[StBernard] 'There's still a long way to go'

[Westley Annis]

'There's still a long way to go'

Evacuees brace for emotional return to La.

BY KATE BRENNAN 
FLORIDA TODAY 

Inside their 30-foot-long FEMA trailer, Dean and Michelle Martin hung
photographs of their two teenage daughters and 23-year-old son.

The family photos keep them motivated as they rebuild their New Orleans
home, which sat in 12 feet of water for weeks after Hurricane Katrina
devastated the Gulf Coast last August.

"You have to remember why you're doing it, otherwise it's easy to go crazy,"
said Michelle, 41, on a recent trip back to work and help her husband.

After nine months of living on Merritt Island, where they evacuated after
the storm, the family is preparing to head home.

But the boarded-up businesses, rotted houses and abandoned streets hardly
resemble their cherished community.

"There's still a long way to go before this town comes back," said Dean,
also 41, who moved back to New Orleans in November to help repair and
strengthen the city's damaged levees.

Even if it's not the same, returning home to St. Bernard Parish where Dean
and Michelle grew up, fell in love and raised their children, is important
to the couple, now married more than 20 years.

"I have a vision that in time it will be a nice place to live again. And I'm
OK to wait for that," Michelle said. "I don't have to have a perfectly
manicured lawn."

Slowly, signs of life are returning to St. Bernard. A Walgreens recently
opened, a few restaurants are back in business, and banners reading "Let's
go St. Bernard!" offer encouragement and hope.

Still, most of the estimated 30,000 destroyed homes have not been touched.
Piles of loose shingles, broken siding and moldy sofas line the streets. To
get to the nearest grocery store, residents have to drive 30 minutes on
roads where most traffic lights don't work.

Most officials agree that less than a third of the parish's 65,000 residents
have returned.

Desperate to make a living where the economy has all but stopped, people
have converted their government trailers into hot dog stands and snow-cone
shops.

Others try to sell tires they collected from wrecked cars to drivers who
continuously run over nails in the debris-filled area.

Most people are homeless, many are jobless, and if it weren't for children,
people say they would simply give up.

Despite slow progress, Michelle said she can't deny her daughters the chance
to graduate from Chalmette High School, which has been renamed and
transformed into a kindergarten through 12th-grade school with 2,400
students from all over the parish. It used to serve 1,100 students in grades
nine to 12.

"It's this gut feeling that this is where they need to be, this is where
they need to go to school and this is where they need to volunteer with the
community and really get involved and see a difference," Michelle said.

Longing for home

June 3 is a date Danielle and Dana Martin have been waiting for since they
were ripped from the close-knit city of Chalmette -- the seat of St. Bernard
Parish -- and thrown into an unfamiliar place three states and 700 miles
away. It's the day the sisters finally will go home.

"I'm so excited," said Dana, 15, who has begged her parents for months to go
back. "I can't wait to see all my friends, my family, all the people I
haven't seen for so long."

Since the storm, the girls have been sharing a four-bedroom rental house on
Merritt Island with eight other family members, two dogs and two cats. They
landed there after Dean found temporary construction work with a former
Cocoa Beach employer.

The girls haven't seen their dad since Christmas and don't have their mom
around as often as they used to. Michelle has been commuting every other
week to her job at Shell Offshore Inc. in New Orleans, leaving the girls in
the supervision of their 66-year-old grandmother and 73-year-old great-aunt.

The girls describe it as a "very hard time," but the tears that well in
their eyes say much more.

It's been a year of endless change, including a new school, a sea of
strangers and a constant longing for home. They lost everything but a few
photographs, muddy trophies and memories of what used to be.

Their father's seafood restaurant was destroyed and without flood insurance
won't ever reopen. His 32-foot commercial shrimping boat -- also uninsured
-- couldn't be recovered from the pilings were it crashed.

And the homes of nearly every relative from grandparents to aunts and uncles
rotted from the putrid waters that coated floors and walls with thick, black
sludge.

On Merritt Island, Danielle has battled sleepless nights as her head spins
with thoughts of death and loss. With the absence of her dad and the
separation from her friends, Dana has felt isolated and alone.

"I felt like I was stuck in a slump," said Danielle, 17. "It's been really
hard."

