keys, south of the southern tip of the state of Florida. This hurricane was one of the worst ever to strike the United States. Its winds, which gusted to 200 mph, pushed a surge of about 17.5 feet over the top of the keys, scouring them bare of all life.
The Labor Day Florida hurricane of 1935 is unique in at least two ways. First, it is one of only three hurricanes to make landfall at Category 5 strength along the U.S. coast since the onset of reliable weather records (about 1850). The other two Category 5 storms were Hurricane Camille (1969, made landfall near the mouth of the Mississippi River) and Hurricane Andrew (1992, struck Homestead, south of Miami).
Second, the hurricane took the lives of about one-third (259) of around 750 U.S. veterans (World War I, Spanish War, and “peacetime” veterans) who were living on Windley and Matecumbe Keys while constructing overseas highways under the auspices of the Florida division of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), a unit of the administration of Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The 1935 storm also killed 164 civilians, for a total loss of life of 423 lives, according to one source. (2)
The Florida Keys have a long history of severe hurricanes. As noted by one observer, “Down on these keys, they are only a very few feet above sea level. When a hurricane comes along, this great force of the wind piles the water up in front of it, and that is what happened on the Labor Day hurricane. Those people, or most of them, were washed off of these islands, or were drowned by this wave of water that was brought in ahead of the hurricane.” (3) A description of the large number of severe Florida Key hurricanes is beyond the scope of this article. A few examples emphasize the idea. On September 4, 1622, the Spanish Tierra Firma flota of 28 ships left Havana, Cuba, bound for Spain. On September 5, 1622, a hurricane overtook the fleet as it entered the Florida Straits. By the morning of September 6, 1622, eight of the vessels lay broken and scattered on the ocean floor near Dry Tortugas. (4-6) Some 550 people perished in this disaster. On July 15, 1733, a hurricane demolished 17 0f 21 ships of the New Spain Armada on the Upper and Middle Keys. (7) Wilkinson recalls other disastrous Florida Keys’ hurricanes: The October hurricanes of 1906, 1909, 1910 and the September of 1919 were quite severe for the Keys. The first three played havoc with the construction of the Overseas Railway. Henry Flagler’s crews learned much about preparation and evacuation from the 1906 hurricane and were far better prepared for the next two, losing only a few lives. The 1919 hurricane did severe damage to the Key West-Havana railroad docks and buildings in Key West with a high loss of life, though not on land. The steamer Valbanera was later found between Key West and the Dry Tortugas sunk with 488 aboard. [No bodies were ever recovered.]
The 1926 hurricane devastated Miami/Ft. Lauderdale and caused 200 deaths. The warning came late at night when most everyone was asleep. Two years later the 1928 hurricane overflowed Lake Okeechobee, killing 1,836 people. The year 1933 had a record number of tropical storms - 21, nine of which were hurricanes. (8) The Florida Keys are 1700 islands formed in an arcuate chain, strung like a 200-mile-long rope of pearls beginning about 15 miles south of Miami and then trending southwest and west, finally ending at the Dry Tortugas group of islands. The Florida Keys lie along the Florida Straits, which divide the Atlantic Ocean to the east from the Gulf of Mexico to the west.
The total land area of the Florida Keys is only 137.3 square miles. The Keys in general are made of ancient coral reefs overlying limestone. The highest point of the Florida Keys is 18 feet on Windley Key. Most keys, however, are only a few feet above sea level. “The barrier reef in the Florida Keys is the third largest living coral reef system in the world behind the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and the Belizean barrier reef. It is also the only extensive reef system in the continental United States.” (9) Hon. James M. Wilcox (1890-1956), Democratic U.S. Representative from Florida, described how hurricanes wrought their damage on the Florida Keys: Just off the east coast of Florida the water is very shallow out for several miles. That is coral formation, and the water is very shallow. There is a tremendous force of the wind and it goes on for several hours, beginning from nothing and gradually working itself up to the peak and at the very height of the storm, of course, the wind is flowing—it has to be blowing a hundred miles an hour to be considered a hurricane. Then the great force of the wind on this shallow water is the same as if you took a saucer of water and began blowing your breath against it. When the water is deeper in the cup, for instance, you cannot do that so well, but in a saucer you can blow practically every bit of the water out. So it is that way with these hurricanes. The force of this wind blowing on this shallow water picks it up and drives it further inland, in front of the wind, and when the wind dies down the water goes back. (10) The climate of the Florida Keys is very pleasant, Wilcox noted during testimony in 1936. There were problems with mosquitoes in certain seasons of the year, “but they are not fever mosquitoes, they are not malaria mosquitoes. Malaria does not exist in that part of the world,” he declared. The only problem with living on the Keys was the “danger of hurricanes in September,” but “one had not struck there” in the previous 20 years, he averred. (11) In 1935, the Florida Keys boasted the following populations, exclusive of transients such as the veterans: The economic basis of the heavily populated two- by four-mile Key West throughout most of its history depended upon military and naval establishments and cigar manufacturing industry, notes Long. (12) He continues, The subsequent reduction and elimination of the military and naval bases in Key West [after World War I], and the severe decline in cigar manufacturing after 1926 eroded almost completely the economic basis for the continuance of the city and its inhabitants. Manufacturing establishments decreased from 69 in 1919 to 26 in 1929 and the average number of wage earners of manufacturing declined from 2,313 in 1919 to 756 in 1929. Salaries paid wage earners in manufacturing dropped from $2,094,461 in 1919 to only $648,404 in 1929. The undesirable economic situation in the island city prompted many families to move away during this period and as a result the population was reduced from 18,749 in 1920 to 13,445 in 1930.2 Of those remaining in 1934, over one-fourth was categorized as “Latins,” many of whom had followed the cigar manufacturing industry to Key West from Cuba and who had no intention of leaving their new tropical home although jobs comparable to their skills were totally unavailable. Because of these factors, unemployment grew rapidly during the early thirties. The county authorities attempted to provide relief for families of the unemployed, investing $2,045 in relief in 1929, nearly half again as much in 1930, and $21,892 in 1931. The program of relief was helpful but inadequate as shrinking tax revenues made it difficult even to pay current governmental operating expenses. By October, 1933, Monroe County had nearly five thousand persons on its relief rolls. Funds for relief payments were received from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and channeled into the county through the state government. By the summer of 1934 local sources of funds were completely exhausted and the governmental authorities found themselves with over $100,000 in debts for operational costs that they could not pay. (12) Burnett further notes, that Key West residents were “laid low by an economic coma that officials called ‘more acute and oppressive’ than any other in the country. By 1934, some eighty percent of Key West’s 11,600 citizens were on [federal] relief. The city government, which already had defaulted on several millions in bonded debt, could no longer afford fire, police, or sanitation services. City employees were paid in script (merchants accepting the script used it to pay their city taxes.)” (13) People had abandoned buildings and houses and littered the streets with garbage. Piers were collapsing for want of repair.
