I sat up late Wednesday night, watching weather reports and willing Ivan’s roving eye to turn just a bit farther west.

I like hurricanes. I don’t like the terrible damage and destruction they cause, but I like being in the middle of the excitement.

My mother swears I get it from my grandmother, who would become positively gleeful when powerful nor’easters roared over Long Island.

When a hurricane was headed her way, she rode it out in her darkened house until the eye passed over &045; and then she wanted to venture out during the calm.

If my grandmother passed on her love of storms, she must also have given this suburban-raised girl an appreciation for small towns.

What I saw last week in Natchez and Concordia Parish was phenomenal &045; not just the sheer number of people who grew our population by a few thousand but the kindnesses, great and small, that came pouring out of the woodwork.

Natchez and Vidalia opened their arms to Ivan’s refugees without thinking twice.

Contrast that with a big city like New Orleans, where city officials ordered an evacuation but waited until late on Wednesday to open the Superdome’s shelter to the poor who had no transportation to leave for higher ground.

Late Tuesday evening in Natchez, evacuees began showing up at the Red Cross’ shelter at the David Steckler Multi-Purpose Building; by the next afternoon, three more shelters were filling up in Natchez and Vidalia.

Coastal residents who had been driving for hours &045; some all day and all night &045; were grateful for a spot to lay their heads.

Many could not help but gush about the kindness of our residents.

One couple from Mississippi praised the treatment they’d received at a local hotel; the desk clerks couldn’t find them a room in Natchez or anywhere else, but the effort they put into finding one made it all worthwhile.

People showed up at the shelters to help out or to drop off food or blankets or even just magazines. Restaurants and bed and breakfasts offered special deals to evacuees.

Such treatment is the best advertisement we could give ourselves.

In a week in which a tourism consultant advised that we spend more money on marketing our community to potential visitors, we had a free opportunity to advertise our greatest strength &045; our hospitality.

And that hospitality was noticed beyond Mississippi, as well.

Here’s an e-mail we received from an online reader, J.N. Law, in Lakeland, Calif.:

&8220;Your people must be blessed!

&8220;To turn out like you have to help the folks escaping the hurricane shows how wonderful and how American you all are. I wish I lived in Natchez. I would be proud to be a part of your community.

&8220;Maybe I will sell out and move down there. I would love to live out my life in the company of so many wonderful people.

&8220;God bless you all.&8221;

Kerry Whipple

is editor of The Democrat. She can be reached at 445-3541 or by e-mail at

kerry.whipple@natchezdemocrat.com

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