Isaac's Storm (49 page)

Joseph
 

SOON
AFTER
THE
storm,
Willis
Moore
promoted
Joseph
to
section
director,
with
an
increase
in
salary
to
$
1,500
a
year
from
$
1,200,
and
ordered
him
to
Puerto
Rico
to
take
over
the
island's
weather
station.
Joseph
dreaded
the
assignment,
claiming
his
health
was
not
good
enough
for
a
tropical
climate.
On
November
3,
1900,
two
days
before
Joseph
was
scheduled
to
leave
Galveston,
Isaac
notified
Moore
that
Joseph
"is
unable
to
leave
his
room.
He
has
been
under
medical
treatment
since
the
hurricane
and
has
at
last
been
compelled
to
take
to
his
bed."

A
month
later,
Joseph,
in
a
letter
that
dripped
reluctance,
wrote
to
Moore
that
he
was
now
ready
to
go.
"I
believe
that
I
have
fully
recovered
from
injuries
of
glands
and
blood
vessels
in
[my]
left
leg,
and
as
it
is
the
wishes
of
the
Bureau
that
I
proceed
on
to
Porto
Rico,
I
will
do
so
with
pleasure."
He
asked
Moore,
however,
to
reconsider
his
transfer
if
"the
climate
there
proves
adverse."

Joseph
did
go
to
Puerto
Rico,
and
in
the
August
1901
issue
of
the
Monthly
Weather
Review,
wrote,
"The
climate
is
not
so
oppressive
as
one
might
expect
in
the
Tropics.
A
cool,
very
pleasant,
and
most
welcome
breeze
generally
blows
across
the
island,
particularly
in
the
afternoon
and
at
night,
which
adds
much
to
the
comfort
of
the
inhabitants."
By
then,
however,
he
was
already
back
in
the
United
States.
He
had
been
back
for
months.
In
the
spring
of
1901,
Moore
at
last
had
acknowledged
Joseph's
concerns
and
on
April
5
wrote
to
the
secretary
of
agriculture
recommending
that
Joseph
be
returned
to
the
United
States
on
account
of
his
"feeble"
health.
Moore
demoted
Joseph
to
his
old
rank
of
observer
and
cut
his
salary
by
$200
a
year.

Two
weeks
later,
as
if
deliberately
trying
to
intensify
the
rivalry
between
Joseph
and
Isaac,
Willis
Moore
promoted
Isaac
and
ordered
him
to
New
Orleans
to
take
charge
of
a
newly
created
Gulf
Forecast
District
encompassing
Texas,
Oklahoma,
Louisiana,
Arkansas,
Mississippi,
Alabama,
and
the
Florida
panhandle.
He
raised
Isaac's
salary
$200
a
year,
to
$2,000.

Moore
 

IN
1909
IN
a
widely
published
forecast
Willis
Moore
announced
that
the
weather
for
William
Howard
Taft's
inauguration
would
be
"clear
and
colder."
Snow
fell.

Isaac
 

ISAAC
CAME
TO
see
his
transfer
to
New
Orleans
as
punishment
for
his
having
become
too
successful
at
forecasting
frosts,
floods,
and
storms.
He
believed
Moore
considered
him
a
threat
to
his
own
job.
"When
a
station
official
performed
work
that
attracted
the
attention
of
the
public
and
was
commended
by
the
press,"
Isaac
wrote,
"Moore
frequently
sent
him
to
some
part
of
the
world
where
he
could
not
render
conspicuous
service."

To
Isaac,
New
Orleans
was
just
such
a
place.
It
was,
he
wrote,
"a
dumping
ground
for
observers
who
were
guilty
of
drunkenness
and
neglect
of
duty
and
whom
it
was
necessary
to
discipline."
The
low
level
of
talent
not
only
made
it
difficult
for
Isaac
to
improve
the
station's
performance,
it
also
forced
him
to
invoke
harsh
disciplinary
measures,
which
in
turn
poisoned
his
own
reputation
within
the
bureau.
Many
years
earlier
Gen.
Adolphus
Greely
had
sent
troubled
employees
to
Galveston,
but
Isaac
saw
those
transfers
as
good-faith
efforts
to
save
careers.
Moore,
he
believed,
had
other
motives.
"The
object,"
Isasac
wrote,
"was
to
give
my
station
a
bad
record
in
dealing
with
personal
problems."

Isaac's
disillusionment
deepened
when
Moore
pressured
him
to
assist
Moore's
campaign
to
become
secretary
of
agriculture
under
Woodrow
Wilson.
Moore
used
bureau
officials
and
bureau
time
to
promote
his
ambitions
and
became
so
convinced
Wilson
would
choose
him
that
he
designated
a
man
to
take
his
place
as
chief.

Wilson
picked
someone
else.
The
Justice
Department
launched
an
investigation
of
Moore's
politicking,
and
Moore
spread
the
word
to
Isaac
and
other
officials
to
destroy
all
correspondence
related
to
his
campaign.
At
nine
o'clock
in
the
morning
on
April
Fool's
Day,
1913,
an
agent
with
the
Justice
Department
walked
into
Isaac's
office
and
demanded
to
see
all
correspondence
between
him
and
Moore.
The
agent
clearly
expected
Isaac
to
claim
no
such
material
existed.

Isaac
believed
in
loyalty
and
hard
work
and
in
the
essential
goodness
of
men,
but
he
had
learned
much
in
those
thirty
years
since
his
first
arrival
in
Washington.
He
handed
the
agent
a
thick
file
containing
all
of
Moore's
campaign
directives,
complete
with
postmarked
envelopes.

Moore
was
fired.

