For most Georgetown students, returning home is a time of celebration with family and friends, but for Jordan Nelson (COL ’09), whose Florida home was devastated by Hurricane Wilma, a recent trip home was anything but festive.

Wilma, the third category five storm of this year’s record-breaking hurricane season, wrecked Nelson’s house in Key West, Fla., in October. After hearing about the storm in the news and talking with his family, Nelson made a surprise trip home on Oct. 25 to find his small, close-knit island community in ruin.

The build-up of debris along the roads heading into his three-and-a-half by one-and-a-half-mile island town was “pile upon pile upon pile,” Nelson described.

Nelson flew into Miami and was met by friends who made the 160-mile trip to pick him up.

“Community is why I wanted to go home,” he said.

When Nelson reached his hometown, he surprised his mother, Donna, father, Joel, and two younger siblings, Morgan and Taylor in their house – flooded with about four feet of water.

“My dad didn’t believe it and my mom cried,” Nelson said.

Many of the family’s irreplaceable and personal items were destroyed.

“The most depressing thing was the family photos,” he said. “Those are the things you really miss. Those are the things you can’t replace.”

Nelson spent the majority of the weekend clearing debris from his mom’s store, a small children’s toy shop on the northern waterfront where the storm hit unexpectedly.

“We’d work from dawn till dusk,” he said.

After the extensive cleanup he did while home, Nelson said he remains optimistic about his community’s ability to overcome the devastation.

“Whenever a hurricane hits, it kind of brings a community together,” he said. “When you’ve lost everything, everything you have means so much more. The things people lost are devastating, but the things people still have give them hope.”

He emphasized the optimism of his community and the resilience that gave him hope throughout his trip and upon his return to the Georgetown community.

“Next time we’ll build on stilts,” Nelson said. “It’s Key West – the bars were open a day or two after the hurricane.”

Though Key West’s morale for rebuilding their community is high, much work still remains to be done. Nelson said that he will likely spend the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday at a friend’s apartment.

“Thanksgiving is particularly poignant this year,” he said. “It’s very important that we take the time and give thanks for what we have.”

Cleanup is not the only problem for those in Key West and in the areas affected by Wilma. Insurance and other long-term damage assessments must also be addressed.

Insurance is especially a concern for the Nelson family’s small toy business.

“We lost a lot of merchandise,” he said.

Nelson added that flood insurance is an unrealistic expense for many small business owners. When he left, Nelson’s family was in the process of refilling the store, which will hopefully be up and running within the next few days.

Nelson said his family is getting much-needed loans for damage repair and added that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the arm of the government responsible for aiding those hit hardest by major disasters like hurricanes, has done a passable job.

“FEMA isn’t bad,” he noted. “We’ve been taken care of insurance-wise.”

Nelson returned to Georgetown on Oct. 28 but remains in close contact with his family, who he said is using every spare moment to repair their house.

“For them having to go through something like this without me, their oldest son, is hard,” Nelson said.

Though understandably distraught about his inability to be in Key West with his family and community, Nelson expressed deep gratitude for those who have displayed concern and taken action to aid him on campus.

He noted the support of the Georgetown University Hurricane Emergency Relief Effort, an organization created by students following Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the Gulf Coast region in early September. Members of GU HERE were quick to help fund his trip home, Nelson said.

“There are some really dedicated individuals there and support for them is key,” he said.