– by Mary Ragan, PhD, LCSW
The people I met in the Lower 9th Ward of the city of New Orleans lost everything. Hurricane Katrina delivered the first punch. They could have survived that. It was the failure of the levees, the result of long-term neglect and inadequate construction, that sent a powerful rush of water from the Industrial Canal into the neighborhood, destroying everything in its path. Some houses were obliterated entirely; others were lifted off their foundations and floated across the road or down the street. Some houses stood upright, with everything inside completely demolished. Refrigerators were on rooftops, boats in trees, mattresses on utility poles and houses on cars. No matter how many videos or how many news reports a person has seen of this neighborhood, nothing adequately conveys how total the devastation is. The place is a wasteland, the bombed-out epicenter of Katrina and the breach of the levees. The Lower 9th is the place where the power of nature and the failure of the levees combined to produce one of the worst disasters — natural and human-made — ever to occur in this country.
This is the story of my time in the Lower 9th Ward and the people I met there in my role as a social worker on a volunteer mental health team. The Lower 9th, of course, is not all of New Orleans. Eighty percent of the entire city was under water at various times during this storm. Multi-million-dollar homes along Lakeshore Drive facing Lake Ponchartrain were destroyed. Whole neighborhoods in Chalmette and St. Bernard’s Parish were damaged. An oil spill at Murphy Refineries in the Chalmette area resulted in a million barrels of crude oil on the ground and in the water. An EPA official from Washington told me that if Katrina had not been as devastating as it was, the oil spill would have been on the front page of every newspaper in the country. The scope of the spill, and its toxicity, was second only to the Exxon Valdez spill. The schools in that area re-opened during my stay in New Orleans. I asked the EPA man about the safety of the air quality and soil contamination for children. He said: “Let’s put it this way: I wouldn’t let my child go to school there.” The television news that night showed smiling, happy children going into the trailers that are now their school. As I sat watching the report, all I could think of was: “If it were my child. . .”
But, back to the people I met who were the residents of the Lower 9th Ward. What I experienced there is only a small part of a much larger story, whose ending has yet to be written. The story I write is partial and subjective and will not do justice to the devastation I witnessed or the beauty I experienced. I hope it will convey something of the dignity and resilience, faith and life-affirming humor of the people of the Lower 9th.
The community was overwhelmingly African American in composition. Most people who lived in this area were homeowners, some owning more than one property. A woman named Rilla told me: “The media portrays us as the scum of the earth. I have three daughters, two with college educations, one with a masters degree. We’ve always paid our bills and never asked for anything. That is not the story that the media wants to tell.”
By and large, these were working people who lived in this neighborhood for generations, with extended family sometimes living on the same block, or down the street, or over by the levee. It was a community with strong family ties and traditions that were passed from one generation to the next. Many lived their entire lives in the Lower 9th . They are now scattered throughout 48 states. The fabric of an entire community has been rent.
I made twenty-three trips into this neighborhood over the course of two weeks. I accompanied people who were returning to their homes ten weeks after Hurricane Katrina. Most of them were returning for the first time, many of them for the last time. The bus trips into the 9th Ward were called “Look and Leave.” People, for the most part, were not allowed into their homes. The mud, mold and toxic contaminants, coupled with the structural unsoundness of their homes, made it dangerous to enter. More important, perhaps, was the fact that emergency workers were still finding human remains in these homes. Though the official search for human remains was called off on October 3, 2005, rescue teams with cadaver dogs discovered many bodies during the two weeks that I was there.
To take the bus trip into the neighborhood with these residents was both privilege and heartbreak. It had the feel of being with family members when they went to view the body for the first time. As one team member commented: “This is the longest funeral I have ever attended.”
There was Miss Helen (I had to learn to say Miss Helen), 75 years old, widowed, suffering from a heart condition and determined to keep herself calm during this journey. She and her daughters were brought back to her house in a van by two of the National Guard soldiers. She couldn’t enter the house because of its condition, but told Jonathon, the soldier, that her wedding ring was in the house.
