Katrina and The Cajun Navy - 7 Years Later (Pt. 1)

This is the second installment on this topic.

To read from the beginning please go to posts beginning 9/20/12.

      
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA is a shining jewel among only a handful of the truly unique cities of the world.  It is my birthplace.  Though not my residence since 1973, it is still home.  It will forever be home.  It has also become the adopted second home of my wife, Sara.  A native of Lake Charles in the heel of the boot that is Louisiana, she has grown to love New Orleans in the toe of that boot, as passionately as I do. 

credit Wikipedia

New Orleans has always been our favorite place to visit with each other, with friends and with the kids.  For any reason, we will go.  Whatever is the intended purpose, it becomes secondary to the underlying "spiritual" exploration...the tiring rejuvenation that a trip to NOLA always becomes.  Very simply, it is our established, never-disappointing place to walk, to eat, to relax … to be.  It is the classic melting pot of cultures and traditions, with diversity like nowhere else.  Joie de vivre to excess, with endless variety of culture, architecture, tolerance and food.

Oh, the food! 

         

August 29, 2005 and a vicious lady named Katrina changed the city forever.  The physical structure, the vessel containing and holding the people and spirit of New Orleans was dealt a blow that will impact it for generations to come.  In just a few days I would question first-hand whether the heart and soul of what had always been New Orleans, would ever return.

NOAA Katrina

          “Katrina” is now a name to replace “Betsy”, in my mind, as the Queen Killer Bee of hurricanes.  (To folks in the area, use of the term "Hurricane" is unnecessary and redundant for those storms with whom we are on a first name basis.  Audrey, Betsy, Camille, et al).

In 1965, Betsy cut a wide, wet destructive swath through Southeast Louisiana.  As a 10 year old, I experienced that massive storm as something fun, as an adventure.  The roof of the neighbors garage, flipped off of its structure and resting on our back fence, and the twisted steel I-beam of the K&B Drug store sign on Veterans Highway are two memories dug into my brain.  Driving between debris and downed wires...Priceless!!  

Yeah, really!
(my older siblings had drivers' licenses)

As a ten  year old, these were exciting and almost happy memories because it was all exciting and new and everyone we knew was OK.  (Of course it carries a different perspective when you "grow up" and become a property owner).

In Betsy's aftermath, low to moderate income families, in our wood-frame subdivision that had sprouted out of the suburban woods of New Orleans in the late 50's, were without electricity for two weeks following the storm.  With no lights or luxuries inside, seemingly hundreds of kids played day and night in the yards and streets of the neighborhood, sometimes dodging debris and mild street flooding.  




Toddlers and teens danced in the streets to Beatles’ and British Invasion era songs playing on battery-powered transistor radios.  Families who all knew each other, carried on endless conversations, sitting on the hoods of cars like they were on swings on their front porches.

These happy memories of a unique childhood experience established, in my mind, the benchmark of hurricanes, that is until August 29, 2005 and a witch named Katrina.

          

She was a 250-mile wide monster, and she gouged a path of devastation from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico through the marshes and over strips of high ground along a course that ran just east of New Orleans.






The ultimate damage she caused surpassed the combined damage done by her predecessors Betsy, Camille, and Andrew.  Surely the swath cut in Sherman’s fiery march to the sea paled in comparison to the physical damage inflicted upon Southeast Louisiana, the City of New Orleans and the Gulf coast of Mississippi and Alabama.  

In many respects, for those directly affected and others touched in some way by Katrina, it is likely that the emotional and psychological trauma caused will be as devastating and impactful as that suffered by the victims of the cowardly terrorist attack on New York City on September 11, 2001.  The death toll of both was in the thousands.



Shortly after Katrina’s hurricane force fury turned to clearing skies and mild breezes in the city, residents and officials breathed a premature sigh of relief.  Briefly, it appeared as if NOLA had again escaped the “Big One”.  Then a levee broke, and then another.  Instead of waters subsiding, it subtly appeared to be rising in areas far away from the breaks.  Then the rise became not so subtle but obvious.  Water flowed into the below sea level bowl in which the homes and businesses of the city rested peacefully.