To remedy this desperate situation, Democratic Florida Governor David Sholtz (1891-1953) asked FERA administrator Harry L. Hopkins (1890-1946) to reorganize the Florida arm of FERA. Hopkins appointed an FDR protégé and lawyer named Julius F. Stone, Jr., as administrator of FERA in Florida, beginning March 1934. Stone remained in this position until June 1935. Stone was from Columbus, Ohio, and had earned a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Harvard University. The bankrupt situation Key West and Monroe County authorities faced resulted in their decision to dissolve as governmental units. “On July 2, 1934, they relinquished governing authority to the Governor, David Sholtz. He accepted the responsibility and requested Julius Stone, the Federal Emergency Relief Administrator in Florida, to act as his representative to provide whatever relief was possible through federal funds.” (14) Burnett explains, “The town sparked national headlines when desperate city fathers ‘surrendered’ their powers of city government to the state. A sympathetic Governor David Sholtz, declaring a state of emergency, promptly authorized Julius F. Stone, Jr., Florida head of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), to set up a local body, the Key West Administration, and implement a relief program.” (13) Stone wrote a beaming article in the New York Times on August 12, 1934 about his success in reinvigorating Key West. (15) “Key West offers a fair cross-section of the sociological and economic problems facing the country,” he opined. “It has now become a laboratory where solutions to these problems are centralized in the hands of the Florida Emergency Relief Administration [Stone!]. The program, as it is now being developed, should bring actual physical and spiritual comfort to some 10,000 people who have suffered as few other communities in recent years, and such relief will be the result of the labor and enthusiasm of the people of Key West.” (15) In fact, an earlier New York Times article not written by Stone, dated July 6, 1934, was titled “Federal official rules Key West’s affairs; counts on tourists to revive stranded city.” (16) In the United Press, Harry Ferguson called Stone “the king of a tight little empire….Call it a ‘dictatorship,’ a ‘kingdom within a republic,’ or anything you choose.’” One person who detested Stone was Ernest Hemingway who lived in Key West during these remarkable years. (16) Hemingway, a conservative Republican who favored small government, called Stone “that damned Jew administrator” as well as numerous other references in To Have and Have Not, Hemingway’s final work (1953). (17-18) Florida Congressman Wilcox noted that one piece of the Stone’s scheme to rehabilitate Key West was to construct “a bridge, actually a series of bridges,” a project to be sponsored by the Florida division of FERA. Florida lawmakers, including Senators Fletcher and Trammel and Congressmen Sears and Wilcox, “had been trying to get a bridge built from the mainland out to Key West for several years.” The idea was to build bridges to close two water gaps where ferries ran so that people could easily travel by car from the Florida mainland to Key West without need of boarding a ferryboat. The ferries carried the cars across the water gaps (more below). The new bridges would bring the tourists to Key West, which was critical to the success of Stone’s plan. “Mr. Stone had worked with us, and he told me that they had worked out this plan for handling it, and I told him I thought it was an excellent way of getting it in, and I approved it,” declared Wilcox. (19) When Stone testified before the House Committee in 1936, he said he was responsible for 2,600 separate projects in the state of Florida, including the one that brought the U.S. veterans to Windley and Matecumbe Keys. (20) In December 1933, Florida lawmakers approached Julius Stone in Washington, D.C., about interceding to try to procure an overseas highway project, for which application had been made before the Public Works Administration (PWA). Stone noted, The Legislature of the State of Florida had passed a law, a special law, creating the overseas bridge commission, for the specific purpose of making application to the Public Works Administration for a loan and grant for the construction of this bridge. The Governor had appointed the members of that commission. They had made application, which had been approved in due course by the Public Works Administration of Florida, of which Mr. Treadway was chairman, of whom the engineer, Mr. Cotton, was one of the engineers who, I believe, built the Florida East Coast Road under Mr. Flagler, where it went over the sea area. Presumptively, therefore, he knew all about that project, and appeared before the Public Works Administration at the time these gentlemen began to importune me to see if I could do something about it; and also Mr. Allen Johnston, who was our field representative at that time for the Southeastern States, who knew the relief situation in southern Florida, who had also asked me if I could not interest myself in this project. So when I was sent to Florida as the administrator, it was not one of the projects with which I was unfamiliar. You might ask why it was that we did not start on it at once? The reason was, and this is the reason why I suggested we have these camps here; that there were no people [on relief] there. You see, our relief problem is where the people are, and the Public Works Administration projects are relief projects, per se, and since the matter had not gone through the Public Works Administration, we were not able to work people that we did not have. (20)
Stone explained that a first-class road existed from Miami to Key West (about 178 miles) except for two water gaps. The first gap was from Matecumbe Key to Vacas Key, a distance of 12 miles. A ferry plied between those two points. A road traversed Vacas Key and a series of little keys for a distance of 15 miles. Then a second gap of water interceded between Vacas Key and No Name Key, a distance of approximately 12 miles. The water gaps were generally shallow, between 1 and 6 feet deep. Stone said, So that if anyone wishes to go from Miami to Key West by automobile, one travels about 2 hours to the first ferry gap, gets on the ferry, gets off again and goes 15 miles and gets on the second ferry, and goes 12 miles, and then drives finally 40 miles into Key West….The time required her is approximately 1 day to go from Miami, with the two ferry jumps, and into Key West, by motor car, in either direction. (20) Stone recounted that there were not enough people on relief near these two water gaps, with sufficient skill, to build a bridge in a finite time span. “That is why we did not start the bridge the minute I got to Florida as Relief Administrator; because there was so much pressure behind me to do that, I would have been glad to undertake it, if it were reasonable from our point of view.” In November 1934, Stone received a call from his chief engineer named Mr. Hibbins, who said “that the weather in Washington was terrible, and that there was a number of veterans who had foregathered here under the auspices of our transient division, and they were anxious to see if they could not provide some suitable employment for them.” (21) Stone continued, I said, “Well, tell me something about these folks. He asked me out of a clear sky to give them something to do, and he said, “Well, the trouble of the matter is, they are persons who have never readjusted themselves after the war [World War I]. They got through the war all right, but peace was too much for them.” He said they had come back and had found their jobs filled and perhaps they were a little upset emotionally by their experience in the war, and if they had found employment, psychologically, they had been unable to adjust themselves to the regime of peace; that in every case, the need of employment was whatever was most reasonable, because they had been kicked from pillar to post for 20 years. This reduced them to words of one syllable.
