Farragut residents Mike and Anita Singletary have, along with millions of others, been watching the daily coverage of the Hurricane Harvey disaster in and around Houston and for good reason – their daughter Angie and her family are part of the story.
Angie and husband Kevin Dailey and their three daughters (14, 12 and 9 years old) live in Spring, Texas, a bedroom community 15 miles north of Houston. Like many other neighborhoods, theirs was completely flooded. “A big part of their neighborhood got some serious water, but it happens that their home is slightly elevated and so they remained dry,” Mike says. “You wouldn’t notice the elevation to casually look at the site, but it’s been a blessing. I’m sure they didn’t consider the elevation above sea level when they bought the house.”
They were dry. Many others were not. Kevin is a fisherman and for four days he’s been using his flat-bottom fishing boat to rescue neighbors and many others. You may have seen him on FOX News. The network reported on his heroic efforts.
Mike, who is a retired University of Tennessee journalism professor, pays attention to the news, of course. On Wednesday he shared the news about the family with the Rotary Club of Farragut, of which he is a member.
Like many others, Angie and Kevin can’t get to their jobs so they decided to chip in and help out, even taking one displaced family into their home. Kevin works in logistics for Kuehne & Nagel and routes shipping containers coming into Houston on ships to locations all around the country. Angie is a physical therapist with a degree in biology from the University of Tennessee.
Kevin has also been concerned about his parents, who live in the Texas coastal town of Palacios, which has been battered by Harvey and was near where Harvey came ashore. Kevin tells Mike that his parents are doing OK and are safe.
The father of the family that Kevin and Angie took in ended up helping Kevin rescue those stranded on rooftops and walking around in the water, carrying what they could. “Kevin was stopping and picking up people and going to homes and loading them into his boat and then taking them to higher ground so they could be taken to shelters,” Mike said. “I’m glad they’re all safe and we’re proud of Kevin and Angie.”