[StBernard] 'Grenatians' say new neighborhood soothes their souls after Katrina

[Westley Annis]

'Grenatians' say new neighborhood soothes their souls after Katrina

Published: Monday, December 06, 2010, 7:30 AM

 R. Stephanie Bruno 

You've heard of the "St. Tammanards."

But what about the "Grenations"?

The former is the wry nickname adopted by thousands of former St. Bernard
Parish residents after they relocated to the north shore in the wake of
Hurricane Katrina.

The latter is a the moniker taken on by a much smaller, but still
tight-knit, group of former St. Bernardians who have planted the old parish
flag in Old Gretna.

A multigenerational group of them gathered at the home of Steve Bean and Jay
Sanchez recently to celebrate their friendship. Bean had introduced the
neighborhood to his childhood friend Eddie Miller, and both moved to Old
Gretna in the fall of October 2005.

"We were renting in Old Gretna after the storm and decided to buy here about
the same time as Eddie and Sharon," Bean said. "Since then, we've run across
others who live here and used to live in St. Bernard, and we've also
recruited a few more St. Bernard families."

One of those is the Cavet family: Celeste, Brent and their daughter Brooke.
The Cavets lived in Buccaneer Villa in Chalmette before the storm, then
relocated to Tennessee for two years. But when Brent Cavet's job brought the
family back to New Orleans, they called Bean, a Realtor and a former
neighbor, for advice.

"We didn't know where we wanted to live but we told Steve definitely not the
West Bank, no matter how much he liked it," Celeste Cavet said. "Not even an
option. No way. Not on your life. So Steve showed us houses in every
subdivision from Mississippi to Baton Rouge before we finally broke down and
said we'd take a look at Old Gretna. Now we lie in bed at night and listen
to the engines of the ships and the foghorns. We love it."

Cavet said there is a cozy, familiar feel about Old Gretna that hooked them.
The same quality attracted Joel and Camilla Hutcherson, who lived in
Meraux's Jumonville Plantation before Katrina.

"Our daughter moved to Dallas after the storm and our son moved to New
Orleans. My husband wanted to be closer to his work," at Conoco-Phillips in
New Orleans, Hutcherson said. "So we came to look in Old Gretna and bought
the very first house we saw. We were charmed."

It wasn't until later that the Hutchersons realized they were in a hotbed of
St. Bernardians.

"A friend had a birthday party and invited everyone, and we kept meeting
people and saying, 'You're from St. Bernard too?' It felt so good," Cavet
said. "Everything had been ripped out from under us so quickly and this gave
us a sense of normalcy."

Eddie Miller said he and Bean landed in Old Gretna together on purpose after
making a pact to move to the same community after the storm.

"We might not know anyone else, but at least we would know each other,"
Miller said. As the cluster of former St. Bernard residents swelled, Bean
invented the nickname "Grenations," a cross between Gretnites and
Chalmatians.

"That's just the term I use for us, sort of as a joke," he said. "But we
really are a tight group: We do everything together."

The group has brought along a menu of St. Bernard customs that they share
with others in the neighborhood.

"At this point you don't know who is from St. Bernard and who isn't - we
include everyone," Camilla Hutcherson said. "We have a crawfish boil in
April and Bonco parties throughout the year. We do something called 'Fall
Boo" when we play tricks and give gifts. But the finale of the year is the
'Search for Santa.'"

At that event, a progressive dinner, neighbors travel from house to house
and are greeted with cocktails or appetizers and desserts.

"It stays pretty tame until the last stop," Hutcherson said. "Then we break
out the karaoke."

Hutcherson said a longtime resident of Old Gretna told her recently that the
St. Bernard contingent had become "the glue of the neighborhood." She burst
with pride.

"You know how they sometimes make jokes about people from St. Bernard," she
said. "Well, one of the original Old Gretna residents told me not too long
ago, 'I wish I was a Chalmatian!'"

Bean said Gretna has become much more to him than a port in the storm. It
has been a life-saver.

"What happened to St. Bernard in the storm was shattering. We lost
everything and I don't just mean stuff - I mean a way of life and all the
physical landmarks that are part of traditions. It was all wiped out," Bean
said. "We had to find another place to live but we didn't want to go to St.
Tammany like so many other people from St. Bernard.

"I was familiar with Old Gretna but I never could have imagined how it would
change my life and help my recovery from the storm."

Cavet, like the convert she is, echoes Bean's sentiments.

"I never lived in a neighborhood like this one where you know all your
neighbors," she said. "You pull up at your house and people are coming over
to talk to you before you get out of the car. Before you know it, you're
having a glass of wine, then you're walking someplace to dinner. We feel so
much more at home than we ever did before."

R. Stephanie Bruno is a contributing writer