 On the morning following the storm, a seasoned CNN reporter could not hold back tears and her emotions as she detailed her boat trip into various parts of the City the evening before.  She recounted tales of people trapped in attics, crying for help and thousands of others stranded on rooftop islands dotting the new Venetian-esque landscape.

          On Tuesday morning, Sara and I were disturbed over the early images being received from the city, but following routine we appeared at our respective accounting and law offices and continued to listen to ongoing reports.

 
I found myself unsettled, distracted and restless, un-focused and unable to concentrate.  It turns out Sara was as disrupted as I was.  On too many occasions previously, I had been touched by circumstances in which I considered contributing time, work, experience and spirit to a worthy project, but lost motivation because the compulsion was not strong enough.  This time was different.  This was my home, a place and a people I love.  By 9:15 that morning, the magnetic draw yanking my spirit and brain to New Orleans was uncontrollable.  Sara's brain and heart had taken her down a similar path to the same point.

          Step in Ronny Lovett, a country boy originally from Georgia.

(not Ronny)

Two years my junior, he had come to Louisiana as a construction worker 20 years before and had turned a small startup company in 1995 into a 400-600 employee operation competing with the national big boys in industrial construction.


  His innate business sense and savvy were often surpassed by his consuming and limitless generosity.  Openly generous to his employees at R & R Construction in Lake Charles, Louisiana, he is unceasingly, but quietly generous to simple folks and children in need.

         
 Ronny is an unassuming champion of basic principles, who knows the power of being direct.  He is not without blemish, but he understands and lives with a crystal clear, black and white sense of right and wrong like an Andy of Mayberry.  His single experience with the juvenile system as an 11 year old over the attempted theft of a 7¢ jelly worm still defines his clear sense of justice.


 To this day he describes that memory as the reason he would not, “steal a shell from a parking lot”.  Better still that he found out as a grown man that his afternoon in jail, his court appearance and probation were all orchestrated by the judge and his daddy who were close friends.

With Sara and Ronny conspiring to create this project, it soon took on the momentum of a honey-soaked marshmallow rolling down a hillside of granola.  Pulled by natural forces, the project grew gently but uncontrollably.  By 10:00 a.m., the troops of R & R began mobilizing.  Drawn from a force of over 500, these black-hatted, petro-chemical refinery construction workers quickly mobilized an armada of their personal bayou boats (bateaus).  This determined assembly of strong-willed Cajuns were intent to immediately descend upon the City of New Orleans.  Although only about 200 miles from the city, many of these guys were hard-working, blue collar, home-bodies who had never been to the Crescent City before.

Katrina and The Cajun Navy - 7 Years Gone By (Prologue)

Prologue

The main character in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind was uncontrollably driven by a compelling, unknown force to construct what turned out to be a model of the alien Mother Ship's landing site at the climax of the story.

I have mentally analogized that unidentified and relentless compulsion to the irresistible internal forces that drove me to do two things after the passage of Hurricane Katrina through southeastern Louisiana in late August of 2005.

First: Something indescribably powerful dragged my heart to my hometown of New Orleans after this killer storm.  It was comparable to any internal force I have ever experienced.  YES, ANY! 

Many felt the same, but I was fortunate to have resources to actually get my body into the city through the compassion and generosity of my client and friend, Ronny Lovett, owner of R&R Construction, Inc.

Second: I was also overcome after returning home, with the urge to document what I had seen, heard and experienced.  In the days immediately following Katrina, inside the ravaged confines of the City of New Orleans, the only information available to us and to residents was live, local radio.  Stations had converted exclusively to talk radio format and callers shared stories and circumstances similar to those we were encountering from the foot of Canal Street to the flood waters of New Orleans East, Mid-City and St. Bernard Parish.

Head-quartered at the foot of Canal Street, we were trying to function inside of an isolated, distinct and totally self-reliant universe with limited resources under outrageous conditions.  For a few days, everyone inside was mostly ignorant of the depiction of events being seen nationally in the media.

