MUSKOGEE, Okla. - As hurricane season rips through the country, a victim of a recent hurricane is trying to start over in Green Country.
Anybody who knows Brenda Fedorchik knows exactly where to find her, in the kitchen.
Today, it's her famous gumbo.
But just last week, Brenda watched her own kitchen wash away.
“It was bad, it really was.”
Monday, from the porch of her niece's Muskogee home, she remembers the view from her own.
“I’ve been through floods, I don’t need to worry. The water is just a little higher than what it’s ever been before. Boy, was it higher," she said.
She was one of the many people we saw who insisted.
“I’m like, I don’t want to go. And they’re saying you need to go, and my grandson’s saying, you’re going.”
So when her niece Robin called.
“I told her I said it’s time to come up here.”
Her feet were already planted where she wanted to be.
“She wouldn’t leave. She’s a stubborn old lady," said her niece Robin Boggs.
But as the Harvey waters rose, even Brenda couldn't take it.
“They said whatever you can fit in your lap is all you can take.”
She grabbed her wheelchair, her daughter with special needs and one other thing.
“I would leave everything behind, but I would not leave him behind.”
Her husband Gary's ashes.
“It’s hard, ok. It’s very hard to know you don’t have anything anymore.”
Two shelters, and a boat rescue later, she finally called Robin back.
“I said are you still willing to come and pick me up? and she said I’m on the way.”
“I can’t remember a day without her, and I don’t want to," Robin said.
Now, with only a bed in Robin's dining room to call home, her quest to find a new home starts in the one place that'll never change.
For information on how to help Brenda and her daughter, click here.
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