He also said—and this was also important in consideration I gave it—that the average age was around 41 years. That was the average age; but it was, by no means, the top limit; and that the physical condition of the men was anything but good; that some of them were ill-clad, some of them had undernourished symptoms very definitely, and they were a peculiar problem. So I said, “Well, how long do you think we are going to have this problem? How many men are there?” Well, there turned out to be about 150. Mr. Hibbins said, “I don’t know. We will have to let the thing develop and sort of determine such problems as they arise, but you can certainly count on 150.” Well, now, on the basis of this knowledge about their health, this knowledge about the climate, this knowledge about this project, it seemed to me that here were two instances of where 2 plus 2 equals 4 very clearly, so I said to Mr. Hibbins to ship them on the first train and I would take care of them in our base transient camps up at Jacksonville. The climate in north Florida in the winter time is not very good, and it is cold and a cold that penetrates. But the climate, on the other hand, from Jacksonville on down is different. It is an entirely different belt, because the Gulf Stream passes much nearer to this area farther south. Therefore, you have the best climate in Florida….to where the keys begin. We received them there at Camp Foster, and took care of them there, where they had sufficient equipment, and evacuated the transient camp about 40 miles from Jacksonville, where the transients had built an airport, and we used that as a quarantine and conditioning camp. Nobody knew whether these men might have contagious diseases, and there is certainly an inception period when you have to have the men under observation, before you can turn them loose. Also, the physical condition was bad, and they were illy equipped. The veterans remained at the quarantine camp for two to three weeks. “Certain of the more completely disabled were never sent out of the quarantine camp upon actual work projects, but were sent back to the base at Camp Foster for general hospitalization there,” said Stone. The men received pay of one dollar a day, plus room, board, clothing, and medical care, which was equivalent to what Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers were receiving. The CCC was a public work relief program for unemployed men, which focused on natural resource conservation between 1933 and 1942. CCC people were carefully selected after examination, whereas the veterans’ group was assembled as a random body. Stone said that at first the veterans worked to repair a district school at Matecumbe and helped to restore Fort Jefferson, the abandoned fortress on Dry Tortugas. Meanwhile, more veterans made their way to Florida, and ultimately Stone had six work camps in which veterans worked. Stone believed that placing the veterans away from urban populations was imperative because “the minute you put a group of detached men anywhere near a city, they have got two strikes on them before they start; they are blamed for every crime that is committed in the city, and they do not have a chance at leading anything like a normal life, because the environment will not permit it.” (22) He placed all six camps away from cities. This was another reason why he felt that Windley and Matecumbe Keys would be a good area to place the camps, because they were 90 miles away from Key West and 90 miles from Miami—a half a day by car and less than that by train, which went in both directions. (Railroad tracks were continuous between Miami and Key West, even though roads for cars were not.) A subsequent legal description of the veterans who resided in the work camps on the Florida Keys follows: Veterans who were assigned to camps in Florida had applied in Washington, D.C., to the Veterans Administration or to the Transient Division of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration for relief or employment. They had accepted employment in a veterans’ work camp in Florida at their own volition with the understanding that they would be paid a minimum wage of $30 per month, plus subsistence, and that they were free to leave the camps at any time. The camps were set up in Florida as a special work program for veterans, under the direction of the Florida Emergency Relief Administration, which is a State organization, using Federal relief money granted to the Governor of the State upon his formal application for funds. The money used was legally State money. The veterans assigned to the Florida work camps had the legal status of work relief recipients. (23) Three veterans camps—Camp No. 1, Camp No. 3 and Camp No. 5—were built on Windley and Lower Matecumbe Keys to house the veterans. Camp No. 1 was located on Windley Key, approximately 78 miles south of Miami. Camp No. 5 lay on the northern end of Lower Matecumbe Key, approximately 8 miles south of camp no. 1. Camp No. 3 was at the south end of Lower Matecumbe Key, about 4 miles south of Camp No. 5. Thus, from south to north on two keys (Lower Matecumbe and Windley) were Camp No. 3, Camp No. 5, and Camp No. 1, in that order. These three camps lay between 90 miles and 78 miles south of Miami. The headquarters for all three camps was a building formerly occupied by the Matecumbe Hotel. Sometimes Windley Key went by the name of Upper Matecumbe Key. In this context, the three camps were located on Lower and Upper Matecumbe Keys.
Each camp held sixty or more wooden buildings that sat on wooden pilings or concrete blocks. Florida State Road Department engineers B.M. Duncan and Lawrence Bow oversaw their construction. (24) “If [the buildings] lay above keystone outcroppings, they might be bolted down. The ones that weren’t anchored had sand piled up around them to hold them in place,” notes Scott. Camp 5, at the north end of Lower Matecumbe Key, was so close to sea level, the tide sometimes rolled up to the kitchen floor of the mess hall and put out the fires. “The nearby Matecumbe Hotel became the Administrative Building for all three camps, with second-floor offices and living quarters for thirty-five staff.” (24)
Camp leaders tended to stay for short periods. For example, on April 1, 1935, Fred Ghent arrived, but was rapidly promoted on July 1, 1935, to oversee all the veterans’ camps in Florida. These included (besides Camps 1, 3, and 5 on the Florida Keys) Camp 2 in St. Petersburg, Camp 4 in Clearwater, Camp 7 in Palatka, Camp 8 in Gainesville, and Camp 9 in Leesburg.) (25) Ghent retreated to office headquarters in Jacksonville, Florida. A man named Jack Little replaced Ghent. Ray W. Sheldon, who arrived on August 1, 1935, then replaced Little as superintendent of Camps 1, 3, and 5. Sheldon, newlywed on July 1, 1935, worked and lived in the Matecumbe Hotel administrative offices. By background he was a construction engineer with twenty to twenty-five years experience. Both Ghent and Sheldon, along with Conrad Van Hyning, would play pivotal roles in the Florida hurricane disaster of 1935 (more below).
Stone pointed out that, unlike the CCC camps, the veterans camps lacked military direction. There were no officers in charge and there was no attempt or desire to have military discipline maintained in these camps, although the men themselves had been veterans during the war. (26) Stone continued, We had no military discipline; therefore, we had no guardhouse; therefore no one was ever forcibly detained in any of these camps, including our transient camp. There was not military discipline maintained at any of these camps for the homeless men in Florida while I was there. Therefore, any statement which said that these men were forcibly detained at any time by any of the camp authorities is in error. The men were encouraged, as a matter of fact, to leave, to go to Key West on one hand and Miami on the other. We organized groups of them every week, so that every 3 or 4 week end periods everyone in camp had a chance not to go off by himself, alone, but to go off with a bunch of his pals, and those parties left on Saturday and came back on Sunday afternoon. The veterans worked 30-hour weeks. While Stone was heading the Florida office of FERA, the camps employed between 600 and 650 veterans. Stone said, “They had some sense of security, some idea that somebody was taking care of them, and they had a pleasant place to stay, and they were