Trauma haunted Spanish Lakes survivor, 88, for months

Ray Balsamo, 71, rode his golf cart through the Spanish Lakes community in Lakewood Park on a humid Friday afternoon Sept. 26.
He went to the front door of N. Craig Martin, a 20-year resident who moved to a nearby double-wide mobile home after a life of banking in the hamlet of Waterford, near Albany, N.Y.
Martin’s front parlor had fresh, modern furniture that contrasted with vinyl wood-grain paneling. A throw blanket embroidered with a group portrait of his five adult daughters accented his sofa.
Martin ribbed Balsamo, his neighbor of three years, on how he owes his high energy to taking the multivitamin Geritol daily for nearly seven decades after watching ad breaks during “The Lawrence Welk Show.” Now 88, Martin danced through conversations about ridding the “tired blood” of his past self through Geritol, he claimed at the kitchen table. He accented his fast talking – often prefaced with the tic “basically speaking” – while rapping on the glass tabletop like it were wood as he recounted his fortunes.
His jocular demeanor betrayed his advanced age and his own brush with death from the tornado that claimed six of his neighbors down the road at La Villa Way last Oct. 9.
Like the six, Martin had a double-wide mobile home along that street. Unlike them, he sheltered in a different double-wide that fateful afternoon.
Hurricane Milton produced storm clouds and heavy rain throughout St. Lucie as it blew in from the Gulf Coast toward Tampa that morning. It did not concern Martin, who lunched at a nearby Chili’s with neighbor Mike Brandt before the latter drove south to shelter with family.
It was around 2 p.m. when Martin returned to housesit another mobile home closer to Dacia Stoll, his fiancée who lived along Lagos del Norte several yards east of his home on La Villa Way.
Martin said he first received tornado warnings for Lakewood Park around 4 p.m. They signaled a milder twister that spun at peak wind speeds between 80 to 90 miles per hour inbound from the southeast, according to the National Weather Service.
Then came the warning for another twister an hour later. It was the same tornado that had ravaged farmland along Kings Highway before it reached Indrio Road and cut through Eastwood Drive to Spanish Lakes.
“I could hardly open the door with the winds that were blowing,” he said, adding that “the palm tree next door was touching down,” along with the ominous “freight train” wailing indicating the tornado’s passage.
He rushed to take cover atop a closed toilet before the twister tore the house asunder. “It picked me and the toilet up and threw me against the wall. I hit the towel rack. I didn’t know how long I was out. The next thing, rainwater was coming down and I was looking up; there was no ceiling or anything.”
Martin found himself crawling under a mess of ceramic, vinyl paneling and torn insulation when he regained consciousness. He then heard John Lawrence, another neighbor, calling out for him as the wind stopped howling.
“He crawled out with just fractured ribs,” he said of Lawrence, who emerged from his upended van before he began his search. “He came down looking for me and I’m yelling for help, trying to get out. He had a tough time; he thought I had died.”
Lawrence ambulated his neighbor before they began “wading in knee-deep water” over to Martin’s obliterated home. “It took the house 3 feet off the foundation,” Martin said.
He also recalled telling Brandt over the phone that the tornado also destroyed his home next door. “‘You’re the only house that disappeared. All you have is a foundation. Everybody else’s house crashed in. If you were here, you would’ve been dead.’”
At least three of his daughters helped Martin with his affairs in the weeks after Milton, from recovering “artifacts” in his wrecked home to financial affairs and medical appointments.
Martin lost many of his belongings with the exception of a restored grandfather clock, an old pepper mill, and an icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help – one incarnation of the Christian Mother Mary – hand-carved in wood.
Doctors in neighboring Vero Beach cleared appointment queues to tend to Martin upon hearing of his survival in Spanish Lakes. He said that none of their tests – including MRIs and X-rays – picked up any signs of concussion or internal damage.
Within weeks, he received enough funding to refurnish his new home through the Federal Emergency Management Administration “I was getting this money in credit cards. It was amazing,” he said.
He added that he received his present double-wide home as a gift from Matthew Wynne, a leader with the Port St. Lucie-based Wynne Building Corporation that owns the three Spanish Lakes communities in the county.
Overwhelming alms and federal aid, however, masked an inner turmoil that churned in Martin for months after the storm. “I wasn’t myself.”
Talking to himself upwelled the trauma of surviving the tornado. “‘This isn’t my house.’ Then, I’d cry because it’s not my house but it is my house now. I was a basket case. I had meltdowns and everything.”
His compromised mental state affected his ability to tend to personal matters and led to more public “meltdowns,” he said. Daughter Luanne and son-in-law Robert Amato helped with his finances as he coped.
He remembered one breakdown as he filed financial papers with the Amatos at the local bank.
“They were like, ‘calm down, calm down,’ They did all the speaking.” He did not seek mental health treatment despite his numerous post-traumatic episodes.
Today, La Villa Way stands as an empty row of dirt and freshly planted grass. “I’m pretty much over it,” Martin said about walking or bicycling near there daily. “Once in a while, I’ll get something, but I can talk about it and drive around my street. It doesn’t bother me anymore but I’m thankful to be alive.”
Leaders of the Wynne Building Corporation were to unveil a plaque dedicated to the six tornado victims today at the community clubhouse, Martin said. 