Counselor visited Houston this week to report on the impact of Hurricane Harvey on promotional product companies and professionals affected by the historic storm. Here we share the stories of Proforma Impact Promotions’ (asi/490136) Karen Sharp and Hirsch Gift’s (asi/61005) Sharon Williams.

Despite Cancer & Harvey, Karen Sharp Chooses Joy
Karen Sharp stood in the wreckage of what was once her living room, telling stories about the valuables and heirlooms the flood waters had damaged or destroyed.

“I’ve had this piano since I was 14,” said Sharp, owner of Proforma Impact Promotions, while she touched her fingers gently to the keys, as if afraid to cause further damage. “I had hoped it could be saved, but it’s ruined.” She pressed her knuckles to her lips for a silent moment, then turned and pointed at a rocking chair. “It’s an antique – 100 years old,” she said, her eyes brightening. “I managed to save it. It’s going to be okay.”

The same could not be said for the rest of the place Sharp had called home in Cypress, TX, a suburb just outside the city limits of Houston.

Watch a video interview with Karen Sharp below:

When Harvey, the hurricane-turned-tropical storm, deluged the area with about a year’s worth of rain in several days, the nearby Cypress Creek jumped its bank and surged into Sharp’s Lakewood West neighborhood. Sharp had seen the creek, about four blocks from her front door, rise into the neighborhood during past floods, but never before had the invading waters penetrated her home. Harvey, however, was different. The relentless storm spurred the creek on until it turned her interiors into a lapping pond, decimating drywall, floors and possessions that couldn’t be lifted. Outside was a lake. Visiting on a hot sunny day little more than a week after the water had receded, Sharp’s sensitive lungs buckled in the rented home’s unhealthy atmosphere – the black mold beginning to fester. “I have to move,” said Sharp. “There’s no way I can stay here.”

And yet, despite everything, Sharp again began smiling.

Certainly, no one could blame her if she had slipped into despair. After all, Harvey’s timing was especially poor for the promo industry veteran, who was battling breast cancer when the rains came. Her fight against the disease had been successful and she was nearing the end of treatment when the storm presented her with multiple new dilemmas: Keep business going amid Harvey’s aftermath and find a new place to live. Still, as Sharp led a tour through the hollowed rooms, she time and again spoke of joy, of gratitude. “I choose joy,” she said. “You can either choose to be miserable or you can choose joy. I just keep saying let’s choose joy. You got one day to live.”

Indeed, Sharp is determined to make the best of each day, and she was enthusiastic about detailing what she says were blessings bestowed before, during and after Harvey. For one thing, key clients have remained loyal through her cancer treatment, and opportunities were arising post-storm, providing peace of mind that sales will continue to grow. For another, her daughter and granddaughter survived Harvey and were in good condition after being temporarily trapped in their apartment by floodwaters. Further, she said, Harvey re-revealed the inherent goodness in so many people. As the waters rose, neighbors helped her dig a small ditch, allowing some water to run away from her home. Similarly, a good friend offered to come get her as the floodwaters closed in. It took the woman two hours to go a few miles to reach Sharp, but reach her she did. They escaped to higher ground. Then there were the good Samaritans who, post-Harvey, brought by cleaning supplies – two ladies and two little girls who couldn’t have been happier to help. “The saying is that there is more love down here than water,” said Sharp.

For sure, Sharp, Cypress and other hard-hit areas in greater Houston and beyond have a long way to go. In Sharp’s neighborhood alone, piles of sheetrock, furniture, carpets and other household items lined the sidewalks and lawns of flood-ravaged homes. But even so, work crews and residents were hard at work doing what could be done – picking up the pieces and trying to move on. A few children were even outside on a side street, playing tag. Things were looking up for Sharp, too. She had put a bid in on a new home. Late in the day after the visit to Cypress, Sharp texted with good news. “I got the house!!!!” the text said. “Fresh new start!!!”

And though she didn’t say it this time, her words – “choose joy” – echoed behind the text and, maybe, through all of southeast Texas.

Rescued From the Flood & Feeling Blessed
On a dry, sun-splashed September morning, the Brays Bayou lulled along through its concrete channel in the Meyerland section of southwest Houston. The placid pace and shallow water belied the raging river the waterway morphed into during Harvey.