not spending their money…They had, for the moment, a little security, and the tendency, I suppose, in bursting the bounds of worry and care, led them to excesses which are not difficult for any of us to understand. There was nothing abnormal; just, I would say, an overflow of accumulated disappointments of a number of years. There were all nice fellows, and they wanted to get along, they wanted to do the best they could.” (27) In early 1935, FERA Administrator Harry Hopkins appointed Stone field representative for the southeastern states (Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico) as well as continuing service as Florida FERA administrator. About six months later Hopkins directed Stone to relinquish the Florida FERA appointment to spend full time on his duties as field representative for the southeastern states noted above. Thus, on June 30, 1935, he “ceased to have any official connection with the Florida Relief Administration.” (28) He said that he was out of Florida from June 30, 1935 on, only 60 days before the Labor Day Hurricane struck Windley and Matecumbe Keys. Who replaced Stone? Social welfare specialist Conrad Van Hyning (like many New Dealers, a Harvard alumnus) succeeded Stone as administrator for the Florida FERA on July 1, 1935. Florida Governor David Sholtz earlier had brought Van Hyning to Florida to study its welfare situation and to offer suggestions, which eventually the state legislature incorporated into one of the most progressive social welfare system of laws in the nation. Van Hyning notes he had gone to Florida in January 1935 as commissioner of public welfare. As for the renaissance of Key West initiated by Stone, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) assumed control in 1936 by conducting a second phase of the project, which included new sewerage, electrical, and water systems. Burnett notes, “[U]nemployment was reduced by two-thirds. People were employed at essential jobs and local government resumed control. Thus, where private initiative had failed, a group of intelligent, dedicated men and women, a renewed community spirit, and a benevolent government had restored a city to life. The long-range effects and benefits of that resurrection are still visible in Key West today.” (29) Beginning on July 1, 1935, Conrad Van Hyning worked as administrator for the Florida unit of FERA from headquarters located in Tallahassee in Florida’s panhandle region. Van Hyning was Fred Ghent’s new boss. Van Hyning, according to Scott, “quickly formed a negative opinion of [Ghent]. ‘I felt he was the nervous type and likely to jump at decisions,’ Van Hyning said.” (30) Meanwhile, Harry Hopkins in Washington, D.C., announced on August 16, 1935, that the veterans’ camps would be closed by November 1, 1935, because of waning support for them. A New York Times article on August 16, 1935, noted, FERA camps in the South to which some 3,500 jobless war veterans were quietly sent, partly because of the administration’s fear of another bonus march, will be broken up by Nov. 1 and the able-bodied veterans in them will be transferred to CCC camps and work-relief jobs, Harry L. Hopkins, Relief Administration, announced today….The announcement as to the veterans’ camps followed publication in The New York Times of a series of articles revealing their existence and describing conditions in them. Mr. Hopkins said, however, that he was entirely satisfied with the manner in which the camps had operated. “It’s the first time that anybody has undertaken to do anything for this crowd of people, which has moved around the country trying to get jobs, filled bread lines and caused panhandling,” said the Relief Administrator in defending creation of the camps. He estimated that of 3,000 to 4,000 veterans in these camps some 80 percent were able to work. About one-third were eligible for the CCC and the rest would be put on work-relief jobs…” (31) On August 12, 1935, Van Hyning, who knew about Hopkins’ upcoming announcement, told Ghent that the bridge and road construction in the Florida Keys would be transferred to the CCC in October 1935, after which Ghent’s services at FERA would no longer be needed. Ghent was stunned. (30) Van Hyning, the new Florida FERA administrator, said that “several months” before the storm struck on September 2, 1935, he had discussed with Ray Sheldon and Fred Ghent “what we would do in case of a hurricane.” (32) Van Hyning continued, I had talked also with Mr. Pynchon, who was the WPA administrator there, and who was familiar with hurricanes in that area, because he had been through several of them. Sheldon had also been through some hurricanes in that area, and I do not know whether Ghent had, or not, but he was familiar with the precautions that were taken. So we had in mind, in general, the kind of precautions we would take, and one solution we had of getting them [the veterans on the Keys] out was a train. (32)
Van Hyning declared that he “instructed Sheldon and Ghent, in a general discussion with them several months prior to the hurricane, to take the precautions to have the train take them [the veterans] out [in the event of an approaching hurricane]. That was the general plan which had been agreed upon” by “Mr. Ghent, Mr. Sheldon, and myself.” “The arrangements were to be made by Mr. Sheldon,” continued Van Hyning, “in simply contacting the railroad and to have the train when needed. Trains were passing through there daily—two trains a day—and it did not seem very complicated for Mr. Sheldon to make arrangements with the Miami office of the railroad as to getting a train, when needed…We thought that the reports from the Weather Bureau would give us at least 48 hours before we would need to order such a train…Mr. Ghent and Mr. Sheldon had both discussed it with the railroad.” (33) The United States Weather Bureau issued a series of Advisories on the behavior of the tropical storm, beginning August 31, 1935, as reproduced in full below (bolding added): Advisory, 1 p.m., August 31, 1935 [Saturday]. Tropical disturbance of small diameter but considerable intensity central about 60 miles east of Long Island, Bahamas, apparently moving west northwestward, attended by strong shifting winds and probably gales near center. Caution advised southeastern Bahamas and ships in that vicinity. Advisory, 3:30 p.m., August 31, 1935. Tropical disturbance of small diameter central near Long Island, Bahamas, apparently moving west northwestward attended by fresh to strong shifty winds and squalls, possible gale force near center. Caution advised Bahama Islands and ships in that vicinity. Advisory, 9:30 p.m., August 31, 1935. The tropical disturbance is central tonight near or over the northern end of Long Island, Bahamas, moving rather slowly west northwestward, attended by strong shifting winds and squalls over a considerable area and probably gale force near center. Indications center will reach vicinity of Andros Island early Sunday. Bulletin, 2:56 a.m., September 1, 1935 [Sunday]. Tropical disturbance central about 50 miles west of Long Island, Bahamas, apparently moving westward about 8 miles per hour, accompanied by shifting gales and possibly winds of hurricane force near center. Advisory, 10 a.m., September 1, 1935. Tropical disturbance central short distance south of Andros Island moving westward about 8 miles per hour, attended by shifting gales and probably winds of hurricane force small area near center. Indications storm will pass through Florida Straits late tonight or Monday. Caution advised vessels in path. Northeast storm warnings displayed Fort Pierce to Fort Myers, Fla. Advisory, 4 p.m., September 1, 1935. Tropical disturbance central about 275 miles east of Havana, moving very slowly west or west-southwestward, probably accompanied by winds of hurricane force over small area near center. Advisory, 9:30 p.m., September 1, 1935. Tropical disturbance central about 260 miles east of Havana, Cuba, moving slowly westward, attended by shifting gales and probably winds of hurricane force, small area near center. Caution advised vessels Florida Straits next 36 hours. Northeast storm warnings displayed south of Miami to Fort Myers, Fla. Bulletin, 3:30 a.m., September 2, 1935 [Monday]. Tropical disturbance still of small diameter, but considerable intensity, is moving slowly westward off the coast of north-central Cuba, attended by shifting gales, and probably winds near