What I saw and heard in national media in the weeks and months following Katrina painted a different picture than what we experienced while we were there.  I cannot say the reporting was exaggerated, because what was there cannot be exaggerated.  My perception is that what was passed off as “information” during the days immediately following Katrina, was often conjecture, if not fabrication in media's quest to get the story first and present it dramatically to gain market share.  That is unfortunate and was unnecessary as what was there was dramatic enough.

I hope that anyone reading this brief journal of experiences will gain an accurate idea of what was reality in those first few days after the storm, and that they will appreciate the magnitude of the impact on the millions of individual lives significantly changed by Katrina.

I kept this journal to preserve what I saw and to dedicate it to the people, the culture and the attitude of my hometown of New Orleans.  I never published it as many more talented writers produced thousands of pages in the aftermath of the storm to the point that people actually got tired of reading about it.  (Doug Brinkley's Great Deluge is shown above, not as advertising, but because he mentions our efforts in the book, and he's a pretty nice guy). 

Now, seven years later, with the perspective of time and recovery, I will present this in the context of this blog for those of you who want to know and want to remember.

The spirit of the City of New Orleans and its people lives on!

From NOLA and Back with the Cajun Navy

This will be my second attempt at blogging.  The first and only installment of my first blogspot was a scratch-the-surface analysis of the profound truth that true New Orleans French Bread cannot be duplicated outside of New Orleans.

Some analogy was drawn to the return of bell bottom pants to the fashion scene.




I think the connection was that the French bread recipes of New Orleans are protected (as opposed to forgotten) and that maintains their value and prolongs and preserves them for future generations.  Fashion horrors like bell bottoms are forgotten (as opposed to protected) by intervening generations and faded memories of the horror are replaced by fond reminiscences of the past resulting in youngsters of the newer generations adopting them as their own (absence makes the heart grow fonder), thus preserving them.   Huh???  Oh well.  I was astonished that fellow deep-thinking bloggers did not immediately inundate my enlightened blog with insight into this phenomenon that I had discovered.

Yeah, like I said:  Huh??

I also recall that I attempted to set ground rules in that seminal blog to prohibit personal attacks on participants, thus encouraging discussion to be directed at ideas and not personalities.  Then, and now, it amazes me that online interactive discussions routinely denigrate into personal attacks, whether in blogs, comments to news or sports stories, and virtually everywhere on the internet that interaction is allowed.  This occurs whether the discussion is about rival sports teams or someone expressing sympathy at the loss of a loved one.  Perhaps it’s the anonymity that is allowed (or encouraged).  Perhaps it’s what I will call (once and only once with no links provided intentionally) the Hilton/Kardashian Age, in which talent and fame need not be connected and everyone is trying to scoop up their 15 seconds of fame.

Andy Warhol allowed for each of us having 15 minutes of fame but the internet age has dramatically compressed that.  The interweb blogging machine thingy gives everyone the perception that they can say exactly what they are thinking without any social filters that might consider civility.  Anyway, this is still a hope that I can encourage participants (if there are any), to avoid personal attacks on those presenting other ideas and to actually address ideas, even if they leave the original point of the discussion.  Just a thought.

Although I have not lived there for nearly 40 years (and for 15 before that I technically lived in the suburbs), I consider  New Orleans, LA (USA) my home.  It’s in my blood and always will be.  Second in the DNA composition of my blood and connected to that first fact is I am an insufferable New Orleans Saints fan and permanent member of The Who Dat Nation.


I can’t help my love for either the city or the team.  It’s like the color of my eyes (blue)…Can’t change it.  I remember as a 10 year old hearing on the radio that the new franchise destined for New Orleans would be named the Saints, and I was appalled.  In the then-significantly smaller NFL of the Colts, Cardinals, Bears, Giants, Rams etc. why the heck the “Saints”.  Of course I know now why it is the perfect name for the team, and no child within 100 miles of the city reaches the age of 2 without knowing how to sing and to dance to “When the Saints GoMarching In”.



