Tallahassee woman's stepmom drowns during Dorian; sees father in viral CNN video
Nada Hassanein
As monster Hurricane Dorian stalled over the Bahamas where her elderly father lived, a frantic Meghann Gaines paced around her Tallahassee home. That Sunday night felt long. She couldn't sleep.
She'd just spoken to her dad, Howard Armstrong, and his wife and her stepmom, Lynn Armstrong, the day before.
"They were in good spirits," Gaines, 36, recalled from her Old Bainbridge Road home Thursday.
Howard, a crab fisherman, lived in the Bahamas with Lynn in a house he built himself along a canal. They'd been through many a storm, and had put up their storm shutters in advance of Dorian. He told Gaines they were having a few drinks and were headed to bed to sleep through the hurricane.
Still, she worried.
Finding out the tragic news
After Dorian pummeled the islands with its 185-mph howling winds and rain, Gaines couldn't reach her dad by phone at all. Newscasts of the destruction fueled her distress.
On Tuesday evening, Gaines got a Facebook message from a man in Michigan she didn't know.
"He said, 'Is Howard Armstrong your dad?' I said, 'Yes, why — who is this?' '" Gaines remembered. "And he said, 'Saw him on the news 10 minutes ago, so sorry to hear about your mother.' He thought it was my mother, not my stepmother."
Gaines was shocked and confused. She hadn't heard the news yet.
"And that's when I started shaking. I walked down the street," Gaines said through tears.
"She's gone"
The news segment the Michigan man had seen was a viral CNN video interview with her dad, Howard.
"My poor little wife got hypothermia and she was standing on top of the kitchen cabinets until they disintegrated. And then I, I, I kept with her and then she just drowned on me," Howard told CNN. "I never recovered her. She's gone. I couldn't find her body."
He watched his wife drown as the storm surge ripped through their home, with water rising to about 19 feet high. He said he escaped by swimming through the doorway and into his fishing boat anchored nearby.
He told the network he had two daughters in Tallahassee but didn't have their phone numbers memorized and couldn't remember their married surnames.
A scramble to connect with her father
After watching the video Tuesday night, Gaines sat outside her house with her computer and sent message after message, trying to locate her dad. Finally, her childhood friend Mandy in the Bahamas was able to find a displaced Howard in nothing but a red jacket and his undergarments. She brought him clothing, food and water and handed him her cellphone to call his daughter.
"My Meggy. I need you. Please just get over here," Gaines said her dad sobbed on the phone.
She plans to find a way down to the islands to bring him back to Tallahassee with her.
Throughout her childhood, Gaines visited her dad in the Bahamas every summer. She calls herself a "daddy's girl," and used to build boats with him. She says her dad, who has lived on the islands for 58 years, can't read or write and relies on several medications.
"Lynn was his whole world," Gaines said of her stepmother. "She did everything for him… He relied on Lynn for 30 years."
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Meghann Gaines has created a GoFundMe fundraiser for her dad.
Reach Nada Hassanein at nhassanein@tallahassee.com or on Twitter @nhassanein_.