Leaving Haiti 'tore my heart out'

Pat Freebury, a 71-year-old Flathead resident caught in Haiti during the Jan. 12 earthquake, recalls her tears when she finally had an escape route to the Dominican Republic.

Her tears were not from relief as she departed the orphanage where she, her husband and son sponsor three children.

“It just about tore my heart out,” Pat said, her voice cracking with emotion. “I didn’t think Gary would let me go back.”

Her husband, Gary, and her sons had no plans to ask her to forget the orphanage, school and church run by Haiti Mercy Mission in Pignon, Haiti. Her family just wants her to take a GPS tracking system and her own computer for better communications on the next trip.

Although Gary gave no indication of any worry that his wife wouldn’t come home during the trying episode, his reaction when she arrived at Glacier Park International Airport showed his level of relief.

Gary came with several close friends to meet her on Jan. 19.

“They said they had never seen a man hug a woman as long as he did,” Pat said, wiping away a tear. “This has strengthened our marriage.”

Pat said she left Haiti a different woman.

Her first trip in 2008 had given her a new perspective after witnessing the unbelievable poverty of the island nation. Even battling cancer — both hers and Gary’s — was not as life-altering an experience as bearing witness to this huge disaster.

It changed her soul. Pat, who had retired from the library at Flathead High School, said she felt cleansed of every resentment and animosity she may have harbored before this trip.

“Every family was affected by injury or death or family coming home because they lost everything,” Pat said.

Because of poor communications, some details of her story got a bit scrambled in translation from Haiti through Gary to the Inter Lake. In her first-person interview Monday, Pat reviewed her adventure that began when she arrived Jan. 8 in Port-au-Prince.

Pat traveled from Florida with Minnesota-based volunteers Frank “Bud” and Jeanette McLaughlin, their son Erik and neighbor Bob Burns. In Port-au-Prince, they boarded a small airplane for a low, spectacular flight to Pignon located about 85 miles north.

Pat had planned to stay 10 days on this trip. As she flew over, she was struck by how much better the area looked since her last trip when a hurricane had caused massive damage.

“Then this [the earthquake] had to happen,” she said. “You just have to cry for Haiti.”

Pignon has a rudimentary runway where goats and cows graze between landings. It’s located right next to Haiti Mercy Mission’s orphanage, school and church complex so the children ran over to greet them when they arrived on the Friday before the earthquake.

“We all walked to the orphanage,” she said. “The kids are walking and hanging on to you — it’s just precious.”

Her family’s sponsored children — Bentchiny, 9, Shela, 11, and Amelicka, 17 — had met her on the first trip in November 2008. On that stay, Pat fell in love with all the children as well as the staff, including Dr. Pierre Acene and his wife, Anne, who operate the complex.

“They call me Groumoun (Grandma) Pat Komic because they think I’m funny,” she said.

Pat laughed as she related how they loved to play with her arm flap, trace the veins on her hands and run their fingers through her snow-white hair. She was upstaged this year by another visitor with white hair.

“Last year, I was a huge fascination,” she said.

The volunteers put on a belated party where the children re-enacted the Christmas story, then received a backpack full of gifts. Pat also brought crafts for stringing beads and making angels as part of their Bible school study.

She had plans and supplies for a big jewelry-making day that was interrupted by the earthquake. Pat said the children, even the boys, love stringing beads to make colorful necklaces or other crafts.

“I was so disappointed,” she said. “I had a big bead day planned.”

On Jan. 12, Pat and other volunteers went to visit the Haiti Home of Hope, another orphanage that accepts infants, run by the Bill Campbell family. The group had just left and was driving through downtown Pignon in an old Toyota when the earthquake struck.

Because of the rutted, bumpy, rock-strewn road, they had no idea anything out of the ordinary was occurring.

“People were acting goofy — jumping up and down and screaming,” she said. “We had to weave around them.”

Pat said she thought they might be reacting to a car full of white people. She said she has experienced some animosity from a few people in the past but said most are “really loving people.”