In old Tulane Stadium, before the Superdome and before the soccer style kickers in the league, I watched Tom Dempsey, overweight and with half a foot, kick the first 63 yard field goal, a record that stood for decades.  It has now been matched 3 times, but never beaten.  In 2010, my youngest son and I got to attend Super Bowl XLIV (44) in Miami and saw the Saints whip Archie’s son (Peyton) and the Colts.  (Luv ya Peyton - Go Broncos...just not against the Saints).  Hopefully that’s not a once in a lifetime experience.  What I hope will be is what has come to be known as “The Homecoming”.  I was fortunate (at the risk of exaggerating I’d say “blessed”) to be in the Superdome for the re-opening of the stadium one year after Hurricane Katrina.  It was waaaaay more than a sporting event and represented the resurrection of the city.  The City of New Orleans and our Saints are imbedded deep within my inner core.

Bones

Grunch & Bones McGregor

As the 9^th of 10 kids (yeah Catholic) I was skinny as a bean pole and bore all of the nick-names, “skinny minny”,         “boney-maroney”, “bone head”, “whiteroach”(?) etc., but the one that stuck was Bones.  I have adult friends and relatives who still call me Bones and Uncle Bones. One that didn’t really stick, but it was exclusively used by my Dad (aka The Grunch), was Bones McGregor.  I don’t know where it came from, but I always assumed it was connected to the sports equipment manufacturer “McGregor”.  From that moniker come my occasionally used screen names “Bones McGregor” and @boneymac.  No deeper meanings or double entendre…just a nick-name my dad called me.

Being from NOLA, one area of my brain stores un-erasable knowledge of hurricanes.  Until Katrina and Rita in 2005, the most prominent storms had been Betsy and Camille in the late 60’s.  The eye of Betsy passed over the roof of our family’s small wood-frame track home while we listened to local storm reports on a battery powered transistor radio while mopping water up from under doorways and waiting for the “picture window” to implode.  Fortunately, it never did.

On the heels of Betsy came Camille a year or two later.   This time dad sprung for a room at the Jung Hotel on Canal Street, a huge, square, plain-brick (trans. "butt-ugly") downtown New Orleans hotel, then touted to be the largest in the city.  Fortunately for us, but devastatingly for the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Camille turned north in the last hours before land-fall.  Only Katrina, nearly 40 years later could wipe out the remnant destruction of Camille, by adding a layer of destruction over the top of it.

Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Rita

Katrina will be the detailed topic of my first set of blog posts.  Suffice it to say now, being in the streets of New Orleans within 48 hours of Katrina’s visit, left memories and images I could never have anticipated and will never forget.  I had no time to come down with post traumatic stress disorder because 3 weeks after returning home to southwest Louisiana, Hurricane Rita devastated that area and put an oak tree in our bedroom.  It took a year and a half to repair and move back in.

I am the father of 5 children ages 13 – 30 and Pe'Pere to one grandson with another on the way.  Only one of my children (to my knowledge) has spent any time in jail. That was just a few hours and no one was hurt.  I “married up” as they say.  My wife of 19 years is a strong, charismatic (in the traditional, not the evangelical sense) and special person, unique among her gender.  We were both political junkies when we met at a campaign seminar during my unsuccessful run for the state legislature 21 years ago.  With age our political feelings remain strong, but are now held in check by severe cynicism resulting from the non-productive nature of the slash and burn politics of the last 20 years.

Despite the early death of my father and of other family members and friends, I have lived a moderately charmed life…I mean I’m not Bill Gates, Bill Clinton or the governor of some south Pacific island, but I feel very fortunate.

I’ve always fancied myself a writer with a combination of adequate brain power and perspective to have ideas worth discussing.  I blame my French laissez faire blood and upbringing for my less than disciplined approach to writing.  I’m sure I am fooling myself into thinking that this blogging stuff will be just what the doctor ordered.

I'll start with something I've already written.  It was written seven years ago after being lucky enough to get into the City of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  We were among the various groups of Louisianians who brought boats into the flooded city and later came to be know en masse as The Cajun Navy.