Hurricane Hilda changed the life of the Broussard family with loss of two sons

All though it was 50 years ago, one Vermilion Parish woman who lost her brothers when the water towers collapsed, can recall the night like it was yesterday.
Vivian Broussard Gilbert lost Vernice and Duffy Broussard, who died when the water tower fell during Hurricane Hilda. Vernice was 20 and Duffy was 28 years old. Till this day, no one knows why the tower fell.
The two brothers were two of eight men killed when the water tower dumped 44,000 gallons of water on top of them.
Gilbert, now living in Abbeville, relived the tragedy Sunday afternoon in a special 50th Anniversary event held at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Erath.
Gilbert was in her 30s in 1964. She remembers the day the storm was coming, her family left Vermilion Parish for Lafayette to escape. Duffy stayed behind to help protect the appliance store located in downtown Erath.
Vernice drove his family to Lafayette to escape the winds of Hurricane Hilda. The Broussards heard on the radio that Hurricane Hilda turned and was not coming towards the parish; their mother wanted to return to the parish. Vernice drove them back. But before they arrived, they heard the storm turned back and was heading towards Vermilion Parish.
He eventually drove them to the old J.H. Williams gymnasium (old Abbeville High gym) for shelter as the weather got worse.
His mother begged her younger son not to leave the gym and stay with the family. Vernice left, and it would be the last time she saw her son.
Vernice just arrived at city hall and walked into the building when the tower fell, killing eight of the nine people in the building. Duffy was helping man the citizen band radio.
Many in the Abbeville gym had radios and heard the bad news that the water tower had fallen.
“Everyone shut off their radios so we could not hear the news,” said Gilbert. “My mother said, ‘I know my two boys died. I know. I know.’”
Gilbert reassured her mother her sons were going to be OK. Then someone from Erath came to the gym looking for a Broussard family member to go and identify the bodies of the Broussard brothers.
Gilbert said they approached her father to go to Erath, and he went to Gilbert to see if she wanted to go with him.
“I told him I did not want to go. I wanted to remember them the way I knew them,” she said.
He left to go to Erath, but he nor Gilbert informed Broussard’s mother that she lost her two sons. After noticing her husband not there, she began asking.
“‘Where is your daddy? Where is he?’ She said, ‘I know your daddy is going to see if the boys because they probably got killed.’ I told her I did not know.”
He returned and told her the bad news.
“She was hysteric,” said Gilbert.
The family had to keep her sedated for two weeks after losing her sons. She would wake up at night screaming. Overtime, they stopped giving her medicine. Members of the church talked to her about her loss. Gilbert said the people who finally eased her mind and helped her deal the deaths were nuns. Unsure of what they told her till this day, Gilbert said, it helped.
Overtime the Broussard family healed but never forgot its loss.
Sunday, Gilbert and her other brother, along with family members, attended the 50th anniversary. Pictures of her two brothers were shown on the screen.
“It seemed like it brought it all back,” Gilbert added. “It was a good in a way because I feel now everyone is sharing the same pain we had. Everyone is facing it together.
“To me, it made me feel good to know the whole community cared enough to put this on for all the family members.”