[StBernard] St. Bernard evacuees regrouping

[Westley Annis]

About 20 people ate and chatted beneath Joe and Peggy Geraci's carport on a recent rainy Saturday afternoon.

They gathered at three tables for a quintessential South Louisiana get-together of boiled crawfish, shrimp, red potatoes, sausage and corn on the cob.

Uprooted from Rosetta Drive in Chalmette by Hurricane Katrina, the Geracis were the leading edge of six St. Bernard Parish families — either related to the couple or friends of the Geraci clan — who moved to Willow Pointe subdivision near Denham Springs.

The new development off Hatchell Lane has all the hallmarks of an emerging suburban neighborhood: children, construction crews and treeless yards of newly planted landscaping framed by fresh concrete streets.

The Geracis and their family are putting down roots in Willow Pointe because it’s the closest thing to pre-Katrina St. Bernard that they expect to find anytime soon.

The Geracis’ daughter is married to a Denham Springs man. Her wedding, just months after the hurricane, gave reason for family to lease and then buy in Willow Pointe. Others who came in for wedding events soon followed.

Peggy Geraci said she and her husband had always figured they’d live in Chalmette until they died.

“There are things I miss about it, but now that everybody is up here” said Peggy Geraci, her voice trailing off. “I wouldn’t want to go back if it was the same, because of the family.”

The Geracis are part of a wave of St. Bernard residents who have resettled in clusters of family and neighborhood networks across southeastern Louisiana, trying to take some sense of home with them.

Many spread out from St. Bernard in an arc between Baton Rouge and southern Mississippi, recent figures from the Louisiana Recovery Authority show. Often, as with the Geracis, a family connection drew them to their new homes, and others followed, seeking to stay close to friends.

But other reasons played a role. Former St. Bernard residents say those factors include what affordable housing was available at the time, schools and proximity to work. Another big worry was the long-term uncertainty of St. Bernard’s redevelopment and hurricane safety.

To many weighing those concerns, a fresh start near or north of Interstate 12 seemed the safest bet, at least for a while.

George and Rhonda McGovern bought their home in Bedico, just east of the Tangipahoa Parish line in St. Tammany Parish, so their youngest son could finish his education in the St. Bernard Parish school he started in before Katrina.

Archbishop Hannan High, a Catholic school formerly in Meraux, reopened at the St. Joseph Abbey near Covington after the storm.

“After all we’ve been through, we thought we could at least give him that back,” Rhonda said of her son.

Demographers and geographers say that along with maintaining that kind of connection, race and class also tend to play a role in where people are moving.

“There’s kind of an institutional movement to these kind of things. People still want to live next to people who are like them,” said Craig Colten, LSU professor in environmental historical geography.

Scattered by the storm

Just how many people have moved out of St. Bernard is a matter of debate, but most estimates range from 39,700 to 49,600 — up to two-thirds of the parish’s prestorm population. Only five homes didn’t flood, parish officials have said.

Of all the parishes affected by Hurricanes Katrina or Rita, St. Bernard has the highest percentage of residents accepting an “in-state buyout” from the Road Home program, Louisiana’s effort to help homeowners rebuild or relocate.

Nearly 35 percent have chosen to sell their damaged homes but remain in the state, including an unknown number who may buy new houses in St. Bernard. About 4 percent planned to move out of state. Another 21 percent were undecided as of April 5, the LRA reports.

An LRA estimate based on Federal Emergency Management Agency financial aid data shows St. Bernard residents have resettled mostly in Jefferson Parish, with 14 percent of the displaced population, and St. Tammany Parish, with 15 percent. Ascension, Livingston, Tangipahoa and East Baton Rouge parishes each account for between 2 percent and 6 percent.

David Bowman, who as LRA director of research and special projects produced the estimate, noted the uncertainly of those numbers. It’s unknown whether — or where — people moved after they stopped getting FEMA aid, and the information dates from November 2006, he said.

Demographer Elliott Stonecipher said the movement of St. Bernard residents is part of a longer-term migration that was under way before Katrina, with the population shifting toward the region’s interstates and away from the coast. The storm accelerated the process, he said.

He said when researchers look back a few years from now, people will be broken into two groups: those willing to stick it out no matter what and those who moved north, in particular younger generations.

Parish officials insist things are starting to perk up, particularly in the higher part of St. Bernard between Judge Perez Drive and St. Bernard Highway.

The famous Rocky and Carlo’s restaurant reopened in February, with the owners banking on redevelopment and the allegiance of their old customers.

Peggy Geraci’s brother, Ty Irby, 50, is buying her house in Chalmette. Her son, John Martinez, 25, bought her brother’s.

