The only photo Meaux has of herself in a nursing uniform was taken at Memorial Hospital in August 1968.
Barely 22 years old and pregnant with her second child, Marguerite Meaux was put in charge of 41 newborns, their parents and a room full of expectant mothers as Hurricane Audrey pounded Lake Charles in 1957. (Karen Wink/ American Press)
Remembering Audrey: A firsthand account of the 1957 hurricane (with video)
Last Modified: Monday, July 02, 2012 2:32 PM
By Ashley Withers / American Press
Editor’s Note: Today marks the 55th anniversary of Hurricane Audrey, which struck the coast on June 27, 1957, killing an estimated 550 people. It was the seventh-deadliest storm in the United States and the third-deadliest in Louisiana. On the morning of June 26, 1957, Lake Charles Memorial Hospital received some unexpected news. With the threat of a major hurricane looming in the Gulf of Mexico, the Chennault Air Force Base had to be evacuated and the base’s hospital would transport all the newborn babies to Memorial Hospital in a matter of hours. Marguerite Meaux was a nurse in the hospital’s obstetrics unit at that time. “They were just sending over the babies. I don’t know what they did with the mothers. I just knew I had more babies to take care of,” Meaux said. Barely 22 years old, Meaux was in charge of 41 newborns, including 14 premature babies, along with a group of new parents and a waiting room full of expectant mothers, all while Hurricane Audrey raged outside. “Everyone that thought they were going to have a baby was at Memorial Hospital,” Meaux said. Normally, fathers waiting to see their wives and children after delivery waited in a room known as “The Stark Club,” but during the storm the room had a different purpose. “The night before it hit and the day it hit, the whole Stark Club was dedicated to pregnant women. Some of them were cramping and some weren’t. Some were scared. Some were scared that we weren’t going to be able to deliver their baby or they would have to have it on the floor or would we have enough stretchers. It was unreal what went on,” Meaux said. While tending to the expectant mothers, Meaux was also responsible for feeding and caring for all the newborn babies in the hospital. That task came with its own set of challenges. “We also had no prepared formula nor presterilized bottles or nipples. We fed the babies every three hours, so that was eight bottles per baby, so when I had 41 babies I knew that I had to come up with 328 bottles of formula,” Meaux said. “And we had to cook it! We had to maintain it at a certain temperature, and we had to be very careful because if we went over that amount the babies would spit up and get indigestion. I’ll never forget getting those first bottles of formula ready.” Meaux was pregnant herself, just seven weeks away from delivering her second child, and only had one person available to help her. “The electricity went out on Wednesday, and the hurricane hit Thursday. What time Wednesday we lost the electricity I don’t remember, but I had one batch of formula made. But I knew I couldn’t get another one ready by the time the storm hit.” There were no elevators, so Meaux had to run up and down the stairs carrying the bottles in a large tub. “I could get almost enough bottles in there, but I would have to go down to the kitchen to the gas stove and cook them, which meant I had no control over how they would come out.” Meaux also said that in addition to feeding the newborn babies with bottles, the premature babies had to be tube fed. “I didn’t sleep until it was all over. I wouldn’t have known where I slept,” she said. Meaux also worried about her own family during the hurricane. “My first concern was my mother, living a block from the hospital, and my husband and baby, which also lived a block (away). They told us that we could have our families come to the hospital, so I called my husband and told him to bring my 10-month-old child,” Meaux said. “I looked out the nursery window where we prepared the formula and we had a new ’57 Chevrolet. I saw him turn from 18th Street to Second Avenue on two wheels, and I prayed the car would not turn over. The wind was that strong. At that time, the oak trees were coming down.” The wind caused other troubles in the hospital. Strong winds broke the windows in the cafeteria, and the shattered glass ruined the food that was there for the employees. Meaux remembered the cafeteria staff scrambling to make sandwiches. “Everything had windows. We had windows in the cafeteria. We had windows on the east side of the nursery. We had windows on the other side of the nursery where parents could see their babies,” Meaux said. After the strong winds broke the windows in the cafeteria, Meaux taped blankets over the windows in the nursery. She taped the blankets over the outside windows and on the windows that allowed parents to see into the room. “I was afraid they would break them to get to their babies. It was that scary,” Meaux said. “Then I went and told every mother that no matter what