hurricane force over small area. Will probably pass through Florida Straits Monday. Caution advised against high tides and gales Florida Keys and for ships in path. Advisory, 10 a.m., September 2, 1935. Tropical disturbance central about 200 miles due east of Havana, Cuba, moving slowly westward, attended by shifting gales and probably winds hurricane force small area near center. Caution advised vessels Florida Straits next 24 to 36 hours. Northeast storm warning displayed Miami to Fort Myers, Fla. Advisory, 1:30 p.m., September 2, 1935. Hurricane warnings ordered Key West. Tropical disturbance central noon about latitude 23 degrees 20 minutes, longitude 80 degrees 15 minutes, moving slowly westward. It will be attended by winds hurricane force in Florida Straits and winds gale force Florida Keys south of Key Largo this afternoon and tonight. [Key Largo is nearer the mainland Florida than Windley and Matecumbe Keys.] Caution advised vessels Florida Straits next 24 hours. Northeast storm warnings remain displayed elsewhere Miami to Fort Myers. Advisory, 4:30 p.m., September 2, 1935. Tropical storm now apparently moving northwestward toward Florida Keys accompanied by hurricane winds over small area. Hurricane warnings displayed Key West and town of Everglades and northeast storm warnings elsewhere south Florida coast West Palm Beach to Sarasota. Advisory, 7:30 p.m., September 2, 1935. Hoist hurricane warnings north of Key Largo to West Palm Beach and northeast storm warnings north of West Palm Beach to Titusville and storm warnings continued elsewhere south Florida coast Titusville to Sarasota. Tropical disturbance, hurricane intensity, approaching Matecumbe Key apparently moving north northwestward with recurving tendency. Will cause winds of about hurricane force over extreme southern Florida and strong winds over central Florida late tonight or early Tuesday morning. Advisory, 10 p.m., September 2, 1935. Northeast storm warnings extended north of Sarasota to Carrabelle, Fla., and hurricane warnings north of Everglades to Punta Gorda. Tropical disturbance of full hurricane intensity but rather small diameter central 8 p.m., near Matecumbe Key moving northwestward, accompanied by shifting gales and hurricane winds near center. Northeast storm warnings are now displayed from Titusville to Carrabelle and hurricane warnings from West Palm Beach to Punta Gorda. (34) Van Hyning said that he followed the Weather Bureau advisories by telephoning Mr. Gilfong, the FERA administrator in Key West (phone calls documented at 11:23 a.m., 11:53 a.m., and 5:52 p.m., Monday, September 2, 1935), who was following the advisories published in the newspapers. Van Hyning, believing the storm would not arrive before Tuesday morning, “gave Mr. Gilfong instructions [11:53 a.m. call] at that time to have the train brought in immediately…[I asked] him to call Mr. Sheldon and have the train brought down and not wait.” (35) The records then showed that Ray Sheldon ordered the train at around 1:30 p.m. However, the train did not depart until 5 p.m. (35) Van Hyning said he did not know about this delay. He conversed with Mr. Gilfong in Key West at 5:52 p.m., Monday, September 2, 1935; assumed that everything was all right and that the train would reach Matecumbe in plenty of time; and carried out his previous arrangements, which were to leave for Birmingham, Alabama on Tuesday morning by airplane to attend a regional WPA conference. (36) He did not learn about the disaster on Matecumbe Key until Tuesday evening, September 3, 1935. Recall that Sheldon was in charge of the three veterans camps located at Windley and Matecumbe Keys. He had held the position for one month. He had lived in Florida (West Palm Beach) since 1923 before assignment to the job on the Florida Keys, under Fred Ghent. Recall that Ghent managed from Jacksonville, Florida, all the veteran camps in the state of Florida. Sheldon said that two weeks before the storm struck, Van Hyning and Ghent both visited the keys and had “made an inspection of the camps.” Sheldon “requested a little more information as to just what I would do, how we would get these trains and I was informed that, in case of a storm, the railroad had already been in correspondence with the Jacksonville office [where Ghent worked], and that, if the request was made, it would only be a very short time—I mean in hours—before the train would be there.” (37) Apparently, no such arrangements with the railroad had been made (more below). Sheldon continued, “Saturday, August 31 [1935], was pay day. On that day, all of the men, the same as every camp of men, wanted to go to town and spend their money, and as soon as they were paid off, they left by whatever means they could find to get into town. There was a baseball team that went to Miami, and the supporters wanted to go along the next day. Trucks were furnished them.” (37)
Sheldon took his new wife to Key West for Saturday night (the tropical storm was still over Long Island, Bahamas at that time) and Sunday. He left at 3 p.m. on Saturday and, upon arriving at around 10 p.m. that night in Key West, noticed a newspaper, which stated there was an advisory of a tropical storm disturbance located north or east of Long Island, Bahamas, about 650 miles from Matecumbe Key. Sheldon called the Weather Bureau at Key West at around 11 p.m., as soon as he reached his hotel, and was told that the storm was not heading toward the keys. The Weather Bureau contacted Sheldon at 4:45 a.m. Sunday morning, as he had requested, and “told [him] that the storm had changed and had headed more south…[and] there was no danger at that time to any part of the keys.” The Weather Bureau advised him to get on the next ferry and return to Matecumbe. Sheldon then called Ghent in Jacksonville, at 5:00 a.m. (Sunday), September 1, 1935, to tell him that “there was no danger at that time to any part of the mainland of Florida.” (?) Ghent verified the information with the Jacksonville Weather Bureau and called Sheldon back 30 minutes later. At about 5:15 a.m. on Sunday, September 1, 1935, Sheldon also phoned Mr. Gaddis of the Florida East Coast Railroad, asking him the length of time needed to make up the train to get to Matecumbe from Miami. Sheldon noted, “Now, I meant by that from the time I gave him the order until the time the grain was spotted at Matecumbe. He understood that. That was from 3 to 4 hours.” (38) Sheldon, however, did not give the order then. Sheldon was also aware that the train takes 2 hours and 10 minutes on its regular run from Miami to Matecumbe, making stops on the way day. Sheldon and his wife ferried back to Matecumbe Key, reaching it finally at 4 p.m., because the ferry had broken a propeller shaft on the way over. (38) At 10:18 p.m. on Sunday, Sheldon said he called the Weather Bureau in Miami and was told by Mr. Carlson (the head man) that there was no danger to the camps or the keys that Sunday night. He cautioned, however, “There may be another report sometime during the night.” Sheldon received a call at 3:31 a.m. and called the Weather Bureau at 8:19 a.m. on Monday. Each time he was told that the storm was headed west and south toward Cuba. At 11:23 a.m., Monday, September 2, 1935, Sheldon said Mr. Gilfong of Key West had called to say that “Mr. Van Hyning had been endeavoring to get hold of me [and also Ghent], but for some reason could not make the connection; and he was very anxious to know in what shape we were there. I explained to him that my understanding was that we could get a train on short notice…and that there was no reason for alarm from the reading of my barometer,” which was slightly rising, meaning the low pressure center of the storm was moving away from the barometer. Sheldon interpreted the information as meaning that a storm was about 200 miles away, moving parallel to the keys, along the coast of Cuba, and that the storm would easily bypass the keys if it continued in the same direction. At 12:52 p.m., Monday, September 2, 1935, Sheldon reached his boss, Ghent in Jacksonville, to tell him Mr. Gilfong of Key West was trying to get hold of him for Van Hyning. Sheldon also called the Weather Bureau, which said there was no danger to any one on the keys. After that call, Sheldon went to have dinner. He continued, When I left the dining room and went back up to the office, the barometer dropped .06. In other words, it showed a drop of .06 from 11:30,…until shortly after 1 [p.m., Monday, September 2, 1935]. That was alarming. [It meant the storm center was coming directly at Sheldon and Matecumbe Key] I called Mr. Ghent at Jacksonville at 1:37 [p.m.]