ABOUT HURRICANE FRAN

"I began to sense these great trees as begging for an epitaph or memorializing before being chopped up and burned. Their root balls were exposed as if their very hearts and had been ripped away from them." — Charles Dennis

In 1996, three years after we moved to Raleigh, NC, from Detroit, we were introduced to the impact of a major hurricane. Throughout the day of the forecasted arrival of Hurricane Fran, we stayed close to our televisions and radios. Our focus was on the coast.  We barely expected more than heavy rains and wind for our area.  At some point during the afternoon, we learned that Myrtle Beach had been spared, but Fran was moving up the coast, northward, and gaining speed and intensity.  Wilmington was her new target.

At approximately 4:00 in the afternoon, Fran struck the coastal town of Southport, NC, with winds at over 120 mph. Wilmington was miraculously spared the kind of devastation projected, but then the storm took an unexpected direction over land.  Those of us inland assumed that the storm would weaken as it came our way, but Fran had another plan.  As it roared in from the coast it blanketed the region with winds at 100 mph. 

The mighty trees in Fran’s path were no match for her.  Hundreds fell that night.  Our home in Raleigh was buried beneath a giant Maple. Our street, once covered with manicured Oaks, was unrecognizable. Trees that once shaded our gardens crashed into our living rooms, garages and kitchens.  Sheds beneath them were flipped upside down as the result of the roots ripping loose from the earth that once secured them. Cars were squashed like bugs beneath their enormous trunks. Then came the unending buzz of the chain saws to cut our beautiful trees into giant chunks of wood only to be piled as high as our homes awaiting their journey to the dump and burn sites.

There is no minimizing the toll Fran took on the people of North Carolina, but for Charlie there was a powerful story to be told about the trees that fell.  From that first morning after the storm, Charlie was transformed by what he saw.  While neighbors walked about the street in a state of shock and loss, Charlie set up his tripods, grabbed all of his film and began to shoot roll after roll.  From that first day and for the months that followed, Charlie documented the end of these trees.  He saw beauty in their root balls, stumps and fallen limbs.  He mourned them as they fell and lay upon the houses they once gracefully shrouded.  He wanted to memorialize them and find beauty within the twisted images of chaos and disorder.

He stumbled and fell often as he worked in many precarious locations.  He shot from dawn to sunset.  Strangers called our home leaving messages about downed trees for the “stump photographer” or “the root ball guy” as people networked about him and his mission.  He postponed taking medications that weakened him, and he took extra dosages of those that masked the pain.  At the end of the day, he collapsed in fatigue and pain, succumbing to the consequences of his activities and his lack of proper medicine.  He stood for so many hours in his darkroom developing this work that he developed open foot wounds.  Doctors told him to stop or risk amputation.  He ignored them and never lost so much as a toe.

He felt as though he was in a race against time to capture as many of these images as possible before the clean up would erase the story.  He cataloged hundreds of images and mastered over 200 fine prints.  

Perhaps these fallen trees summoned a kindred spirit within Charlie as his illness was progressing and he, too, felt he could not control a powerful force bringing him down. But, more than this, he felt the force of his creative spirit defying his pain and weakness.  He believed that these great trees needed him to capture the final chapter of their story with dignity and grace.