“Where is it, M’am?”
“Go in the bedroom to the dresser. In the third drawer, under the towels, toward the back, in a box wrapped in a blue sock is the ring.”
“I’ll try, M’am.”
Several minutes pass and Jonathon comes out looking triumphant. He has the rings, he has some jewelry, he has her late husband’s driver’s license. Miss Helen is happy beyond words. Her daughter, who had presented herself as a jovial, strong and indomitable presence, wept uncontrollably at the sight of her deceased father’s driver’s license. It reminded me of May Sarton’s poem “Humpty Dumpty:”
And from great shocks we do recover.
Like Wright’s hotel we have been fashioned
To take earthquake and stand upright still.
. . . . . . . .
It is the small shock, hardly noticed
. . . . . . .
That slowly undermines the solid walls,
Until the building that withstood an earthquake
Falls clumsily among the usual days.
Our last courage has been subtly shaken:
When the cat dies, we are overtaken.
And there was Oliver the bus driver, who had made endless trips into the Lower 9th, helping people find their homes, slowing down, stopping for them to get just the right picture of their church, their home, their neighbor’s home who couldn’t make the trip. Oliver, a big, burly man with a solid-as-a-rock demeanor, offering daily comfort in the form of a pleasant greeting or an easy joke. After about a week of riding the bus with Oliver, I greeted him on yet another morning run:
“Hi, Oliver. How are you?”
“I’m fine. Can’t complain.”
“You live in New Orleans?”
“Yep.”
“How’s your house?”
“Oh, I lost everything. Five feet of water.”
And there was Arthur, a 78-year-old man who drove from Jackson, MI with his wife who was disabled and unable to walk. She stayed in the car while I went with Mr. Arthur and one of the soldiers to his house where he had lived for 50 years. We got out of the van and walked to this house. His eyes filled with tears but he assured me that he’d be all right: “This happens sometimes.” He had been told that his house had collapsed and he commented with a real sense of pride: “It didn’t come down. It’s still standing.” I asked him if he’d like to take a walk down his street. We walked down a dusty and deserted street, looking at ordinary objects in the strangest places. Mr. Arthur told me about his neighbors, who lived in each house and who used to live there. When he’d had enough, we went back to the van. Our conversation was punctuated several times with him saying to me: “Sure am grateful for this, M’am.” I felt awkward and uncomfortable and was very aware that I was a white woman with an elderly black man who was thanking me for the privilege of looking at his devastated home.
Kaitlin, six years old, was on the bus with her parents, her brother and her sister. I spent a long time talking with Kaitlin to distract her from the destruction visible from the bus window. She came and sat next to me on the bus and read to me from a children’s book we had distributed. It was an activities book designed specifically for helping African American children deal with crisis. The book had lots of poems, which she read with pride. She was very smart. One of the poems used the word “dare.” Kaitlin to me:
“What does “dare” mean?”
“Well, it means that if you dare to do something you probably have courage. Do you know what courage means?”
“Yes. If you have courage it means that your house won’t fall down.”
Another poem was about love. As we did the literary criticism of the poem, I asked Kaitlin:
“Who do you love?”
“I love all the people who died in Katrina and Rita.”
Later in the bus ride, Kaitlin noticed that the book we were reading had one page devoted to the song “This Little Light of Mine.” I asked her if she knew the song. She told me that she not only knew the song but that she could sing it. And so, with her face mask on (to protect her from the contamination in the air), she began: “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. . .” Ever so softly, people on the bus around her picked it up and soon the bus was singing “This Little Light of Mine.” This is the moment I will choose to remember: when a six year-old girl, singing behind a face mask, made broken people sing, and then smile.
