Evacuees from New Orleans get engaged on Boynton bus
Dion Houston tells the story with a wink. It began 2 1/2 years ago, before the flood.
“I was just a handsome young man walking down the street and she accepted my conversation,” said the 43-year-old New Orleans native of the day he met his fiancée. They are among the 215 evacuees at the Palm Meadows Training Center who began arriving Sunday night courtesy of owner Frank Stronach.
Miata Gipson, 25, laughs and fixes a look of tender exasperation on Houston, a short man with the names of former girlfriends etched on his arms. The couple spoke Thursday from a balcony outside their room at the center.
On Wednesday, during a field trip organized by volunteers to Wal-Mart in which evacuees received $665 in spending money, Houston got down on his knees. He had a white-gold ring in his hand that he’d bought at the store’s jewelry counter, as well as two wedding bands. Gipson, who is pregnant with the couple’s baby, chose front-row seats on the bus back to Palm Meadows. Houston saw his moment.
“I said, `Would you marry me?’ and the whole bus got quiet and she said `Yeah,’” Houston said.
Days earlier, they had both crouched in the attic of Gipson’s house in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward as Hurricane Katrina’s brackish waters washed over the city.
There were wrenching separations. When the water was still low, Gipson sent her 2-year-old son, Mikel, from a prior relationship, to what she thought was the safety of her parents’ house while she and Houston kept watch on her home.