[StBernard] Ann Fisher commentary: Katrina survivors say 'Don't forget us'

Westley Annis westley at da-parish.com
Wed Jun 25 09:12:36 EDT 2008


Ann Fisher commentary: Katrina survivors say 'Don't forget us'
Wednesday, June 25, 2008 3:00 AM
By Ann Fisher

NEW ORLEANS -- They aren't looking for a handout. They're looking for hope.

That doesn't mean they don't appreciate all the help, said Carol Boasberg, a
transplant from Ireland who moved to New Orleans in 1975.

Since 1993, she has led guided tours of her beloved adopted city but was
forced to add a sad chapter when the tour buses resumed their routes after
Hurricane Katrina.

Now, half of her witty repertoire is consumed by the devastation. Instead of
showing only what is, Boasberg tries also to describe what was.

She praised American generosity -- $25 million in donations -- since the
flooding that claimed 1,500 lives and displaced more than 300,000 people who
have yet to return. She said 1.1 million volunteers have traveled to the
region since the levees broke in August 2005, devoting 4.5 million hours to
the cleanup and the rebuilding.

More generosity pours in every day, and they do need the help. But during a
three-day conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists last
week in the city, we asked everyone we met what they need the most.

We asked the lieutenant governor of Louisiana, the mayor of New Orleans, the
high-school principal in St. Bernard Parish, where 25,000 homes -- every
single house -- were destroyed.

We asked the founders of the St. Bernard Project, who have rebuilt more than
100 homes there, and the folks behind the Baptist Crossroads Project in
Musicians Village in the Upper Ninth Ward.

We asked the senior aviculturist of the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas,
who returned from the evacuation to a crypt of 5,000 dead creatures but
celebrated those that survived.

We asked Leah Chase, the famed 83-year-old chef of the soul-food restaurant
Dooky Chase in the Lower Ninth Ward. After the savory gumbo, the rice and
beans, the barbecue chicken and bread pudding, she greeted us in her
refurbished main dining room where special parties are served by reservation
only because she can't hire enough people to run it full time.

We asked the journalists of the Times-Picayune -- the editor, a photographer
and a young editorial writer, all of whom were displaced at home and at
work.

What do they most need?

One way or another, they all pretty much said the same thing: Don't forget
us.

New Orleans is, first and foremost, a city of people. The hospitals, the
schools and churches, the roads and homes, pharmacies and grocery stores can
be replaced. Eventually, even the operations that provide as much as 40
percent of our nation's domestic oil supply will be restored.

But without people to live there and people to visit and enjoy their famous
hospitality, the city is lost because hope isn't contained in brick and
mortar. Hope lives in the revelers of the French Quarter, in the resonance
of the zydeco and jazz music.

And hope lives in the woman who was working the earth last week outside her
home on Hamlet Place in St. Bernard Parish. Spade in hand, she knelt to
labor amid a patch of zinnias of every possible hue, surrounded by the
remains of a vast disaster.

Ann Fisher is a Dispatch Metro columnist. She can be reached at 614-461-8759
or by e-mail. Check out her blog, Furthermore. at blog.dispatch.com/ann/.

afisher at dispatch.com




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