By Maddy Wagner, News Editor

Moving to a new high school can be challenging for anyone. But junior Whisper Meacham, a sweet-natured Ocracoke native who grew up playing in

the ocean and drawing and swinging a baseball bat with the boys, has begun to settle in to life at First Flight High School. And she’s brought with her a sense of community and creativity that is rooted on an island where everyone is considered family. 

“It’s kind of overwhelming, coming from a school of 30 high school kids who all know each other and were raised together, most of them cousins or related,” Meacham said. “The first few weeks were surely nerve-wracking.”

The Meachams have lived on the East Coast of the Carolinas for 25 years, but just recently moved from Ocracoke to Kitty Hawk. What brought them to the northern Outer Banks is Meachams’ mother’s popular, local soap business, Milk Street Soaps. The ferry, Meacham said, was becoming too hard for her thriving business. 

Ocracoke, the tiny island just south of Hatteras, has a year-round population of less than 700 people and is only accessible by ferry. Growing up on its sandy shores has shaped Meacham and given her an experience that most children in more populated areas don’t have.  

The tiny island of Ocracoke has a community-oriented atmosphere, and growing up in that type of community gave Meacham an amazing sense that family isn’t just immediate blood relatives, it’s the friends and neighbors surrounding her in the community.

“She is a very loving and giving sort of person to be with, so I believe having had the ‘everyone-on-Ocracoke-is-family’ experience served to reinforce what seems to come naturally for her,” said Denise Deacon, a friend and neighbor of Whisper and her family. “I also think that being surrounded by so much natural beauty helped mold her creativity and her artistic side.”

Only weeks after the Meacham family moved to Kitty Hawk, the whipping winds and devastating flood waters of Hurricane Dorian began spiraling toward the Carolinas.  

“We didn’t think it was going to be that bad … just a little wind and a little water,” Meacham said. 

Her family headed to Ocracoke over Labor Day weekend to help family and friends prepare before the storm hit.

As the storm approached the barrier islands of the Outer Banks the nerves started to hit for  Meacham. She watched Dorian batter the shores of Ocracoke through Facebook and the videos her friends were sending her via Snapchat.

“It was pretty nerve-wracking, since you’re so far away,” Meacham said.

The damage left to Ocracoke as the waters receded was devastating. 

Meacham herself hasn’t been back since the storm made landfall, but her parents have been going back and forth helping friends and family with the cleanup of their island home. Her family had some of their personal belongings on their home on Ocracoke.

“We surely did lose a lot, but we’re one of the more fortunate families because we have a place up here that we were already renting,” Meacham said. 

Though the Meachams were one of the more fortunate families on Ocracoke, seeing destructive winds and storm surge impact your island home can be a difficult thing. 

“Material possessions aside, I know her family was terribly affected by seeing all the destruction that their numerous close friends on the island also suffered,” Deacon said. “I know they have been down there often, helping many others as much as possible in the weeks since the storm.”

For Meacham, it’s been an emotional fall with starting at a new school and seeing how badly her island home of Ocracoke has been impacted from Dorian. But for this resilient junior, she is already thriving in her new community.  

Junior Maddy Wagner can be reached at [email protected].