Leaving Brevard

The sisters have leaned on each other, formed new friendships and found
relief through athletics at Merritt Island High. Both girls played on the
school's varsity softball team, and Dana, a catcher, recently was named most
valuable player.

Danielle was the only girl student from the school to qualify and compete in
the state track and field competition this year. She placed 14th in the
discus.

"I couldn't have asked for a better place to be," said Danielle, a junior.
"It's been really enlightening to meet people who will help you, be there
for you and get you through stuff."

Danielle said the experience has made her more confident and Dana said she's
more independent. Both girls agree they've matured a lot.

"You can't be a little kid going through this," said Dana, a sophomore.
"I've grown up a lot."

Now that they've made new friends, leaving Merritt Island will be harder
than they thought, they said.

"I'm ready (to go)," said Danielle. "But of course, I can't be totally
happy, because I'm leaving a lot of people behind who've made me very happy
and who have helped me through this."

Under one roof

With a June 1 deadline to repair the levees, Dean has been averaging
100-hour work weeks as night superintendent for a Louisiana construction
company under contract with the Army Corp of Engineers.

When he's not on the job, he's racing the clock to repair their
three-bedroom house before his family returns. He has done most of the work
alone, surviving on little, if any, sleep. He spends what remaining time
there is in the cramped quarters of the FEMA trailer in his driveway.

"It's crunch time and it's tough," Dean said. "But I want the girls to come
back home and walk in their bedroom and not skip a beat."

During the weeks she worked in New Orleans, Michelle spent her free time
painting the girls' bedroom walls turquoise and yellow, restocking her
husband's building supplies and ordering floors, kitchen cabinets and
appliances.

Although she wants the house to be finished when the girls return, she's
beginning to accept that things "won't be perfect." There will be no sink or
stove, no beds or furniture, no kitchen table or family room TV.

"I've got to let myself off the hook," she said. "We'll all be in the same
place under the same roof, even if it's a FEMA trailer, even if it's a house
with no kitchen, and it will be fine."

At first Dean and Michelle weren't sure their house was salvageable. They
also weren't convinced returning to the devastated city was the right
choice. But when their insurance settlement came in, they said it made sense
financially to rebuild.

And as more and more FEMA trailers were delivered to Old Hickory Street -- a
sign that her neighbors were returning -- Michelle said she became confident
of her family's homecoming.

"I can't imagine a community that doesn't come back," she said. "It just
doesn't seem possible."

Forever changed

After taking the fall semester off, Dean Martin Jr. went back to Lousiana
State University in January to finish his accounting degree. He'll graduate
in August and begin working as an auditor for the Louisiana Legislative
Auditor, where he was recently hired.

The 23-year-old believes his internship at Parrish Medical Center in
Titusville, where he worked as a bookkeeper for four months after the storm,
helped him land the Baton Rouge job.

He's happy his family is moving back to the Crescent City, but said their
hometown is "not the same at all."

"It's kind of depressing, really," he said. "As soon as you start to get
into New Orleans, it gets gloomy almost."

His grandmother Carol Pertuit fears the changes she'll face when she
returns.

Because her house was contaminated from an oil spill, she can't rebuild.
It's where she lived for 40 years, raised three daughters, and it was the
only home she made with her husband, who died two-and-a-half years ago.

Instead, Carol, who lost part of her right leg to diabetes, will share a
specially equipped FEMA trailer for several months with her sister.
Eventually, she'll move a block away into a house that was less damaged than
hers, but still saturated with four feet of floodwaters. She bought it for
$75,000 and is waiting for a contractor to begin renovations.

"I'm not very patient," she said. "I want things done yesterday and that's
not good."

No place like home

Although they know much has changed, Danielle and Dana said they're counting
on a few things to be the same: school uniforms, roast beef "po' boys" and
their dad.

They said the experience has taught them that there truly is no place like
home.

"It's where we grew up, it's our comfort zone, it's the only place we've
ever known," Danielle said.

On a recent trip back to Chalmette, their mother ate a muffuletta -- a
traditional New Orleans sandwich -- and reminisced about Friday night
football games, early morning fishing trips, school fairs and the feeling of
October after the summer heat fades.

"You just realize you love the things that make this place unique," she
said, "and you never realize how much you want to live somewhere, until you
can't."

Contact Brennan at 242-3722 or kbrennan at flatoday.net