…There was no need of calling Mr. Ghent for the train, or for any assistance before 1:37, when my barometer dropped. I told him the conditions, that I believed that my barometer was dropping and would show that a storm was approaching here. The Weather Bureau told me there was no danger, but I believed there was. While I was talking with Mr. Ghent, the broadcast of the Weather Bureau came in. This is the broadcast which was issued at 1:30, we got it over the radio: “Hoist hurricane warning 1:30 p.m. Key West district. Tropical disturbance central noon about latitude 23 degrees 20 minutes, longitude 80 degrees 15minutes, moving slowly westward. It will be attended by winds hurricane force in Florida Straits and winds of gale force Florida keys south of Key Largo this afternoon and tonight. ” Sheldon told Ghent he wanted the train ordered. Squalls were already beginning out front of the Matecumbe Hotel. At 1:45 p.m., Sheldon called the Florida East Coast Railway operating department and told them that he had “just talked to Mr. Ghent at Jacksonville and the order was going through from there to St. Augustine and then officially to him, saying that [he] was to have the train.” (39) After being placed on hold for 5 to 8 minutes, Sheldon received verbal confirmation that the railroad had gotten the order from Ghent. The railroad staff told Sheldon the train would be at Matecumbe at 5 or 5:30 p.m. Sheldon told them they had better hurry, and ought to make it faster than that. Then Ghent called from Jacksonville at 2:17 p.m., Monday, September 2, 1935, to say that he had ordered the train. Sheldon said he then notified the camps to be ready to leave on the train at 5 or 5:30-p.m. Sheldon also ordered water and other sanitary arrangements (e.g., field latrines) for the train, and sent out by automobile some of the civilians, such as the wife of one of the clerks at the office. Five small automobiles got out safely. At 3:45 p.m., Sheldon learned by listening on the phone on a party line that the storm was heading directly for the veterans’ camps. The Weather Bureau issued the written statement indicating the same information at 4:30 p.m. Sheldon called the railroad in Miami, which said the train had already left by 4:01 p.m. (40) The train was due in at 6:10 p.m. However, the storm was already upon the keys, with winds blowing at 50 miles an hour. Sheldon waited for the train at the railroad station in Islamorada, north of Camp 5. He could still walk around despite the wind. The rain was heavy. Unfortunately, the train was delayed at Homestead, Florida, to reverse the locomotive so that it could back down into the Florida Keys. It backed down so that it could change ends with the cars and use its headlight to see to leave the Keys. Then the train ran into a one-inch metal cable used for a derrick above the town of Islamorada. Disentangling took the train engineer an hour and 20 minutes. Sheldon continued to wait in a box car on a siding of the main line in Islamorada, noting his barometer continuing to fall. The box car had 15 drums of oil in it, said Sheldon, and was tied to a car with 720 sacks of cement. (41) The train finally arrived at 8:20 p.m. on Monday, September 2, 1935. Sheldon recalled what transpired next: I got out of the box car…As I reached the end of the box car, the wind was sufficiently strong to blow me down. The ground was dry other than where it had been rained on. I mean, there had been no salt water come over there at that time… While I was crawling over to the locomotive, the water came over the rail [the railroad track]. I am telling you this to show you how quickly it came up. As I got to the cab step and reached up for the handle, the water reached my waist…I told the engineer to head south…The engineer manipulated the levers. As I looked out the door I thought we were traveling too fast. I told him to slow up or we would go off the track. As a matter of fact, it was simply the water going by the locomotive and we were not moving. The box car on the end had been blown off, locking the air. The next instant there was another wave which went over the cab floor and shut off the draft to the oil burner, and there we were. Now, we all grabbed what we could to hold on. The windows in the locomotive had been broken. It really was no protection except that you had your head up against the roof of the cab. There was no other protection. I stood on the seat, holding onto a channel bar and a valve over my head. The water was sufficiently high at times to hit me in the knees, back of the knees, and there were times we were unable to breathe due to the water breaking over the locomotive. I stayed there—all of us who were in the cab stayed there---until daylight the next morning…There was a Negro fireman; an engineer whose name I cannot tell you, but I have it in the records, and a trainmaster of a train—whatever his title is. He goes out with the train. I do not know his name, but he was a slim fellow and I believe I would know him if I saw him again…It was a question of hanging on and waiting until it stopped blowing, until daylight the next morning, when the wind was still very high. The water had gone down sometime during the night. How long it stayed up, I do not know. Daylight came. We realized just how serious the storm was. The locomotive was the only thing which stood upright. It just looked as if a giant broom had swept across there. The cars, some were on this side, some were half way over. This car with the 720 sacks of cement was washed a considerable distance and toward the east there was a Danish freighter blown in, possibly within a mile of shore…(42) Sheldon continued, Tuesday morning, as soon as it was light enough to enable us to pick our way, a group of six of us started north to secure aid. On reaching Whale Harbor, we found the ocean had cut a channel through to the Gulf and I forbid the party, due to the dangerous condition of the water, to attempt to swim across. We were completely isolated on Matecumbe Key, the highway and railroad fill to the South, having gone before the force of the tidal wave. This crew of men immediately returned to the hotel at Matecumbe, and from information gained at this point we found we could not travel more than half a mile south. The washout between that point and lower Matecumbe is a distance of 4 or 5 miles; and it has been impossible for us to effect any means of communication with lower Matecumbe Key on which was located camps no. 3 and 5….We found whole colonies of houses were swept in to one point by the current of water; sometimes causing a pile of debris to the height of 20 to 25 feet. Landmarks and houses which were pointed to with pride by the natives as being storm resisting, were swept from their foundations. From Snake Creek to as far south as Carribee, there are only two buildings remaining, namely , the lower floor of the Matecumbe Hotel and a filling station owned by Mr. O.D. King, who turned his place into a first-aid hospital. (43) Sheldon finally reached a Miami hotel on Wednesday, September 4, 1935, after dark, where Ghent was ready to meet him.
The State health department recommended to Florida Governor David Sholtz on Wednesday or Thursday, September 4 or 5, 1935, that recovered corpses undergo cremation. The reason for this decision, according to a public health physician on the scene named Dr. Googe, was “the bodies were in a high state of decomposition. Many of the bodies had to be recovered from the sea, I guess perhaps a third or maybe one-half of the bodies, and before they would be recovered from the sea, they had to be floaters—they would not come to the surface until they were floaters. That meant that the gas bacilli had been working on the bodies, and they were bloated…It was dangerous, in our judgment, to transport the bodies over the road between Snake Creek and Miami. The reason for the cremation, as against burial, was the difficulty of burial in the keys…This coral rock formation [requires that] they would probably have to blast the graves with dynamite, and the time and all that kind of thing would have delayed the proper disposal of the dead still longer.” (44) However, some bodies were shipped to Miami for burial.
