[StBernard] A Comeback, but No Miracle

[Westley Annis]

A Comeback, but No Miracle
While the Devastated City Languished, Its Residents Clung to the Saints'
Improbable Success

By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 22, 2007; A03



NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 21 -- Who dat? Who dat?

This struggling city needs many things more than a pro football
championship. But on Sunday afternoon, around televisions in FEMA trailers,
in bars in deserted neighborhoods, in homes still bearing the scars of
Hurricane Katrina, echoing time and again was the battle chant of the New
Orleans Saints faithful.

Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?

The answer to the fans' taunt, it turned out, was the Chicago Bears, who
crushed this fragile city's hopes of sending a team to the Super Bowl for
the first time. The Bears overpowered the Saints, 39-14.

The loss in Chicago ended an improbable run for the Saints, one that many
here had begun to regard as the sort of divine comeback story that seems to
have eluded the city itself.

The hard-luck franchise long known locally as the 'Aints was playing for a
conference championship for the first time in the team's 40-year history,
one year after ranking among the NFL's worst teams.

"It gave everyone hope that miracles can happen -- and I think this city
needs a miracle," said Mickey Jeanfreau, 32, a butcher and musician from
Chalmette, a small town nearly wiped out by Katrina's waters. "Plus, for a
short period of time, it took all this crap off my mind."

Watching the game downtown on a huge outdoor screen with his wife and
stepdaughter, Jeanfreau considered the devastation again for a moment.

"Actually, I think we need more than a couple miracles," he said.

"It brought us joy and hope," said Sonya Recasner, 29, a slots attendant at
the city's casino. "It made us believe that something good can happen."

The team's success "showed the nation that we can rebuild," said Reginald
Love, 21, a maintenance worker living with his mother-in-law after having
been flooded out of the Lower Ninth Ward.

Football rapture is a strange spectacle in a devastated city.

New Orleans's population remains at about half its pre-storm level. Vast
stretches of neighborhoods remain desolated, and promises that "help is on
the way" are now met with rueful scorn.

Most of the billions of dollars in federal relief has yet to reach
homeowners, the funds stuck in a bureaucratic maze at the state level. Many
say they have lost faith in the federal government, which to them seems more
interested in saving Iraq than their home town. And city leaders, mired in
power struggles and racial distrust, are still -- nearly a year and half
after the storm -- developing a plan for its reconstruction.

Yet nothing since Katrina has monopolized this city's attention as did the
Saints' success. This was partly, many said, because it was the only hopeful
news the city's residents could latch onto.

Sporting-goods stores sold out of Saints jerseys and other memorabilia. The
team's black-and-gold fleur-de-lis logo blossomed everywhere in the usual
places -- hats, tattoos and banners. It also sprouted in places where a
football game might seem an extravagant diversion -- on trailers in
semi-abandoned neighborhoods, and spray-painted on vacant properties.


>From the altar of St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square on Sunday morning,

Archbishop Alfred C. Hughes tied the Saints' success to the second reading
of the Mass, from Corinthians: "In one spirit we were all baptized into one
body."

"I think that the Saints team is a symbol of what it means for a body to
work together," he told parishioners.

He, too, he added, was offering prayers for the team.

All season long, the Saints' fate had seemed inextricably linked to the
city's troubles and its rebound.

The Louisiana Superdome, the team's home, served as a desperate emergency
shelter during the storm. Damaged both by the crowds and the winds, it was
rendered uninhabitable, just as much of the city was.

The team relocated to San Antonio during the hurricane, and many New Orleans
residents believed that it would stay there, rather than count on support
from a diminished population. Others wondered whether the Superdome could be
repaired in time for the start of the NFL season.

Since then, however, the Superdome has been refurbished on schedule and the
hole in its roof patched, and fans here exceeded expectations for
season-ticket purchases.

Meanwhile, new quarterback Drew Brees and other members of the team
repeatedly underscored that their work on the field was all the more
meaningful because it was helping to lift the troubled city's morale.

"It made the whole thing so much bigger than just football," linebacker
Scott Fujita told reporters recently. "Football is our job, and we take it
very seriously. But it's an extra element. As the season has gone on, it's
become more unspoken and unsaid. But every one of us realizes that it's
there. I think about it all the time."

A loopy rap song by Baby Boy Da Prince, which became the city's unofficial
season anthem, underscored the entwining of Katrina and the team:

New Orleans Saints . . . number one on the field

Katrina couldn't stop us . . . and that's real

Beating these teams . . . is no big deal.

This is the way we live.

As the crowd downtown thinned out after the loss, many fans offered the
usual words of consolation.

It had been a great season, they said, and wasn't it wonderful?

Emerson Picou, 31, a counselor at a homeless shelter, focused instead on
what may be the larger significance of the on-field defeat -- the loss of
national exposure.

"The team gave us hope all along during this tumultuous time, but it was a
hurtin' loss," Picou said. "People have forgotten us. People from outside,
people in Congress, they say they have Katrina fatigue. They don't want to
hear about it any more. If we were going to the Super Bowl, I think we might
have been returned to the national consciousness."