The
rivalry
between
Isaac
and
Joseph
evolved
into
complete
estrangement.
The
clearest
evidence
appears
in
a
forlorn
document
deep
in
the
records
of
the
National
Archives.
It
is
an
account
of
the
Galveston
storm
that
Joseph
wrote
in
March
1922,
in
which
he
goes
to
great,
almost
comical,
lengths
to
avoid
using
Isaac's
name
or
even
to
acknowledge
him
as
his
brother.
When
Joseph
describes
his
own
journey
to
Isaac's
house
on
the
Saturday
of
the
storm,
he
never
identifies
its
owner.
It
is
only
"a
house"
in
which
fifty
people
happened
to
have
congregated.
"At
eight
o'clock,"
Joseph
writes,
"the
house
we
were
in
went
to
pieces,
and
as
the
house
went
over
I
broke
through
the
window
and
climbed
on
the
side
of
the
framed
house,
and
carried
two
children
to
safety...
Finally
the
house
went
to
pieces
and
a
short
distance
away
I
observed
3
others
coming
out
of
the
water.
These
3
were
also
saved."

On
the
night
of
the
storm
the
lives
of
Joseph
and
Isaac
touched
with
an
intensity
that
only
a
man
blinded
by
anger
could
disavow.
Perhaps
Joseph
resented
Isaac's
subsequent
success
within
the
bureau,
or
Isaac's
failure
to
contest
Moore's
portrayal
of
Isaac
as
the
great
hero
of
the
storm.
And
maybe
Isaac,
for
his
part,
transformed
his
own
guilt
into
a
perverse
anger
at
Joseph
for
having
been
right
about
urging
everyone
to
evacuate.
Maybe
each
time
Isaac
saw
Joseph
the
magnitude
of
his
own
error
came
roaring
back
to
him.

Maybe
Joseph
sensed
this,
and
played
to
it.

The
hurricane
changed
Isaac.
He
gave
up
the
study
of
climate
and
health
and
concentrated
instead
on
trying
to
find
out
why
the
storm
had
been
so
deadly.
He
wrote
two
books
on
hurricanes,
thus
fulfilling
his
childhood
dream
of
writing
an
important
scientific
treatise.
He
became
one
of
the
nation's
leading
hurricane
experts.
It
was
Isaac
who
established
that
a
hurricane's
deadliest
weapon
was
not
direct
wind
damage,
as
bureau
dogma
held,
but
its
wind-driven
tide,
and
that
this
tide
provided
important
warning
signals.
He
was
not
shy
about
taking
credit.
In
his
monograph
"A
Century
of
Progress
in
the
Study
of
Cyclones,"
published
in
1942,
he
wrote,
"I
was
the
only
official
in
the
U.S.
Weather
Bureau
who
recognized
and
studied
the
importance
of
the
storm
tides
in
forecasting
hurricanes
resulting
from
tropical
storms."

But
a
question
haunted
him:
Did
some
of
the
blame
for
all
those
deaths
in
Galveston
belong
to
him?
He
blamed
himself,
certainly,
for
the
loss
of
his
wife.
His
decision
to
weather
the
storm
in
his
house
had
been
foolhardy,
as
had
been
his
advice
to
some
of
the
people
he
encountered
on
Saturday,
among
them
Judson
Palmer,
who
had
lost
everything.
Isaac
kept
returning
to
the
question.
He
told
and
retold
the
story
of
how
he
had
asked
a
reporter
for
the
Associated
Press
if
anything
more
could
have
been
done
to
warn
the
citizens
of
Galveston
—
and
how
the
reporter
replied,
"Nothing
more
could
have
been
done
than
was
done."

Isaac's
subsequent
reports
to
the
Monthly
Weather
Review
suggest
a
man
obsessed
with
proclaiming
his
own
prowess
at
warning
of
troublesome
weather.
Unlike
his
peers,
who
filed
their
routine
district
reports
in
spare,
self-quashing
language,
Isaac
praised
his
own
work,
or
quoted
newspapers
and
letters
that
did
likewise.
In
September
1909,
for
example,
he
quoted
a
letter
to
him
praising
his
warnings
of
a
hurricane
that
struck
Louisiana:
"
'We
feel
that
your
office
was
solely
instrumental
in
saving
to
New
Orleans,
through
advices
sent
out
by
you
in
advance,
many
lives
and
thousands
of
dollars
worth
of
property.'"

The
Galveston
hurricane
irrevocably
collapsed
the
wall
Isaac
had
erected
between
the
personal
and
the
professional,
the
irrational
and
the
rational.
On
the
morning
of
February
10,1901,
Isaac
came
forward
"on
profession
of
faith"
to
seek
formal
admittance
to
the
Baptist
church.
A
month
later,
the
congregation
convened
at
the
YMCA
pool
to
conduct
its
first
baptism
since
the
storm.
Judson
Palmer
was
there.
So
were
Rosemary
and
Allie
May,
and
of
course
Isaac's
baby,
Esther,
and
a
hundred
members
of
the
church.
When
Isaac
stepped
into
the
pool,
applause
rang
for
what
seemed
like
hours.

Art
became
his
passion.
It
filled
his
spare
time
with
the
scent
of
linseed
oil,
the
seductive
texture
of
canvas.
He
divided
his
annual
leave
into
segments
as
short
as
two
hours
so
he
could
attend
auctions
and
estate
sales.
He
collected
Early
American
portraits
and
Chinese
bronzes
and
in
1918
sold
a
portion
of
his
collection
for
the
then-fabulous
sum
of
twenty-five
thousand
dollars.
When
he
had
his
photograph
taken,
he
knew
exacdy
what
he
was
doing.