Rescuers recovered both veterans and civilians. The bodies were cremated in various points on the Keys, “on the order of the Governor, with ceremonies, proper religious ceremonies, by both Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant ministers, which were conducted at all the points of cremation, as I understand, although I did not see the ceremonies,” said Dr. Googe. He also noted that many bodies did not surface for a week after the hurricane. About 120 injured veteran survivors of the hurricane were hospitalized, according to Googe. (45) Recall that Fred Ghent oversaw the seven veterans’ camps in Florida, that Sheldon reported to Ghent, and that Ghent reported to Van Hyning, who planned to release Ghent when Harry Hopkins closed the veterans camps in October 1935 (see above). Ghent was born in Alabama 18 miles from the Florida line and had lived in Florida since 1925. Ghent was a World War veteran, serving in the Navy. He went to the keys April 1, 1935, to take charge of the veterans’ camps. Ghent told Congress that on Saturday, August 31, 1935, the storm was too far away from the keys to be concerned for the safety of the men. “Moving south, it was moving contrary to the natural course of the hurricanes, and I intended to wait until it established its true course and got under way,” Ghent said. After speaking with Sheldon when Sheldon was with his new wife in Key West on Sunday, September 1, 1935 at around 5 in the morning, Ghent called the Florida East Coast Railroad in New Smyrna, Florida, about 100 miles south of St. Augustine to tell the dispatcher he would probably need a train on short notice. Specifically, he needed 10 coaches, standard passenger equipment, and 3 baggage cars. (46) When the storm suddenly changed course and headed toward Matecumbe, Ghent said he ordered the train at approximately 1:30 p.m., Monday, September 2, 1935. He felt that because the distance was only 80 or 90 miles from Miami to Matecumbe Key, the train could move into the area within 3 hours, load the men within an hour and move them back to the mainland within another hour and a half, thus reaching the mainland around 6 p.m. Ghent then drove from Jacksonville to St. Augustine and from there to West Palm Beach, which he reached at 9:30 p.m. He said the operator at West Palm Beach had not heard from the train since it left Homestead. Ghent reached Hollywood, Florida, at 11:30 p.m., Monday, September 2, 1935. They had not heard from the train either since it left Homestead. On Tuesday, September 3, 1935, Ghent made his way on a cleared road to Snake Creek where he found that the highway bridge and the railroad bridge had been washed away. He continued, We could see a few men around on the camps site, where no. 1 camp had been located, walking around, and after about 30 or 40 minutes we succeeded in getting one of these men to come up to the other side of the washout, and I stayed there about an hour or an hour and a half trying to communicate with that man but the wind was blowing so hard that I could not make myself heard, and I could not hear anything that he was saying. Two of my men attempted to swim Snake Creek, but the current was so swift that they had to turn back. One of the keys fishermen had a small boat, which had weathered the storm along the side of the railroad fill, and I offered him $25 to take me across Snake Creek, but he would not take the chance in the wind and the current. So I left there and came back to Homestead and got in touch with the Coast Guard at Fort Lauderdale and asked them to send a boat to Islamorada, one to Snake Creek and one to lower Matecumbe at the camp sites, and they said it was impossible, because the equipment that they had was busy on the steamship Dixie, which had run aground off of Key Largo with 231 passengers aboard. (47) By Tuesday night at 11:30 p.m., September 3, 1935, someone told Ghent that rescuers had made it across Snake Creek, that the locomotive was being moved into Homestead, and that a temporary hospital had been set up there. He drove there to find the Red Cross had organized the Medical Association of Dade County and the social service workers attached to the Miami office of the Florida Emergency Relief Administration. Ghent said, “Doctors from Miami came down in relays of about 10 or 15; and the most severely injured men were moved immediately to the hospitals in Miami, and those who only required first aid were kept at Homestead.” (47) Ghent found Sheldon on Wednesday and asked him to document what had happened. This statement is available elsewhere. (43) What arrangements had Ghent made to prepare for evacuation of the veterans from the FERA camps in hurricane season? When Ghent took charge of the veterans program in April 1935, he contacted Florida East Coast Railroad, anticipating it would take two trains of five coaches each to move the total number of men, given that the camps were at capacity. Ghent noted, It got down to the point where it looked like it was going to be almost compulsory to pay a per diem on their equipment and I thought that was unjust. I knew enough about the operation of the railroad to know that is not the ordinary practice. And I knew that, if I were to order the train, not within 12 hours, but within 18 hours before, or notified the railroad of my intention of giving them a firm order for a train within 18 hours before the expected approach of the storm, that should be sufficient, and I did not intend to pay the Florida East Coast Railroad any per diem for storing their equipment on their own system, when you can go from one end of it to the other within 12 or 15 hours. In other words, Ghent was not disposed to pay the asking fees of the railroad. There was no contract with the railroad after all. In fact, there was no agreement with the Florida East Coast Railroad. (48) Ghent planned to contact the railroad within sufficient time to set up a train to evacuate the veterans for any given storm situation. The Labor Day Hurricane was a very small hurricane, “its eye only ten miles wide, and it had moved in from the open sea almost by stealth, undetected until it reached a point 280 miles east of Havana,” remarks Burnett. (49) “For some forty-eight hours, the storm moved about in an erratic pattern, eluding all attempts by the U.S. Weather Bureau to track it. As it did, its tightly packed winds intensified in force.”
Burnett continues, When it suddenly bolted from overcast obscurity and smashed dead center into a section of the Florida Keys, it struck with the most incredible wind velocity and destructive force of any hurricane ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere. Revolving cups on wind gauges whirled so fast their bearings burned out and the gauges broke apart, long before peak winds were reached. Even more telling of the storm’s violence was the macabre manner by which hundreds were killed or injured in its wake: Victims were decapitated, impaled, and even sandblasted to death. Heavy steel railroad cars were heaved one hundred feet off their tracks, iron rails twisted, and solid homes splintered like matchboxes as, in a grim finale, the shattered Keys were hit with a massive eighteen-foot tidal wave. (49) Burnett tells more details of the storm’s impact: Wind gauges had already broken apart as the trapped victims frantically, and unsuccessfully, scurried blindly for refuge. Still the winds screamed in ever-faster velocity. Suddenly the pitch darkness was given an eerie illumination as wind-blasted sand granules generated static electricity and flashed through the air “like millions of fireflies,” one survivor later recalled. Objects careened through the air with deadly speed. Sheet-metal roofs became “flying guillotines,” decapitating several victims and amputating the limbs of others. Whirling lumber became lethal javelins, impaling victims or knocking them loose from precarious grips on poles and trees. Like exploding atoms, pounding sheets of sand sheared clothes and even the skin off victims, leaving them clad only in belts and shoes, often with their faces literally sandblasted beyond identification. And then came the rushing force of tons of water in an eighteen-foot tidal wave that smashed homes to splinters, crushing or drowning occupants and sweeping bodies pell-mell into tangled mangrove thickets or out to sea. As dawn broke the next day, survivors stared trance-like at the scene of horror surrounding them. Bodies lay half out of smashed windows, or hanging from uprooted trees, or partly protruding from sand mounds, while parts of bodies grotesquely speckled the barren landscape. Some crumpled forms still clung to rail ties or splintered poles. Bodies were later discovered in distant mangrove thickets while many more were swept out to sea, lost forever. (49) Scott writes, “The wind had barely stopped blowing before the inquiries began. On Friday, September 6 [1935], three separate investigations were launched: one by Harry Hopkins, chief administrator of the Works Progress Administration and FERA, who sent assistant WPA director Aubrey Williams to Florida; one by Florida State Attorney George Ambrose Worley; and a third by the American Legion on behalf of its fellow veterans. Scott continues, All three focused on two things: the Weather Bureau’s reports and the delayed relief train. Right away, though, it seemed as if the first two investigations had reached their conclusions before they’d begun. “I think it is a terrible and a shocking disaster,” Hopkins told a reporter. “But I don’t think from the weather reports—which I’ve been reading—that anybody would necessarily have evacuated those people.” It was the message Ghent had conveyed to FERA officials in Washington after taking Sheldon’s statement. Arriving in Florida Friday morning, Aubrey Williams made one flight over the Upper Keys and interviewed a dozen witnesses while Sheldon sat in the room observing—hardly a formula for frank or negative testimony. Williams then read six witness transcripts from the state investigation and had his report on Hopkins and Roosevelt’s desks by Sunday afternoon [September 8, 1935]. “It is impossible for us to reach the conclusion that there has been negligence or mistaken judgment on the part of those charged with the responsibility for the safety of the men engaged on the Keys projects,” the report read. “To our mind, the catastrophe must be characterized as an ‘act of God.’” (50) Ernest Hemingway, who rode out the storm in safety in Key West, which was relatively untouched, spewed out one of the most searing essays on the hurricane. The essay, titled “Who Murdered the Vets? A First-Hand Report on the Florida Hurricane,” found publication in New Masses, the official voice of the American Communist Party, in the September 17, 1935 issue. Hemingway often sat for hours in Key West haunts with the veterans on leave from the camps. His essay is available online; parts are reproduced below. (51)