Unaware of the true reason for the people’s odd behavior, they continued over a bridge spanning a river on the way home. The earthquake had not damaged the bridge.

“We had no idea,” she said. “It’s not a deep river but it’s way down.”

When they got back to the orphanage, they found the children and others excited but safe outside. Damage was limited to two long cracks that didn’t threaten the integrity of the orphanage building.

Once they became aware of the magnitude of damage in Port-au-Prince, the orphanage staff made plans to survive the food shortage expected with the capitol in chaos. Pat and the McLaughlins pooled their money with the orphanage’s money to buy a pickup load of rice, beans, dried fish and fuel in Pignon.

“That was so smart,” she said. “They figured they had a month’s worth of food.”

In the days following the earthquake, the Haiti Mercy Mission was flooded with new orphans as well as refugees escaping the civil unrest of Port-au-Prince. Some additional supplies of food have arrived since Pat left.

Because she had brought just enough of her cancer and thyroid medication for her 10-day stay, Pat needed to find a way home as soon as possible.

Following the advice of a pilot friend who knew the area, she, Burns, two others and two guards set off at 4 a.m. Monday, Jan. 18, for Cap Haitien to link up with a bus to Santiago in the Dominican Republic.

“There were eight of us in the back of a small pickup under a metal rack covered by a tarp,” she said. “We about froze to death.”

She and Burns, 73, held onto the tarp to cut down the breeze for about two and half hours of the four hour, 45-minute trip to Cap Haitien. At one point, she peeked out from under the tarp.

“I screamed. All I saw was water all around us,” she said.

The truck was in the middle of a river they had to cross two times on the way to the coastal city. During the entire trip, Pat said they had a little more than three minutes of smooth road.

They arrived in time to catch the bus at Cap Haitien. Pat couldn’t believe her eyes as she took in a large, air-conditioned bus with bathrooms, food and water.

“I went ‘Wow — we’re riding that to the Dominican Republic on paved roads,’” she said.

It was the only pleasant surprise in the large, filthy city, teeming with angry people who couldn’t get fuel and were trying to move loads of supplies through gridlock. She said it took an hour to go a quarter mile through the city.

Their ordeal wasn’t over when they escaped Cap Haitien.

At the border, they were ordered off the bus with their luggage and into a warehouse where they were searched. Finally, after a two-hour wait, they crossed into the paradise of the Dominican Republic that shares the island with Haiti.

“We had smooth roads,” she said. “There were clean houses and prosperity. It was pretty amazing to see.”

Small miracles continued to happen as she and Burns were helped to a hotel and with their airline arrangements in Santiago by a stranger Burns met on the bus.

Pat said she was frightened but never worried during her Haiti experience.

“God put the right people right where they needed to be,” Freebury said. “I was scared at times but I just prayed in those moments. You learn to rely on your faith. I definitely grew as a person.”

She later learned that it rained in Haiti the day after she and Burns left, making the roads impassable. She left just in time so that American and Delta airlines honored her tickets and flew her home.

“I felt a lot of guilt leaving Haiti,” she said. “I cried all the way across America. I wanted to be there so bad.”

Pat arrived to a happy husband and friends and she has since shared her story with the congregation of Epworth United Methodist Church in Kalispell. The congregation opened its hearts and wallets to contribute $1,000 to help the orphanage.

It’s a start on the money she hopes to raise for the two orphanages and the church in Pignon through speaking engagements and a major fundraising benefit she wants help to organize.

“I hope to put together a big concert like CASA’s where people buy a ticket and bring food for the food bank,” she said. “I’d like people to call me [752-1153] if they’re interested in helping.”

Pat also invites groups interested in hearing her story and the needs of the orphans and church to call her. She found herself a local celebrity after the Inter Lake followed her story after the earthquake.

“There’s an amazing amount of interest in this story — I feel like I have a purpose now,” she said.

For more information about either orphanage, go online to www.haitimercymission.com or www.haitihomeofhope.org.

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.