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.