****************************************************************************** I have led my ragamuffins where they are peppered; there’s not three of my hundred and fifty left alive, and they are for the town’s end to beg during life. Shakespeare. Yes, and now we drown those three Whom did they annoy and to whom was their possible presence a political danger? Who sent them down to the Florida Keys and left them there in hurricane months? Who is responsible for their deaths? The writer of this article [Hemingway] lives a long way from Washington and would not know the answers to those questions. But he does know that wealthy people, yachtsmen, fishermen such as President Hoover and President Roosevelt, do not come to the Florida Keys in hurricane months. Hurricane months are August, September and October, and in those months you see no yachts along the Keys. You do not see them because yacht owners know there would be great danger, inescapable danger, to their property if a storm should come. For the same reason, you cannot interest any very wealthy people fishing off the coast of Cuba in the summer when the biggest fish are there. There is a known danger to property. But veterans, especially the bonus-marching variety of veterans, are not property. They are only human beings; unsuccessful human beings, and all they have to lose is their lives. They are doing coolie labor for a top wage of $45 a month and they have been put down on the Florida Keys where they can’t make trouble. It is hurricane months, sure, but if anything comes up, you can always evacuate them, can’t you? This is the way a storm comes. On Saturday evening at Key West, having finished working, you go out to the porch to have a drink and read the evening paper. The first thing you see in the paper is a storm warning. You know that work is off until it is past and you are angry and upset because you were going well. The location of the tropical disturbance is given as east of Long Island in the Bahamas and the direction it is traveling is approximately toward Key West. You get out the September storm chart which gives the tracks and dates of forty storms of hurricane intensity during that month since 1900. And by taking the rate of movement of the storm as given in the Weather Bureau Advisory you calculate that it cannot reach us before Monday noon at the earliest. Sunday you spend making the boat as safe as you can. When they refuse to haul her out on the ways because there are too many boats ahead, you buy $52 worth of new heavy hawser and shift her to what seems the safest part of the submarine base and tie her up there. Monday you nail the shutters on the house and get everything movable inside. There are northeast storm warnings flying, and at five o’clock the wind is blowing heavily and steadily from the northeast and they have hoisted the big red flags with a black square in the middle one over the other that mean a hurricane. The wind is rising hourly and the barometer is falling. All the people of the town are nailing up their houses…But a little after two o’clock it [the hurricane] backs into the west and by the law of circular storms you know the storm has passed over the Keys above us…At five o’clock, the glass having been steady for an hour, you get back to the house. As you make your way in without a light you find a tree is down across the walk and a strange empty look in the front yard show the big old sappodillo tree is down too. You turn in. That’s what happens when one misses you. And that is about the minimum of time you have to prepare for a hurricane; two full days. Sometimes you have longer. But what happened in the Keys? On Tuesday [September 3, 1935], as the storm made its way up the Gulf of Mexico, it was so wild not a boat could leave Key West and there was no communication with the Keys beyond the ferry, nor with the mainland. No one knew what the storm had done, where it had passed. No train came in and there was no news by plane. Nobody knew the horror that was on the Keys. It was not until late the next day that a boat got through to Matecumbe Key from Key West. Now, as this is written five days after the storm, nobody knows how many are dead. The Red Cross, which has steadily played down the number, announcing first forty-six then 150, finally saying the dead would not pass 300, today lists the dead and missing as 446 and there have been seventy bodies of civilians recovered. The total of dead may well pass a thousand as many bodies were swept out to sea and never will be found… Who sent nearly a thousand war veterans, many of them husky, hard-working and simply out of luck, but many of them close to the border of pathological cases, to live in frame shacks on the Florida Keys in hurricane months? Why were the men not evacuated on Sunday, or, at latest, Monday morning, when it was known there was a possibility of a hurricane striking the Keys and evacuation was their only possible protection? [Italics in original]… When we reached Lower Matecumbe there were bodies floating in the ferry slip. The brush was all brown as though autumn had come to these islands where there is no autumn but only a more dangerous summer, but that was because the leaves had all been blown away. There was two feet of sand over the highest part of the island where the sea had carried it and all the heavy bridge-building machines were on their sides. The island looked like the abandoned bed of a river where the sea had swept it. The railroad embankment was gone and the men who had cowered behind it and finally, when the water came, clung to the rails, were all gone with it. You could find them face down and face up in the mangroves. The biggest bunch of the dead were in the tangled, always green but now brown, mangroves behind the tank cars and the water towers. They hung on there, in shelter, until the wind and the rising water carried them away. They didn’t all let go at once but only when they could hold on no longer. Then further on you found them high in the trees where the water swept them. You found them everywhere and in the sun all of them were beginning to be too big for their blue jeans and jackets that they could never fill when they were on the bum and hungry. I’d known a lot of them at Josie Grunt’s place and around the town when they would come in for pay day, and some of them were punch drunk and some of them were smart; some had been on the bum since the Argonne almost and some had lost their jobs the year before last Christmas; some had wives and some couldn’t remember; some were good guys and others put their pay checks in the Postal Savings and then came over to cadge in on the drinks when better men were drunk; some liked to fight and others liked to walk around the town; and they were all what you get after a war. But who sent them there to die? They’re better off, I can hear whoever sent them say, explaining to himself. What good were they? You can’t account for accidents or acts of God. They were well-fed, well-housed, well-treated and, let us suppose, now they are well dead… So now you hold your nose…up to that bunch of mangroves where there is a woman, bloated big as a balloon and upside down and there’s another face down in the brush next to her and explain to you they are two damned nice girls who ran a sandwich place and filling station and that where they are is their hard luck… And so you walk the fill, where there is any fill and now it’s calm and clear and blue and almost the way it is when the millionaires come down in the winter except for the sandflies, the mosquitoes and the smell of the dead that always smell the same in all countries you go to—and now they smell like that in your own country. Or is it just that dead soldiers smell the same no matter what their nationality or who sends them to die?... You’re dead now, brother, but who left you there in the hurricane months on the Keys where a thousand men died before you in the hurricane months when they were building the road that’s now washed out? Who left you there? And what’s the punishment for manslaughter now? (51) **************************************************************************** A monument, erected on Islamorada and dedicated on Sunday, November 14, 1937, memorialized the dead of the 1935 Labor Day hurricane. About 5,000 people—government officials, guests, tourists, and a few survivors—attended the unveiling. Under the memorial is a crypt in the bedrock holding the cremated remains of the dead. A bronze plaque on the 18-foot high obelisk reads: “Dedicated to the memory of civilians and war veterans whose lives were lost in the hurricane of September second, 1935.”
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