The Tragic Story of Minnie Florea

I found the following story in "You Meet Such Interesting People" (1989) by Bess Whitehead Scott, a pioneering Houston newspaper reporter. Scott recounts one of her first newspaper stories written when she was a cub reporter for The Houston Post in 1915. It's unbelievably tragic. Here is her account of it:

…[my] love for my work, a “nose for news,” and circumstances combined to bring to me the most incredible true-life feature story of my long career and one any reporter would consider a bonanza beyond price. It also brought me my first byline.

It was a full-page story of the tragic ordeal of Minnie Florea, a sixteen-year-old girl who saw her mother, father, two sisters, and a brother perish in the great tidal wave disaster that hit Galveston Island on August 15, 1915.

Briefly, John C. Florea, editor and publisher of the Richmond Coaster, and his family and other relatives were vacationing at Surfside on Galveston Bay near Velasco when storm warnings were issued. False reports regarding the force and direction of the storm persuaded some of the group, including the Florea family, to discount the danger and to wait too long to leave the area. They took refuge in a lighthouse, along with others, twenty-three in all, including three lifeguards. Of the twenty-three, only Minnie and the lifeguards survived.

As the lighthouse crumbled under the waves and wind, Minnie saw her father and small sisters' lifeboat capsize, her brother dive into oil-coated water and never rise again, her sister carried out to sea, and her mother turn loose of rafters, saying she wanted to join her husband.

“I held to whatever I could grab,” Minnie told me three weeks afterward, “a life belt, planks from the lighthouse wreck, the lid of a cedar chest, and many times just nothing. I could not give up. All my family had gone to heaven. The Bible says a suicide will not go to heaven, so I could not suicide (sic). I had to pray and hold on.”

Hold on she did, for thirty-three hours, never knowing whether she was being borne out to sea or shoreward, her face almost a solid blister. Finally, she felt flotsam and sand under her feet. But even when she knew she was near the shore, her paralyzed legs would not function. She finally, crawled to a lighted house, far on the east beach. There she was taken in, warmed, and fed, and found that the lifeguards had been carried by the waves to the same refuge.

… Minnie Florea was “adopted” by the Texas Press Association meeting in convention in June, 1916 in El Paso. The resolution, adopted unanimously, preserved in the minutes of the convention, is a classic of the flowery but sincere nomenclature of seventy years ago. The Association helped her enter Rice Institute. In time, she graduated and became a teacher …

Much later, as the sixtieth anniversary of the destructive storm surge of 1915 approached I wrote Minnie, then living in retirement with her husband of many years, asking for an interview by telephone and a letter for a follow-up story on her ordeal. She answered:

Do forgive me when I tell you I could not deliberately open Pandora’s Box and bring back to consciousness my loss of so long ago. An occasional nightmare still throws me into an emotional upset. Aside from that sealed off part of my life, I have been so normal, fortunate and happy, there isn’t any further story. I hope you understand because your interest is really appreciated.