The first anniversary has come and gone, but the scars left
by Katrina are still ugly blotches all over my hometown, Bay St. Louis, and the
neighboring cities on what was the beautiful Mississippi
Coast.
Most of the skeletons of the destroyed homes have been
hauled off to cemeteries of memories, along with the other precious possessions
that splintered under the wrath of a water surge that had never been imagined
before, much less witnessed.
The first anniversary has come and gone, but I recently read
a quote from William Faulkner in a book written by the wonderful writer James
Lee Burke that perhaps best expresses what I sensed as I talked to family and
friends and strangers: “The past is not only still with us, the past is not
even the past.”
Katrina is still with us.
“I don’t know if they want to talk about the hurricane or
about the new owners of the paper,” Stan Tiner, executive editor of The Sun Herald,
wondered as we drove from his office to the Biloxi Rotary Club luncheon, where
we were both on the agenda. Maybe people are tired of talking about it, we thought.
But it didn’t take long for us to learn what was on their minds.
Everybody at our table talked about Katrina, where they were when she came
calling, what has happened since, what the recovery looks like.
Sure, they were interested in the McClatchy folks, who now
own their local newspaper. After all, The Sun Herald had been there when they
needed it more than ever before, serving as the eyes, the ears and the voice of
the community, especially since those unforgettable hours of Katrina’s hell. There
are some things you don’t forget.
That was obvious in the conversations. It’s obvious when you
look at the circulation figures that continue to rise within whispering
distance of where they were before the disaster, even though thousands of
people have yet to return. It’s obvious when you sit in a room and talk with
almost the entire newsroom staff and find them so focused on the job ahead that
they have to be prodded to talk about their own pain, their own losses and
their own roads to recovery.
On a much deeper, personal level, it’s obvious when my wife,
Bea, and I sit in a FEMA trailer with my sister, Inez, who works magic
in a
teeny, tiny kitchen to produce stuffed crabs and shrimp remoulade and a
string-bean casserole that rekindles memories of so many family
dinners, while outside
workers are in the beginning stages of her new home in the footprint
of where
her old one used to be.
The Sun Herald, like The Times-Picayune in New
Orleans and other papers in the area, has been and
remains the link between its readers and the community leaders; the link to
what progress, if any, is being made; the link to their neighbors who have
stayed and are rebuilding and those who have yet to return.
I know I don’t have to tell my former colleagues at
McClatchy that this fabric of trust that has been woven between the paper and
its readers in the toughest of times is an incredible asset during these days
when so many pundits are writing off newspapers as relics of the past. Protect
that trust well. And come often — to see, to talk, to listen.
It’s not easy to get your mind around what you see: the
empty lots where lovely homes once stood; the stairs that lead to nowhere,
frozen on the landscape of time; the dozens of cranes working overtime to
rebuild the demolished bridges that connect communities.
It’s not easy to walk the streets — or, in some cases, what
used to be the streets — that you walked as a kid. So many of the familiar
landmarks I knew way back then are gone or will be gone soon: the building
that housed my dad’s weekly newspaper, the two movie houses where we spent
Saturday afternoons, the barber shop, the sundry store where they also sold
terrific roast-beef po-boys and delicious homemade ice cream, the hamburger
joint on the highway where the chief deputy sheriff and I would hang out when
he let me ride with him as a teenage reporter, and so many others that
were built long after I left years and years ago.
I experienced my first hurricane as a youngster in 1947,
before they named them, on a day when more than 100 people, washed out of their
neighboring homes, ended up in our farm house, which the water didn’t reach.
Thank goodness there were 10 Favre children and lots of clothes to share in all
sizes — and lots of food for my mother to serve, including a birthday cake for Inez.
I came home after another hurricane — Camille, in 1969 — to
witness what was left of Bay St. Louis after what most believed to be the worst
storm in our history. But as awful as it was, it was nothing like coming home
after Katrina. That was beyond anything I could imagine.
I pray we will never witness anything like it again —
that we will never see the images we have seen, hear the cries we heard, or
witness the destruction that was left — that we will never experience the fears that thousands upon
thousands felt, or cry the tears for the dead or for the losses that
represented a lifetime of sacrifices.
The first anniversary has come and gone. In New Orleans, the
Superdome was reopened with an uplifting Saints victory over the Atlanta Falcons, and other unexpected victories have followed. The
church service we attended at Bethlehem Lutheran was upbeat and joyful, and a
rededication is just a week away. Many of the city’s famous restaurants are
back in business, the casinos are booming in Mississippi, with more to come,
and there is more construction work than there are construction workers. Churches from all
over the country are still sending members to help rebuild. People are
desperately seeking more money from their insurance companies and are
breathless at what they hear will be new rates. Or, they are waiting for
approval of their Small Business Administration loans or their government grants, which seem to be
extraordinarily inconsistent.
Life goes on.
It goes on for Dr. Regina Benjamin, a remarkable person who returned home to a
little spot on the Alabama coast, Bayou Le Batre, where one in five families
live under the poverty line, to open a clinic that serves more than 2,000
patients, some who can pay, some who can’t. She lost her clinic to Hurricane
George, rebuilt it and lost it to Katrina, rebuilt it and lost it a third time
to a fire early this year.
Dr. Benjamin had been practicing out of a
large trailer, but has now moved into a small remodeled house, and will rebuild
her clinic once again. She hasn’t lost faith in her mission of caring for the
underserved, despite the enormous obstacles she has faced and the personal
sacrifices she has had to make.
I heard someone say recently that when you are hopeless, you
are helpless; where there is hope, there is help.
The first anniversary has come and gone, and there is still
much hope — in my hometown, and in many other hometowns. And there is still a need
for much help.
The first anniversary has come and gone, and we must not forget.
