Remembering Camille

Colleen Stevens Thompson calls herself a “miracle.”
Forty years ago, on the night Hurricane Camille devastated Nelson County, Thompson, of Williamsburg, survived being washed away from the house she and her family were staying in and was carried more than 3 miles down U.S. 29 by the flood waters.

She told the astounding story of her survival to a crowd of more than 800 people Thursday night at a remembrance held at Nelson County High School in Lovingston.
“All of a sudden we heard that roar,” Thompson said about the night of Aug. 19, 1969. “The roar of the heavens that came down and smashed the house to bits.”
“[The water] threw me under, I was rolling under and under,” Thompson said. “I went down and across [U.S.] 29 and under the [debris] slides coming off the mountains.”
Speaking softly into the microphone, Thompson recalled how she was later found at Ridgecrest Baptist Church and transported to Lynchburg General Hospital, where she was reunited with her son, who had also been washed away from the home.

“I’m a miracle,” Thompson said. “There’s so much of my story to tell, I can’t tell it all.”
Curtis Matthews, of Woods Mill, told of how he stayed out in the storm that night to help truckers and motorists survive the storm.
“I was more a bystander than a victim,” Matthews said. “I was out in it when it started and I was out in it when it ended.”
The hour-long event, sponsored by the Oakland Museum near Colleen, began with a slideshow set to music featuring pictures taken by Brower York Jr., a photographer for a newspaper in Waynesboro at the time; Ralph and Patti Turpin; Beth Goodwin; and others.
Extra chairs had to be brought into the high school’s auditorium to accommodate the massive crowd. But even that wasn’t enough: Some had to view a broadcast of the event in the cafeteria.

The names of the more than 120 people who died in Nelson County from Hurricane Camille were read by the Rev. John Gordon, who was the search and rescue coordinator.
“We felt that the sound of the names would bring to mind those that could not be here today,” Gordon said.
Pat Ritchie, a local musician, sang a song titled “Nelson County Flood” written by her husband, George Ritchie. The night ended with other local musicians, the Fortune Family Singers, performing “God Bless America.”