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Partly Cloudy Five Towns native is coming to terms with Hurricane Ian's aftermath
Friends of Linda Doherty persuaded her to move to Fort Myers, Florida, after the children she raised in Hawley, Pennsylvania, were grown.
In 2016, she moved to Florida and met a man who became her boyfriend, Todd Horman. But now she is back in Hawley with her kids, having returned with post-traumatic stress disorder in the wake of Hurricane Ian.
“I don’t ever want to live by the water again,” Doherty.
A graduate of Hewlett High School, Doherty, 57, was a part of the Five Towns community for 40 years, growing up and attending school in Hewlett, and then moving to Woodmere after getting married.
She and her husband had two children, a son and a daughter. Two years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the family moved to Hawley.
“After 9/11, we just didn’t feel safe raising the kids there,” Doherty said of New York.
In 2009, she got divorced, but she stayed with her children until they were “up and out on their own,” she said. Then she moved to Texas for two years before deciding to settle in Fort Myers. “Fort Myers, for the last six years, was my home,” Doherty said. “I was never going to leave it.”
Hurricane Ian made her change her plans, after it came ashore in Fort Myers on Sept. 28. Several previous hurricanes, such as Irma in 2017, had turned out not to be as severe as forecast, so Doherty and Horman did not prepare as thoroughly for Ian.
“We had Hurricane Irma in 2017 — we were all preparing for this big storm,” Doherty recalled. “But we only lost electricity.”
The plan for Ian was to remain at home and pack a cooler full of non-perishable food on ice.
But by the night of Sept. 27, evacuation warnings were showing up on their phones, indicating that this storm would be much different than Irma.
The couple had no choice but to evacuate to Horman’s mother’s house in nearby Naples. There was no cell service the following day, leaving Doherty and Horman uncertain about the status of homes in their neighborhood and their neighbors’ safety.
On the morning of Sept. 29, Horman made his way to Fort Myers, leaving Doherty at his mother’s. “I didn’t want her to have to find out the bad news up front in person,” he said. “I just got up the following day and left her sleeping.”
What he found left him in shock and disbelief, and a couple of hours later, Doherty saw the damage for herself. “Four feet of water came into our home and took out everything,” she said. “The water moved the furniture around the house and brought in silt from the river. I lost everything.”
Learning what had happened to Doherty left North Woodmere resident Elysa Parker, a friend of hers, at a loss for words. “I heard about it from her posts on Facebook,” Parker wrote in an email. “She continues to post poetic expressions and sayings that imply you should appreciate what you have. ‘Everything is going to be okay’ … ‘make the most of each day and always be thankful.’”
After the storm, Horman, a hotshot driver who hauls from state to state, dropped Doherty off in Hawley to be with her children. He was en route to Indiana to pick up a trailer that will go to New Jersey, all while living at Red Roof Inns.
What’s left now for the couple is figuring out what to do next.
“Florida is definitely an option,” Horman said, “but neither one of us is just plain committed that we have to return to the state of Florida.”
Rebuilding their home in Fort Myers is out of the question. It was so severely damaged that it has been condemned.
“I spoke to a counselor, because I definitely have post-traumatic stress disorder from this storm,” Doherty said. “I find myself crying constantly. Your couches and your bedrooms can always be replaced, but it’s the photos, the memorabilia from the kids growing up. You can’t replace that.”
Parker said she knows her friend will overcome the disaster. “She seems to be a strong person, and is handling tragedy with a fierce determination,” Parker said. “She doesn’t seem to be the type of person to give up. She’s an inspiration to me and others.”
