LUMBERTON — Ginger Britt’s journals describe all the times she has stared down death during the past 10 years: two cancers whose chemotherapy treatment was nearly unbearable; innumerable operations to remove recurring tumors; and most recently, a storm that broke her body and destroyed her home.

She flips through the water-stained pages of a brightly-colored journal. Her neat cursive, penned in blue ink, is slightly smeared on the wrinkled pages, but she’s happy to have even a damaged momento: Of her 10 journals, only the two most recent were recovered from the wreckage of her home; the other eight, dating back a decade, were lost on May 11, when a storm blew through Long Branch, east of Lumberton, wrecking her home and giving her yet another obstacle to confront.

Britt, 43, was in her double-wide mobile home — cream colored, with brick underpinnings, a front porch and back deck — when it started to shake “like someone was trying to jimmy it off the underpinnings.”

She doesn’t remember much after that.

Rescuers found her near a oak tree that still stood tall among the rubble. After 17 years battling health problems, she added broken bones — including her collar bone, vertebrae, ribs, and a femur — and a punctured lung to her hospital chart. She was the only person injured in the storm, according to the National Weather Service.

Britt said her first thought, through a cloud of pain, when she regained consciousness was how she wanted to see her son, Justin, 18, play his last baseball game at Fairmont High School.

“She lives for that boy,” Elton Britt, her father-in-law, said.

For the past 10 years, Britt’s bedtime ritual has been writing page-long journal entries about the day’s events, how she felt, and any other musings. Her husband of 22 years, Teddy, 46, and her son read her entries occasionally, she said, but otherwise her reflections are private.

Britt was diagnosed with Gardner syndrome — a rare, genetic disorder characterized by tumors in the colon and a propensity to develop colon and thyroid cancer — just after Justin was born. She had her first surgery when he was 6 months old, and doctors were not optimistic.

“I didn’t think I was going to live,” she said. “(Journals) were my son’s way of knowing me if I passed away.”

But Britt didn’t start journaling until seven years after she first began treatment for cancers and tumors.

“The only thing that was really, really bad was the chemo,” she said. “I didn’t have to journal to remember that — it was the worst thing I’ve ever been through physically. Just horrible.”

Britt graduated from Robeson Community College with a degree in computer programing and worked as a shipping clerk until 1993, two years after she was diagnosed.

“I kept working because we thought it would only be one operation,” she said. “But then they just kept going.”

As her treatment continued, she used journaling to combat “chemo brain,” she said.

“I couldn’t remember anything — it was all like a dream,” she said. “I wanted to be able to go back and read about everything — the good and the bad.”

Journaling has also been cathartic Britt’s never-ending battle with incurable Gardner syndrome.

“It helps me remember the good times,” she said. “Everyone starts feeling sorry for themselves, but I can remember what I need to be thankful for. I can go back to three weeks ago and see it was a lot worse.”

The morning of the storm, Virginia and Elton Britt, her parents-in-law who lived next door in a house Elton built, took their grandson to school. When they returned, Britt’s house was gone.

“Her car was there, and I knew where her house was, that’s were Ginger was,” Virginia said.

Next door, their home was missing its roof, which had blown into a swamp 600 yards behind the house. Elton noted that if the trailer hadn’t hit a utility pole, Britt’s house would be in the same swamp.

The National Weather Service said 125-mph straight-line winds caused the damage. While there was no evidence of rotating winds, the damage was consistent with an EF-2 tornado on an Enhanced Fujita Scale of 0–5, the report said.

When rescue crews arrived that morning, all that was left of Britt’s home was the front porch, with two white flower pots symmetrically standing guard in front of a debris-strewn lot. Her home has since been reduced to a heap of rubble, with a mattress and ceramic toilet bowl the only distinguishable objects in the pile.

Britt is in a temporary house while her family builds a new home, “but I just can’t seem to get excited about it,” she said. She lived on Sadie Drive for nearly 13 years. “Everyone was back there — the whole family,” she said. “It was so quiet; a nice place to stay.”

Once Britt started her rehabilitation process in Florence, S.C., she had two requests: her journals and her son’s baseball pins, Virginia said.

“I realized I wanted to start back documenting my new mountain to climb,” Britt said.

During her week in rehabilitation, Britt could only listen to her son’s four baseball games, but by late May she was well enough to attend Fairmont’s last game in the sectional championships. The superstitious team had reserved her seat while she was gone, and so Teddy borrowed the team’s John Deere Gator to transport the wheelchair-bound Britt to her spot in the crowd.

She watched Justin go 3-for-3 with an RBI and score three runs to help his team advance to the Eastern Regionals final series of the state 2-A playoffs.

“Not having her here for the past three or four games was tough,” Justin told The Robesonian after the game. “But knowing she was going to be here cheering for me tonight... it put a new heart in me.”

Fairmont fell just short of progressing to the state championship series.

In late May, she cheered her son from a wheelchair, with staples and screws holding together broken bones. Since then, she has progressed to a walker, and her only hardware is a brace to steady her torso until her one broken and two cracked vertebrae heal.

Otherwise, Britt said she’s been journaling about cards, donations, and other kindnesses the community has bestowed on her family.

“People have been so good,” she said. “It’s hard to think about all the bad when you look at all the good that’s been done.”

__________

Message

of thanks

On May 11 the Long Branch community was changed forever. A devastating storm — straight-line winds — destroyed the homes of Elton and Virginia Britt and their son Teddy Britt and daughter-in-law Ginger as well. However, the blessing that came afterward has been immeasurable. Immediately God stepped in and turned this catastrophe around.

Our family cannot begin to thank the people who became involved from the beginning and are still giving to this day. Words cannot begin to express our appreciation for the kids who salvaged pictures, the prayers that were offered and the many donations that have been given. We may never know who you are or be able to give a personal thank you, but we want you to know God has seen it all. Your blessings will be returned as the Bible so states.

We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. May God bless you all.

— The family of Elton and Teddy Britt