Caption: Sharon Williams’ home in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.

For sure, Sharon Williams knows well the sinister side of the bayou, which rose so rapidly and so immensely amid the storm that she, her mother and her cat and two dogs needed to be rescued by boat to escape the life-threatening flood.

Williams, national sales manager at Houston-based Hirsch Gift, was living in a home on S. Braeswood Boulevard, just across the street from the bayou, when Harvey roared in from the Gulf of Mexico. She remembers the day being sunny and beautiful before the rain – a regular weekend day in which she and her mother settled down to watch a Houston Texans preseason game. “It’s not uncommon to get heavy rain in Houston,” said Williams. “We decided we were going to see how things would go with the storm and leave if we needed to.”

>>Watch this video about Harvey relief efforts that Hirsch Gift is spearheading.

Just before kickoff, Williams poked her head outside to check on things. It was raining heavily, but the bayou was within its banks. When she went to check again during the third quarter, Williams discovered a world transformed by water. “I said, ‘Oh my goodness, what happened?’ The water was in the street and halfway up my driveway. We had waited too long to get out.”

Williams called 9-1-1, but first responders were so inundated with emergencies that she couldn’t get through. Thinking on her feet, Williams rang her sister – a police officer – to see if she could help. A vehicle rescue was out of the question given the water levels. Still, Williams’ sister connected her with a Houston Police Department officer who said responders would do their best to rescue them.

So began what was easily one of the longest nights of Williams’ life. Conditions were perilous for emergency personnel, who were making rescues throughout fast-flooding neighborhoods. Given the circumstances and conditions in Meyerland, a heavily developed area built in a 100-year floodplain on former rice fields, the would-be rescuers couldn’t immediately reach Williams and her mom, whose health is fragile. The pair spent the harrowing dark hours in the single-level home as water poured in, rising to a couple feet by the next day. To keep her cat Maggie and dogs Sandy and Molly safe, Williams stacked pillows on chairs and put the pets on them. Over the course of hours, she stayed in contact with rescuers, who by 4 a.m. told her they could have someone there by the next morning. But still the waters continued to rise, reaching chest-high levels outside. “That much water – it’s scary to say the least,” said Williams, who at one point was set to push vehicles in the driveway closer to the home to create a platform from which she could get her mother to the roof – higher ground from the water.

Fortunately, it never came to that. Members of the Houston Police Department Dive Team navigated the labyrinth of flooded streets in a boat and reached Williams and her mother – a rescue Williams facilitated by standing outside on the top of her car and waving an orange bag so the rescuers could see the precise location. From there, the dive team took Williams, her mother and the pets, along with other saved Houstonians, to a home that had miraculously not flooded – an island amid a newly formed lake. The residents fed and watered Williams’ pets – something that moved her. “The human kindness of it in that situation – it just touched you,” said Williams. Not long after, a high water rescue vehicle transported Williams and others to a grocery store parking lot that was on higher ground and not affected by floods. Several hundred people were there, escaping the rising water. “This had started the night before and it wasn’t until 4 p.m., on higher ground, that we finally started to feel a little safe,” said Williams.

Unfortunately, the ordeal didn’t end with the rescue. The home – a rental – was savaged. Williams will not be moving back in. Adding salt to the wound, her renter’s insurance doesn’t cover rising water, meaning she had to apply for government assistance, a process that was ongoing at press time. She admits there were times that she broke down. “There was a day I was sitting in the house, looking at everything that was ruined, and I had a moment of despair,” she said. But the moment passed – thanks in large part to the generosity and compassion of people in the Houston community and promotional products industry. “One day 17 volunteers from a church showed up and asked, ‘What can we do to help?’” said Williams. “They started pulling insulation, cutting sheetrock. They worked nine hours that day, helping us get everything settled. They kept saying, ‘Thank you for letting us help you.’ I was so blessed. It was overwhelming.”

Additionally, industry colleagues who wished to remain anonymous started a GoFundMe page for Williams in the wake of the tragedy, and she was able to locate temporary longer-term accommodations at a great price so she can be settled as she searches for a new permanent home. While no one would blame Williams for taking time off, she willingly got back to work only about a week after the storm cleared, flying to California for appointments alongside a rep there. “It is really helpful to get back to the routine,” said Williams. “You want to return to a sense of normalcy.”