Hurricane Sally leaves mark on Ted Scott's family

It was already dark on Sunday night when Ted Scott’s stepfather, Kenny Miller, picked the veteran caddie up at the Pensacola, Florida airport.

Scott had hopped a ride with his boss, Bubba Watson, on a private plane after the final round of the U.S. Open at Winged Foot. He slipped behind the wheel of the pickup truck so his “bonus dad” could rest and started driving to Miller’s waterfront home in Orange Beach, Alabama, about 27 miles from Pensacola.

Orange Beach is where Hurricane Sally had come ashore on the previous Wednesday as a Category 2 storm, bringing torrential rain and unleashing winds in excess of 100 miles an hour.

Scott didn’t see the full extent of the damage until the light of the following morning.

“I was like, wow, it’s insane,” he recalls.

The boat his parents had bought from friends a couple of months earlier was literally split in two, dissected by the pilings of the dock. Part of one of their decks had floated away. There were about six inches of mud and debris under the 10-foot pilings that supported the house.

Miller, though, had already dismantled the 30-foot tree that was leaning against the deck on the second floor of the home. The soon-to-be 70-year-old – who Scott notes “is nuts sometimes but we love him” -- climbed to the top of an aluminum ladder and used a chainsaw to cut it into manageable pieces.

“And trust me when I tell you, it's not even a story, their house,” Scott says, the sincerity evident in his voice. “When compared to other people it's not even worth talking about. Obviously, I'm there to help my parents first, but when you drive down the road, I mean, literally, this is crazy.”

Some of the Miller’s neighbors lived in older homes that weren’t built on stilts so the flooding was bad. He posted a video on Instagram where he was walking down the street where his mother Sher and Miller live, the roadside lined with warped cabinets, kitchen sinks, taped up, empty refrigerators and moldy clothing, waiting for the next garbage pickup, whenever that might be.

“It's heartbreaking to see that in the video, you're driving by people's lives and, seeing their lives being thrown out on the road,” Scott says.

Scott saw a tow truck pull up next to the Miller’s house earlier this week to cart off a neighbor’s brand-new Jeep and a Ford sedan that had been ruined by the storm surge. On one of the main roads leading to Orange Beach, there’s a 35-foot yacht that washed ashore, nestled against the steel barricades.

“People drive around and say, hey, have you seen like, a red tool chest?” Scott says. “My stepdad, he put like five really nice items that he found at his house out in the yard, hoping somebody would, like, drive by and go, oh, that's mine and get it. I think there's a Facebook group that they put it on, too.

“It’s like a really nice motorcycle helmet, a real nice inner tube that you pull behind a boat ... looks brand new. It's randomly in his yard now. ... One of Bubba's friends has a barge, literally a barge, in his yard in Pensacola, Florida, a literal barge. It's crazy. It's crazy. It’s wild what those storms do.”

But there have been signs of hope, and that’s what Scott wants to focus on. Like the people who drive down the street every hour or so, yelling out their car windows, asking if someone needs water or is hungry and wants one of the sandwiches they made. Wondering simply how they can help.

“That's the coolest stuff,” Scott says. “Just random people driving around, trying to give somebody food, water, help, whatever they can do, you know? And that's awesome. Like that's what life should be about. You know, it's just so fun.”

Just a few weeks earlier, Scott and his wife Melanie, who he says can outwork just about anybody and has the same servant’s heart he does, had been those random people, making the 90-minute drive west from their home outside Lafayette, Louisiana to Lake Charles, which took the hardest hit from Hurricane Laura when the Category 4 storm made landfall on Aug. 27. Our Savior’s Church, where they worship, has been sending work groups there three times a week to do whatever is needed.

“We basically bring chainsaws and blue tarps, and we hear by word of mouth -- she's got a tree on her house or her driveway or this man needs to tarp his roof,” Scott says. “... It's just complete devastation in Lake Charles.”

Scott’s mother and stepfather were visiting that day. When Kenny Miller heard where Scott and Melanie were headed, he said, “Not without me,” Scott recalls.

“He's about to be 70 years old and he'll outwork anybody,” the caddie says. “He just loves to help people, and little did he know that a few weeks later that his place would be devastated in that sense and need all that help. So, it's just tough.

“But at the same time, it's kind of cool to take a break from all the garbage of the day that's going on and see people coming together.”

Scott says Lake Charles was basically flattened. The 160 mph winds were so strong that radio towers were bent in two. One of the people they helped that day had two trees fall on his house, one of which was an oak three-and-a-half feet in diameter, that cracked in half.

“So literally you have five people with chainsaws and 15 other people that were over there in this man's yard, trying to figure out, we don't have a big, huge excavator or a big claw that can grab this tree and pull it up,” Scott recalls.

“We're chopping this massive tree one little bite at a time and trying not to damage the rest of the house. We're tying ropes to the piece for cutting off and trying to lower that down and not kill anybody. It's crazy, but it's awesome. It's like, it's so fun, right, because you're like, man, this guy has been pretty much almost in tears when you leave, because now you can at least tarp his house and salvage it. ...

“That's the joy that I get, and I think all the volunteers get. I want people to see that and want to help because it's so worth it. ... You get so much joy, you walk away as tired as you've ever been, but satisfied.”

Scott says the need for manpower in Lake Charles or Orange Beach or countless other cities along the Gulf Coast isn’t going to go away any time soon. He would like to see others be moved to help – either by volunteering or donating to local churches and charities like loveacadiana.org who have boots on the ground and understand the local landscape.

Scott is also hosting a golf clinic to benefit the hurricane survivors at The Wetlands in Lafayette at 3 p.m. on Saturday along with the club’s head pro David Gary and local golf instructor and minister Daniel Kelly. The clinic costs $20, with other contributions welcome, and more information can be obtained by calling 337-291-7151.

He knows what can happen if people pull together and put their differences aside.

“These are the kind of stories that warm my heart,” Scott says. “Like, you'll hear about the people that are helping their neighbor and I'm sure there's all kinds of Democrats and Republicans helping each other right now, which is fun.

“That's like how it should be, we should be able to disagree on politics, but still get along as neighbors. And that's the one good thing I can say about a storm is that when you have this kind of devastation people will literally do everything they can to help each other out.”