Former Cape couple kept in touch by telephone as Katrina struck their Mississippi home

High school sweethearts from Cape Girardeau were hundreds of miles apart when Hurricane Katrina hit their Mississippi home, but that doesn't mean they weren't together.

Faye Pind of Picayune, Miss., was visiting a daughter in Chesapeake, Va., while the hurricane was lashing their home 45 miles northeast of New Orleans. But every 10 minutes, from early Monday morning while the storm approached until the lines went dead about 5:30 p.m., she spoke by with her husband, Mike, by telephone.

"It wasn't even close to anything like what we have seen before," said Faye Pind.

And the couple has seen a lot. He spent 35 years as a Navy meteorologist. The Pinds, both graduates of Cape Girardeau Central High School, endured hurricanes and typhoons on Puerto Rico, Cuba and Guam.

Faye Pind left Saturday morning for Virginia. Predictions for the storm at that point were vague, she said. "We just did not foresee when I came here that any of this was going to happen," she said.

Mike Pind didn't stay behind because he was stubborn, she said. He just hadn't planned to make the trip with her.

Her husband boarded up the couple's house, which is about 70 feet above sea level, and helped neighbors do the same.

But while their house suffered minimal damage, neighbors weren't so lucky, she said. One house was sliced through by a tree, she said, and another had four trees fall on it. Air-conditioning units were ripped from concrete pads, and a neighbor's heavy backyard shed was whipped over a house across the street.

With husband doing fine, Faye Pind is making plans to return. But she misses the phone calls that kept her reassured of his safety. "When I try to call, all it says is all circuits are busy," she said. "And those tones. It is that awful, nagging sound."