happened, I would block the door and I wouldn’t let them in the nursery because I was scared they would take the wrong baby. We didn’t have identifications like we do now. We had these little bracelets, but I wasn’t even sure that the air base babies would have the bracelets when they got there, and even if they did, I didn’t know who the parents were.” Meaux said that she had to remain calm for her patients through the entire storm because during a hurricane “the main thing you are dealing with is fear.” “It was unreal, but we got it done. No one tried to break in. I kept trying to go down the hall, reassuring the mothers whose babies I had that it would be OK,” Meaux said. Meaux said that none of the babies or mothers at Memorial Hospital died during the storm. However, others were not as lucky. “They (the hospital) didn’t know what to do with all of the dead people. The morgue was full. We didn’t know where to put them. We were pronouncing them dead as we would roll them in. I can remember going down there and 10 or 12 doctors, I knew them all, were standing there trying to decide and saying, ‘what are we going to do with all of these people that are dead. We have no place to put them.’ ” It is estimated that at least 550 people died as a result of Hurricane Audrey, which ranks as the seventh-deadliest hurricane in the United States and the third-deadliest in Louisiana. “No one went around bragging or saying good things because there was so much sadness. Everyone had someone they knew that had died. There was just too much sadness with all of the deaths. How unprepared we all were! There was no one saying, ‘Well, I’m pleased with the way this came out.’ No one was happy about that. There was no disaster plan in the city. No infrastructure, no communications, no system, period. There was nothing, no warnings. We were ahead because of the base getting a hold of us for the babies. I don’t know that we would have been really prepared,” Meaux said. “I don’t think anyone believed it would be that bad. All we could talk about when it was over was how lucky each of us was that we still had our home, our children, our jobs, and our lives."Related Video:
Related Video
Posted By: Joe Anderson On: 7/9/2012
Title: hurricane audrey
my name is joe anderson, i was living on boulevard when the storm came came thru, i was employed at fred's cafeteria on broad street. not knowing the seriouness of the storm i made an attempt to go to work. got all the way to work and found out it was close.made it back home. living on the boulevard i saw the trucks bringing all the dead bodies from cameron.
Posted By: Joe Anderson On: 7/9/2012
Title: hurricane audrey
I remember hurricane audrey very well, i was living on boulevard at the time. i was working at fred's cafeteria on broad street, not knowing the seriouness of the storm i made an attempt to go to work, after arriving found the place was close, made it back home safely and after the storm ended watch truck after truck bringing dead bodies from cameron it was one sad june 27th.
Posted By: Pauline Hicks On: 7/2/2012
Title: My Aunt Pauline.
This happened before I was born, but I remember quite well my Aunt Pauline,--- Kennedy--- whom I'm named after, telling about Hurricane Audrey. She was also a nurse in Lake Charles for many years and talked about it often.
Posted By: Barbara Roberts McConaughey On: 6/28/2012
Title: Hurricane Audrey
Thanks so much for remembering this very courageous nurse and reliving the storm. Hard to believe it has been 55 years. My family lived in Monroe and I can remember it very well and the heavy rains and wind that we received in north LA. This really was a miracle that no one lost their lives at the hospital. Thanks for reminding and remembering these courageous people.
Posted By: Lenard I. Mayweather On: 6/28/2012
Title: Hurricane Audrey
I remember Hurricane Audrey. I grew up in Baton Rouge and that was the worst thing I remember.
Posted By: Rosalind Bell On: 6/28/2012
Title: Hurricane Audrey
Thank you for this article. There is another story to be told: the black neighborhoods of Lake Charles and what they endured. All of my life I heard stories from my parents, Clarence and Geneva Bell, about the many African American bodies brought to Lake Charles from Cameron. There are plenty of folks in the black community who are witnesses to the devastation and the segregated pain. Mr. Noah Lewis would be a good place to begin. Thank you.
Posted By: Don & Etta Jo McCullough Minden, LA On: 6/27/2012
Title: A bad wind that blew up one good thing!
I met my wife to be in the eye of Hurricane Audrey while surveying the initial damage to the Hollywood Subdivision between Sulphur and Lake Charles. That chance meeting resulted in a 54 year marriage which we will celebrate on June 14 of this year. We now have 2 fine boys (both highly regarded professionals in different vocations) and 4 precious grandchildren.
Posted By: Doug On: 6/27/2012
Title: One Meaux HERO
What a HERO!!!!
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