Inspiration At The Village Spires

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The first time Jim Gosselin realized things were returning to normal was the day he drove over the Barber Bridge and saw the balcony railings being put in place. “It started looking like the Spires again and I thought, wow, we’re getting there. We’ve done everything to make this building as modern and as resistant to any type of storms as we possibly could.”

The sight that greeted Betty Robertson that morning in late September 2004 literally took her breath away. As one of the first to call the Village Spires home over 35 years ago she had seen her share of storms and was well aware of the devastation they left behind. But that hadn’t prepared her for what back-to-back hurricanes Frances and Jeanne had done to the two 13-story buildings on Ocean Drive.
“It was a nightmare. Everything was a mass of metal and glass,” says Betty, who couldn’t recognize her fourth-floor condominium in the south building. “My refrigerator was blown out the window and landed down in the basement. I’m glad I wasn’t here or I might have been flying through the air, too.”

Many of us can relate, as in one way or another those twin hurricanes impacted all of our lives. So why is Betty’s story, which is really the story of everyone who lived at the Village Spires, worth telling now, nearly five years later? Because, in the aftermath of the storms, the owners of the condominiums – 52 in each building – found themselves uprooted and scattered to the four winds.

Read the entire article in the April 2009 issue

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