The return

Something strange and wonderful has happened. My words have returned to me. I promise I will explain which words, but first we must travel back in time, approximately five-plus years ago. It is pre-Hurricane Katrina and, like now, I am living in the city of my birth, New Orleans, preparing to visit Cleveland, Ohio. I live for the most part on the second floor of my duplex, but the bulk of my library and extensive record collection is housed downstairs. A small apartment occupies the remainder of the downstairs and I have a tenant, a young divorced man who lives there with his beloved German Shepherd. When the mandatory evacuation occurred, I was away and that fact meant little could be done to save most of my records, CDs, 45s, paperbacks and hardcover volumes which rested on custom constructed shelves there. Because pets are not allowed to evacuate with their owners to the refuge of last resort at the Superdome (this policy has since been changed), my tenant is forced to leave his pet downstairs with a few day's supply of food and water, not knowing the rising waters would drown the animal or that he would end up losing all of his worldly possessions. I am a visitor in Cleveland worried about my home and my city, but forced to watch it from afar, helpless and inadequate. As it turned out, my life would be forever changed by that storm and the flooding that occurred after Hurricane Katrina. I lived and worked there for nearly two years and my return to New Orleans required packing a great many boxes of new possessions coming from my time spent away. In the meantime my housekeeper was able to put away boxes of my possessions that had somehow survived. Since her home was also destroyed, she was away for and unable to return the city for nearly a year, living in Houston and Dallas. However, once she returned to work, she started to put things away for me that had survived the flooding. We were not able to communicate on a regular basis, so whatever she packed away for me was not clearly documented. Between those boxes holding my old items and the new boxes filled with momentos from Cleveland, much of my home has been filled over the course of the last three and a half years with all manner of things largely hidden from view. Just a little over on my second floor entrance way. Inside were my words. To be more specific, inside one of the larger boxes that my housekeeper had put away was my bound edition of my work from 1972 and 1973 as Features Editor and Executive Editor of the Tulane University Hullabaloo, the weekly newspaper over which I labored in my freshman and sophomore years. To say that this volume is irreplaceable is an understatement. How that volume escaped being soaked in the deluge that stood stagnant in my home for nearly three weeks is nothing short of a miracle. When I looked inside it, I found an incredible array of pictures and stories that I had not even thought about in over 36 years. There was the junior Senator from Delaware - a Joseph Biden with hair no less - addressing a forum at Tulane. Also, a story and picture on George Bush, the head of the C.I.A., a full 16 years before becoming President, talking to students. And the president was Richard Nixon. Wow! I cannot believe this volume has mysteriously returned to me, but I know I will treasure it for many years to come.

