[StBernard] St. Bernard plans 'funeral' to bid farewell to grief: Bob Warren

[Westley Annis]

St. Bernard plans 'funeral' to bid farewell to grief: Bob Warren
Published: Sunday, August 22, 2010, 6:10 AM 
 Bob Warren, The Times-Picayune 
 
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It was conceived, as so many projects are, during a simple conversation.

"Joey DiFatta was here for a funeral'' last May, says Floyd Herty,
operations director of St. Bernard Memorial Garden and Funeral, ''and he
stopped into the office to say 'hello' like he always does.

"We got to talking and as it always does for people from St. Bernard Parish,
the conversation turned to Hurricane Katrina. It doesn't matter where you
are or what's going on - with people from St. Bernard the conversation
always turns to Katrina.
"I said, "My God - I'm so sick of talking about Katrina,'' Herty, a St.
Bernard Parish native, recalls. "Then Joey said, 'We ought to have a funeral
for it.''

Herty jotted the idea on his desk calendar, came back to it again and again,
and now, three months later, he's one of the driving forces behind a fifth
anniversary event aimed at laying Katrina's grief to rest.

Next Saturday, one day before the killer storm's five-year mark, Herty and a
handful of religious and community leaders will host a funeral and burial in
Chalmette for the community's collective Katrina grief. The event includes a
funeral service at Our Lady of Prompt Succor Catholic Church, complete with
a casket, followed by a jazz processional through St. Bernard Memorial
Gardens and burial in a vault at a newly-built Katrina memorial. Archbishop
Gregory Aymond and the Revs. Jesse Boyd of Praise Temple Fellowship in
Violet and John Jeffries of First Baptist Church in Chalmette will preside
over the service. DiFatta, who as a St. Bernard Parish Council at the time
spent several nights stranded atop the government building in Chalmette
while the parish soaked in Katrina's floodwaters, and current Parish
President Craig Taffaro, who was also on the council in 2005, will also
speak.

Herty said mourners will be invited to write their feelings on strips of
paper and toss them into the casket. For those who cannot make the funeral
service, the coffin will lie in state at the funeral home Thursday and
Friday.

The funeral service is one of several events planned in the coming days to
mark the fifth year since Katrina's floodwaters made a cruel joke of the
region's inadequate levee and flood protection system and plunged south
Louisiana into its greatest modern crisis. In New Orleans, the city will
host an event, "Commemoration and Determination: Katrina V,'' on Aug. 29.
And in St. Bernard, the parish's school system will host its annual Day of
Reflection Friday; parish government will commemorate the disaster the
morning of Aug. 29 at its Katrina memorial in the Mississippi River Gulf
Outlet at Shell Beach, where the parish's 163 hurricane victims will be
remembered.

At each event, the speakers' messages will no doubt center on what's been
accomplished in the last five years - thousands of homes and businesses
rebuilt, hundreds of millions spent on government buildings and
infrastructure and, perhaps for the first time ever, levees and flood
protection rebuilt to adequate strength. But even with the many positives,
the loss will resonate.

Funeral directors are probably as able as barbers and bartenders to assess a
community's collective psyche. And Herty's assessment of St. Bernard is one
of lingering grief.

"Katrina will always be a defining moment in our lives,'' Herty said. "But
we can't keep blaming it for every misfortune in our lives.''

Maybe, just maybe, the funeral will help. "Funerals do serve a purpose,''
Herty said.
After mourners leave the church there will be a processional to the
cemetery, where the casket will be loaded into a horse-drawn caisson. The
jazz band from Chalmette High School will provide the music for a
traditional jazz funeral as the procession makes its way to a Katrina
monument that includes the vault in which it will be placed.

Herty hopes the mourners take to heart the epitaph inscribed on the granite
monument.
"In remembrance of all that was lost, in anticipation of all that is yet to
be gained. May our future be bright and our spirits stay strong.'' 

Bob Warren is St. Bernard Parish bureau chief. He can be reached at
bwarren at timespicayune.com or 504.826.3363.


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