Work and willingness to see how Chalmette redevelops has brought them back. Irby has a job at the Domino Sugar refinery. Martinez works at a New Orleans restaurant.

“What you’re going to get, we’ll just have to wait and see. Hopefully, it’s going to be OK,” Irby said.

‘St. Bernard North’

In the Woodland Crossing subdivision, south of Walker, several dozen front yards are adorned with an unfamiliar sight for largely Protestant Livingston Parish.

Statues of the Virgin Mary signal that the 600-lot subdivision has attracted some of St. Bernard’s strongly Catholic population.

Officials with D.R. Horton, the subdivision’s homebuilder, say at least 30 families have moved in so far, and more await housing.

The recent arrivals have dubbed their new home “St. Bernard North” and “Little Chalmette” and have spurred street life, throwing block parties and using garages as indoor/outdoor sitting areas.

Mark Ubas, 36, said he was drawn to Woodland Crossing for two reasons: the price and the fact that his fiancé lived in the parish.

Ubas, a former St. Bernard Parish sheriff’s deputy who now works for Walker Police, said he convinced some friends to follow him northwest. He counts at least 10 St. Bernard families on his street alone.

“We’re just like pests. If you got one, you got five more,” Ubas joked.

He said people are trying to keep that strong sense of community, family connections and friendships.

“Twenty years ago, this is what St. Bernard was,” he said of Livingston Parish.

Colten, the LSU professor, said the clustering of St. Bernard residents is similar to what happened with Acadians starting in late 1700s, Dust Bowl farmers in 1930s  or Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s. Immigrants confront “push” and “pull” factors that land them in common resettlement areas.

“Several people lead the way, and they will tell people back home or in their circle or network of friends that this is good place,” he said.

LSU sociologist Jeanne Hurlbert said no one in the New Orleans area has escaped disruption of those social networks, which provide priceless resources for recovery, she said.

“Part of what they are dealing with is putting those networks back together,” she said.

End of a culture?

As with other slices of the New Orleans area’s ethnic and cultural mix, the mass displacement of St. Bernard residents raises questions about how the cultural identity connected with “the parish” — including the trademark accent — will survive if successive generations grow up elsewhere.

As groups move, they keep their culture, experts say.

“They take it with them, but as they disperse and as time passes, the culture that they brought with them starts to hybridize with the larger culture around them,” said Richard Campanella, a geographer and Tulane research professor in earth and environmental sciences.

Campanella said some parts of the St. Bernard-New Orleans culture might linger among those who left the city. But eventually many aspects will likely fade, including the distinct accent.

That hasn’t necessarily happened, however, to the Cajun-accented English speakers of Acadiana.

Research by LSU French Department Chair Sylvie Dubois has found that grandchildren speak with more of the Cajun English accent of their grandparents than do the grandchildren’s parents. That trend emerged as all things Cajun became nationally popular in the 1970s and 1980s, she said.

Whether St. Bernard’s Brooklyn-sounding accent will gain similar supportive appeal outside the New Orleans area is hard to predict. But some of the people who left St. Bernard say change is inevitable.

“It’s going to evolve over time just like everything else does. It’s going to get lost,” Joe Geraci said.

Imperfect transition

Kevin Karcher was within six years of retiring from the U.S. Postal Service in Chalmette when Katrina struck. Two of his daughters had finished college. His youngest girl is in high school.

His home in Chalmette was paid off, and his brother had a camp in Reggio, where Karcher planned to spend his retirement fishing.

Katrina undid his life. Like many St. Bernard residents who moved north, the transition hasn’t been easy for him.

The Karchers evacuated to Kevin’s wife’s aunt’s house in Hammond and remained there well after the storm. They eventually bought a house down the road just as it went on the market, without even looking inside.

Karcher said he hopes the Road Home program will pay off what he owes on his Hammond home. Insurance money from the storm didn’t cover it all. If not, he will have to put off retirement and commute to Chalmette to work indefinitely.

“We’re starting over from scratch,” he said. “I hope we can get the money to pay the home off again.”

Sometimes Karcher questions the wisdom of buying the Hammond home. If he had been single, he said, he would have taken his chances with another storm and the fewer resources in Chalmette. But for his wife and daughter, he wants more.

“I want them to have stores and a regular life,” he said.

Rhonda McGovern, who now lives in Bedico, said she and her friends cling to small reminders of St. Bernard, such as keeping 504-area codes for their cell phones. Their new homes don’t always feel like home.

“I have a friend that says she feels like she’s living in a condo on vacation and one day she is going to get to go home,” Rhonda said.

“I don’t know if it will ever feel like home to me,” George McGovern said. “I spent 43 of 47 years of my life on the same street. I want to be five minutes away from launching our boat.”