The Press Club of Southeast Texas honored Jamey Harrison, Kurt Roccaforte and Carl Thibodeaux as Newsmakers of the Year Friday night for their leadership during Hurricane Ike recovery in Bridge City and other Orange County communities.

Harrison is superintendent of Bridge City schools; Roccaforte, mayor of Bridge City; and Thibodeaux, Orange County judge.

More than 280 people gathered in the Lamar University Reception Center to salute the three men and five other finalists for Newsmaker of the Year.

Also honored were internationally renowned photographer-educator Keith Carter; Beaumont Fire Chief Anne Huff; the team of Joe Worley and David Deslatte, organizers of “Mid-County Kindness”; and Bob Wortham, a leader in hurricane response on the Bolivar Peninsula.

Press Club members select the finalists and the top recipients of the Newsmaker of the Year award, honoring the Southeast Texans who had the most significant positive impact on issues and events during the year 2008.

The Press Club also presented Excellence in the Media Awards for achievements by print and broadcast journalists and public relations professionals. Now in its 18th year, the banquet is the major annual fundraiser for the Press Club Memorial Scholarship, awarded to Lamar communication students.

The 2009-2010 recipient is Julie Garcia, a senior from Port Neches and editor of the University Press at Lamar.

The top Newsmakers – Harrison, Roccaforte and Thibodeaux – have seen a lot in their combined years of public service.

But Hurricane Ike proved the biggest challenge of their careers.

They knew they would have to work together to overcome problems that dwarfed even the damage from Hurricane Rita just three years earlier.

No community suffered a greater degree of damage than Bridge City.

“I’ve never seen local officials respond this efficiently to a disaster before,” Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) spokesman Mark Neveau said.

Roccaforte could hardly believe what he saw in the aftermath of Ike.

Only 14 houses of the 3,500 in the city did not have standing water in them.

More than 250 people had to be rescued at the height of the flood waters.

Despite the damage, Roccaforte said, the people of Bridge City would rebuild their city home by home.

He knew the first need was temporary housing.

If Bridge City residents had travel trailers to live in at their property, they could stay in town and repair their damaged homes.

That wasn’t easy because FEMA officials quickly told him they were “out of the travel trailer business” after problems with victims of hurricanes Rita and Katrina.

Harrison also refused to be overwhelmed by the mountain of problems he faced. Bridge City High School was the only school in the district that didn’t flood.

He was determined the school district would have a full school year despite sustaining the most damage of 30 school districts in the region.

Classes resumed within a month of the storm, with students receiving free lunches for the first few weeks because parents faced their own problems, at home and at work.

Thibodeaux knew he had to help Bridge City recover, even though a third of Orange was flooded. and Vidor and Pinehurst had significant damage too. Many county buildings were also flooded, including the county courthouse.

Virtually overnight, Thibodeaux helped oversee the transformation of an empty parking lot on Highway 90 in Orange into a mobile command center filled with volunteers from around the county, numerous tanker trucks carrying thousands of gallons of gasoline and three tents holding 1,060 cots, several portable showers and laundry units and more than 200 portable toilets.

It was one of 16 set up throughout the region after the storm.

The debris cleanup was also daunting. Within a month of the storm, one contractor had picked up more than 10,000 loads of household debris – barely more than a third of the county’s estimated total.

Finally, Bridge City and Orange County began to recover from Ike’s devastation.

Hurricane Ike was a thunderous shock to the taxpayers who put their trust in Kirk Roccaforte, Jamey Harrison and Carl Thibodeaux.

But because of their many long days and incredible tenacity, it wasn’t a knockout punch. (More)