August 26 five years later

My Broadmoor home three days after Hurricane Katrina

Double click image to see flooding
©2005 Sidney Smith

Five years ago I landed in Cleveland for a few days vacation. My son and mother, the only other members of the family, had already left for college and aboard a cruise ship, respectively. My visit was to be personal but, unfortunately, short. I was due to spend the weekend there with family and friends and would be winging my way back to the Crescent City on Monday morning with an expected return in the early afternoon. I spent the first evening, August 26, enjoying a meal at Fire, a restaurant run by executive chef Doug Katz and located in historic Shaker Square. Following the wonderful cuisine there I passed by the windows of a major supermarket undergoing construction. Large signs on the windows announced the grand opening of the new Dave's Supermarket in five days. I peered inside the windows and noted that there seemed to be little progress to indicate they would be open for business in less than a week. I clearly remember thinking how much I regretted I would not be able to see them open their doors. The next day I attended worship services at Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple and was honored to hold high the Torah scroll, an honor afforded few visitors in a service. It was later that afternoon that I went to check my e-mail and noticed several urgent stories over the Internet later that warned that Hurricane Katrina, a minimal strength storm that had struck Miami just the day before, had reorganized into a major category four storm over the warm Gulf of Mexico waters with further strengthening likely. The satellite pictures showed a massive system beginning to take aim at New Orleans. I was understandably upset. I needed to get back to New Orleans in order to protect my home and hearth. Frantically, I began trying to arrange for a ticket back home, but the lines were crazy busy and it was apparent that no flights were going into the city for the foreseeable future. An e-mail from Continental Airlines on Sunday notified me that my return ticket was canceled. That afternoon and night was a sleepless one for me as I held my breath, hoping that the 175 m.p.h. winds category five storm would miraculously miss the city. As it turned out, the storm did diminish slightly as it came ashore. Estimates are that it was a powerful category three storm with maximum sustained winds near 135 m.p.h. when it hit the city, veering off to the east just enough that a direct hit was registered in nearby Bay St. Louis and Diamondhead, Mississippi. I watched local New Orleans TV newscasts over the Internet, news reports that could not be seen by those in the local viewing area due to widespread power outages there. All of the local studios able to broadcast had evacuated to Baton Rouge or Jackson, Mississippi. Several news teams were stranded in the flood waters that followed the levee breaches at the Industrial Canal and with cell phone towers down no calls were getting in or out of the city. I watched in horror as Mayor Ray Nagin announced that the Twin Spans, the two elevated highways that crossed Lake Pontchartrain and joined the I-10 from New Orleans East to Slidell on the North shore, were gone. Gone! It was surreal. By the time the floodwaters from the New London Canal arrived at my home on Tuesday, August 30, there was nothing to impede the flow of the water leading from Lake Pontchartrain. The water climbed to five feet and stayed there for close to two weeks before the pumping stations began to work the almost impossible task of pushing the toxic soup out of the city. By the end of the third week the water was nearly gone from inside my home, but the toxic black mold and green mildew had started to consume everything left behind: books, albums, pictures and all the walls. Cabinets had exploded and the contents of their shelves were spilled onto the floor. By the time I arrived back home seven weeks later, I could not believe the utter destruction that awaited me inside and out. My entire time in town was limited to a period of just 36 hours before I had to get back to the airport for a return trip back to Cleveland, where I was now living. Because there was no electricity in the Broadmoor section at that time, there was no way to do any work past sundown as I tried to claim any items not ruined by the waters or rendered unusable by the mold and mildew. I made it back to Cleveland late Sunday night. Meanwhile, the Dave's Supermarket in Shaker Square had been opened for six weeks. and doing brisk business. As it turned out, I had not only witnessed its grand opening, but ironically shopped there in the interim. Thanks to my having registered as a Katrina refugee with no visible means of support, I paid for my groceries with an electronic debit card - food stamps, if you will - provided to me by the State of Ohio. Such a change in fortunes is not unusual in those that survived Hurricane Katrina.

Hurricane Katrina's positive influence

It may seems odd to suggest this, but there were several positive aspects to the horrible tragedy known as Hurricane Katrina that have made the old, bedraggled and set-in-its-ways city become progressive and forward thinking. The politics still has its own black-white tilt and the City Council, Mayor's office, police department and District Attorney's office still manage to hurl invectives and accuse each other of skullduggeries. Yet, with all of the disgust in dealing with FEMA, the several years of living in trailers, the disreputable contractors who stole millions of victims' nesteggs and the general feeling of malaise that permeated the city in the immediate years following the flooding, there has emerged in several quarters a new spirit of volunteerism and community activism that was largely absent before the storm. To be sure, there is a lot more to be done today than four years ago. And there is no way we can ever forget the 1500 or more lives snuffed out in the wake of the worst natural and man-made disaster to strike our nation. The city has become the focus for young idealists, who are flocking here intent on making a difference and contributing in myriad ways to rebuilding this historic and unique metropolis. There is the Musician's Village, which offers affordable housing to artists who would not normally be able to do so, and the Brad Pitt-inspired Make It Right Foundation that has built 150 "green" structures in the devastated Lower Ninth Ward. Faith groups through various initiatives have rehabbed, rebuilt and restored homes to grateful families. In the case of groups like the Isaiah Funds millions of dollars have been given out in grants and millions of others in long-term affordable loans have and are being made available to needy groups such as those rebuilding the Central City area. The hiring of iconocastic Rabbi Uri Topolosky as Congregation Beth Israel's spiritual leader has turned out to be one of the most prophetic events in the Modern Orthodox synagogue's history. Through his vision and with the support of the synagogue's board of trustees there will be an announcement today of the launching of a new capital campaign and a building drive that will erect a new edifice on vacant land adjacent to and on that previously owned by Gates of Prayer Synagogue, the Reform synagogue located in Metairie. Over three years ago, Rabbi Robert Loewy offered his synagogue's little-used back chapel as a place of worship for the displaced synagogue formerly located in the flood-ravaged Lakeview area. This unusual partnership between Reform and Orthodox Jewry has blossomed in a way that is quite unusual and typical of the ways that set New Orleans apart from other municipalities. It is the people who have reached out to one another, regardless of differences in philosophies and practices. Hurricane Katrina showed us all what is truly important: life, love and each other. If that is the storm's most lingering aspects, then we all will have been truly blessed. It comes at a great cost, but in the end we may still see that the period of anguish we all went through was that of a birthing pain in which a better, stronger city cried out to be reborn.

