It took days.
Josh Okonye knew his hometown of Sugar Land, Texas, was right in Hurricane Harvey's path. He tried to brace for the unexpected outcome 1,100 miles away in West Lafayette. And when the storm hit, dumping nearly 40 inches of rain and devastating winds, one of his first responses was to try to reach his parents, father John and mother Philo who live apart.
He hooked up with Dad, who didn’t evacuate his home initially, pretty quickly. Mom, though, was another story.
“I found out about the whole thing Thursday (that) it was coming, but I didn’t get a hold of my mom until Sunday, so I was a little worried with that,” Okonye, Purdue’s new cornerback and a transfer from Wake Forest, said Wednesday. “It was hard to get a hold of her, but luckily, I finally did.”
Philo works at a health care facility and was stuck there for days, Okonye said, but she was headed back to check on her home Wednesday. She already knew part of what she’d see: A massive sinkhole. The road collapsed soon after she’d traveled on it, and she told her son she was “lucky” she wasn’t traveling on the road at that time.
“I’m just happy that worked out and she’s safe right now,” Okonye said.
Fortunately, that can be a repeated refrain from Purdue’s Texas contingent.
Lorenzo Neal, who actually grew up in Sugar Land before going to high school in Houston, said his family and friends are safe. His mother, Carla Delpit, lives in the southeast portion of downtown Houston, which he said hadn’t flooded much, though the highway near the house is underwater.
Coach Jeff Brohm said on his Wednesday night radio show that the rest of the players’ families near the area were safe. That’d include Anthony Watts, another Houston native.
Okonye said some of his friends have been stuck in their homes — they didn’t evacuate in time — so they’ve been waiting it out, hoping the worst of the weather has passed. That should be the case, though that doesn’t necessarily ease the minds of the players with connections to the area.
A big part of Okonye wants to go home to help his city and surrounding areas. But he knows he can’t, and not just because he’s enrolled and getting ready to play a game against Louisville Saturday, but the airports aren’t operational, he said.
So a major task now is trying to stay focused on football, though his mind often drifts to friends and family and how he’d love to help first-hand in relief efforts.
That’s been the message from all of the players’ parents, Neal said, that they need to “focus on what we have to do here.”
“So that's what we've been doing,” Neal said. “We've been calling our parents every day to make sure everything is OK. I really do appreciate all the support I've gotten from my teammates about it and my coaches. Everybody cares.”
Okonye has been pleased with stories of his friends being proactive in their community, working to help others and share information. He’s doing what he can from Indiana: Relaying information on social media of people looking for shelter, staying up-to-date on which places are available and encouraging his friends to be smart and stay safe instead of trying to head home too early. His father, who ultimately found higher ground in nearby Stafford, planned to check on his home Friday to survey the damage.
Okonye has been encouraged by the way the community has come together, saying it shows how strong Texas is.
“Hopefully, everything gets handled right and we get the relief we need,” he said. “I see a lot of organizations raising money, just hoping the money gets to the right people and it really helps us out. I don’t want that money to just be gone because we’re going to need a lot of help to get back from this. But we’re strong. The state of Texas is a strong state. We’re going to make it.”
Neal wholeheartedly agrees.
And, amidst the mess, he sees beauty.
"It's great seeing the city come together, especially because the time period we're in," Neal said. "We're probably in one of the most culturally divisive periods in American history, really. It's great seeing not necessarily the government or outside forces, but people coming together and saying, 'This is bigger than anything else going on. This is bigger than the issues we're having. This is about lives.' People are legitimately saving lives."
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