And as for music, there was Sergeant Duskin, one of the Guardsmen, who is the lead singer in his gospel group back home. When so moved, he would go over to a group of residents waiting for a bus to leave and sing: “Amazing Grace” or any number of gospel hymns. He sang to adults and he sang to children, but especially he sang to the children. I remember the day he approached nine-year-old Abby, sat down next to her and sang Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love of All:”
I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride
To make it easier
Let the children’s laughter
Remind us how we used to be . . .
When he finished his song, Abby engaged him in conversation. It was clear that he was the person that she wanted to talk to:
“How come we’re not allowed to go back into our neighborhood?”
Duskin: “They’re still finding bodies. Can’t let people back there.”
Abby, eyes wide as saucers: “Did they find any bodies at 2024 Delery Street?”
Duskin, finally getting it: “No, no. They didn’t find any bodies there.”
Abby looks only slightly relieved.
The next day was Sgt. Duskins’ birthday and Abby and her brother Samwell, age five, decided they wanted to give him a present. They made a crown out of construction paper, attached a balloon to it, put it in a box, wrapped it and gave it to him. When he opened it and took out his “crown,” he saw that they had written on it: “We love soldier.”
There was the nameless woman who came to the site, caked with mud and dirt, shoeless, wearing only underpants and a t-shirt, shouting obscenities, enraged at whomever came near her. She was out of control and clearly psychotic. One of our team members, Megan, followed the woman back to her home in order to get her in the police van. The woman resisted, repeatedly yelling at her to leave her alone. After numerous attempts to shake free of Megan, the woman said: “You aren’t going to stop following me, are you, bitch?” To which Megan replied: “No, I’m not. I will not stop following you until I know you’re safe.” Eventually, the police took her in their van to one of the few functioning hospitals. Though we never learned her name, she did say that she watched her mother drown in the house just down the street from her. I believe that. I also believe that her “madness” was simply an overt expression of what most people on those buses were feeling. The difference was this: they contained it. She wailed, she shouted, she protested, she kicked, she screamed, she said a resounding “No” to reality. Who of the others would not have wanted to do the same?
Another story of protest: Pat, who fell apart at the sight of her deceased father’s driver’s license, is the same woman I came to call the Sol Alinsky of the Look and Leave Program. She, her husband, her mother, her aunt, her sister and her cousin all gained access to their respective homes. She retrieved a set of African masks, two large vases that were miraculously intact, and other assorted items. After spending the morning with this family, we sat down to a Salvation Army version of lunch: canned hash and canned black-eyed peas. I inquired of Pat:
“How is it that you folks have a military escort in a van to return to your homes, go inside and actually retrieve some things?”
“Well, my sister Sharon started comin’ down here right away when the program opened. She talked with Col. Sneed every day, explaining that we needed to get into our homes. Eventually, she started cryin’ and shakin’ and just plain goin’ crazy. That was when Col. Sneed said he’d get us back there.”
To Pat:
“I admire your strategy and your persistence.”
Pat: “We’re just followin’ the advice of Malcolm X: “By any means necessary.’”
At this point her mother interjects: “Within reason.”
“No,” said Pat, “I mean: BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.”
It was as if Martin Luther King and Malcolm X sat down together for lunch over black-eyed peas.
There are stories upon stories upon stories – from the strong and dignified residents of the obliterated 9th Ward, to the bus driver, to the person running Le Petit Espresso coffee shop, to the woman behind the counter at the Café du Monde store, to every business person and resident of New Orleans. Katrina, Rita and the breach of the levees have left of trail of destruction and ruined lives unprecedented in our lifetime. I’m thinking of a woman from the 9th Ward who lost everything to this catastrophe, who said to me: “I used to watch this kind of disaster when it would happen in Florida or other places. I’d sit in front of my TV, tears would roll down my cheeks and I’d say ‘Oh, those poor people.’ And then I’d go on with my life.” Having had the privilege of spending two weeks in the Lower 9th Ward in the aftermath of Katrina, I wonder now if I will simply “go on with my life,” feeling bad for “those poor people,” or if I will have the courage to remember what I’ve seen. And if I do remember, will it make any difference?