Fourth Year Anniversary of Katrina

Four years ago I was preparing for a weekend jaunt to Cleveland, Ohio. It was to be a short weekend vacation and then I was to wing my way back to my uptown New Orleans home. There is an adage: "Man plans and God laughs." That's probably appropriate here because in three days time my ordered world and plans for the foreseeable all were changed dramatically by the events leading up to and following Hurricane Katrina. I found myself in Cleveland, a refugee looking for a job, shelter and a way home. I wrote about it and that story became the front-page cover of the Cleveland Jewish News the following week. More stories were published and eventually a job offer followed. The last four years have passed slowly and, while I am ensconced again in my hometown of New Orleans, I think about the turbulent time I underwent 48 months ago and what it meant to my life for the nearly two years I lived there. I can honestly say that my life improved in many ways due to the Hurricane Katrina experience. Oh, yes, I lost possessions and much of my home was destroyed. There were many things that can and never will be replaced, but in the long run, these were simply possessions. What matters most to me today are the connections I made in Cleveland: the management I worked for and co-workers I labored with at the CJN, the members of the Jewish community who befriended me there and the people of Cleveland who extended me many courtesies. The experience sharpened my work as a reporter and made my writing seem much more important. That the CJN has experienced a downsizing and like the rest of the industry is in the throes of economic upheaval is unfortunate. It turns out I was working there at the height of its most productive period. I feel honored to have shared that experience with them. There is no doubt that the financial uncertainty there today would have sent me packing to New Orleans eventually, so it is fortuitous I made the decision to move back when I did two years ago. The winters were cold and the snow was difficult to manage for this Southern boy, but the feelings I have for my Cleveland exile are still very warm and I maintain many of those friendships even today. Perhaps I should re-word that adage to read: "Man plans and God provides."

Another mandatory evacuation...

Myron Goldberg, president of Congregation Beth Israel in New Orleans, leads an afternoon prayer service (Mincha) on August 29, 2008 at the still devastated synagogue that was destroyed exactly three years before. (Photo Alex Barkoff)

Mayor Ray Nagin just announced the second mandatory evacuation for New Orleans this evening just before 8:00 p.m. Governor Bobby Jindal and Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu has also urged everyone to take heed to the warnings and get out of town now. We are on the bad side of the expected track of the storm, even more so than Hurricane Katrina. The exodus out of the city has been going on all day with most every channels out of the city slogged down to a snail's pace at the edge of the city. All Home Depot, Loew's, Wal-Mart, and Sam's Club stores have closed down as of yesterday. Gas stations have shuttered their doors and most essential services are but a memory. I have resigned myself to the fact that this is a life threatening situation. Family members have all called and urged me to get out. Yet, I believe it is necessary that someone be here to document what is happening here as we prepare for the worst and hope for he best. Contraflow is due to start at 4:00 a.m. on the major arteries out of the city, which means New Orleans will have no means of entry once those plans are implemented. It's the first time that this plan of simultaneous flow both eastward and westward out of town has been implemented. This weekend, the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina was to have featured a number of memorials to those whose lives were lost and as a way to recall what was prior to today considered the storm of the century. Thursday evening's Levees.org event had an auditorium full of people at Touro Synagogue, but that was before the dire warnings from authorities began to be issued. Friday afternoon a Mincha (afternoon) prayer service was held at the Lakeview site of Congregation Beth Israel (see above). That structure is still shuttered after three years following catastrophic destruction that resulted after the 17th Street Canal levee was breached during Hurricane Katrina. After the service was over, the members headed over to Congregation Gates of Prayer in Metairie, the site where they are now meeting to hold Shabbat services and to enjoy a meal with one another into the late hours of the night. At the same time across town at Temple Sinai, one of the oldest Reform temples in New Orleans, an interfaith prayer service hosted by Rabbi Ed Paul Cohn was held. At the event was Francis Hughes, Archbishop of the City of New Orleans; Episcopal Bishop Charles Jenkins; as well as other clergy representing Protestant, the Ba'hai and Islamic faith groups. It was an impressive night. Yet, the storm that was forming in the Caribbean was very much on people's minds. It was the elephant in the back of the room that could not be ignored.

Anniversaries and Alerts

Three years ago the city of New Orleans withstood its greatest challenge when Hurricane Katrina slammed into it with wind gusts of up to 140 miles per hour. What followed the onslaught of wind and driving rain was a man-made disaster of greater proportions, the failure of the levee structures designed to protect the city. It has taken an army of dedicated city workers, loyal residents and outsiders who won't stand idly by and let politics and apathy take over where the flood waters receded. The only thing that can kill the city of New Orleans is not opposition to its rebuilding campaign. It is apathy. Apathy will drive a wedge into the heart and soul of the City That Care Forgot. So on this important anniversary, as another storm threatens her, don't you forget to care.