Class of Katrina
Among the things left in its wrecking path, Hurricane Katrina disrupted the lives of many students starting their first semester of college. Four years later, two freshmen at the time of the storm tell their stories.
Lauren Laborde
Issue date: 3/13/09 Section: Features
Nothing about that August 2005 new student orientation session seemed out of the ordinary. A week of ice-breakers and seminars, which often failed to compete with hangovers or the call of the St. Charles Avenue streetcars, was culminating in a convocation in Holy Name of Jesus Church.
After the ceremony, the masses overflowed onto the lawn facing St. Charles Avenue. Lost amid the flurry of conversation and movement, a man holding a camera shouted "CLASS OF 2009 - PICTURE!" With an unusually large freshmen class this year, it would be difficult to wrangle the students together. But finally, he managed to arrange the group in the Horseshoe. It was the class of 2009 - or, most of it - convening for the first time.
As the photographer snapped the camera, a nascent hurricane that had formed over the Bahamas began to move across Florida.
HOW TO RUN FROM A HURRICANE
Molly Thomas had just missed the beginning of orientation that Thursday. She was busy taking trips across the country with New Orleans as her eventual destination, after spending time in Switzerland as an au pair. When she finally arrived in New Orleans, it was too late to head to Loyola. With her mother in tow, the two instead bought furniture for Molly's bedroom - which would be in her aunt's uptown home - and went to all the typical New Orleans spots. People were talking about a storm. If Molly was going to listen to anyone, it would be her aunt. Besides being a long-time New Orleans resident, she was a blogger on the Weather Underground Web site. She knew her weather, and Molly had her faith in her. Plus, the 57-year-old was a laid-back hippie type, an artist, and not easily rattled. Neither was Molly.
Even as concerned family members called, they remained jovial. Molly's aunt always had a joke: "Molly first lesson in school is going to be how to run from a hurricane."
PACK YOUR THINGS
Nathalie Delise was asleep on Saturday morning when her mom called her, frantic, telling her to pack her things - there was a storm coming. It was strange, because every time a storm came they would always ride it out. A Chalmette native, Nathalie always heard about hurricane Betsey growing up. Her mother remembers sirens going off at the river. She remembers walking through the floodwaters with Nathalie's grandmother. But everything would be OK, they said, if you put all of your important stuff up high. The water would only be six-feet deep at most.
Nathalie started to pack her bags for her first time evacuating. She was living in the apartment in the back of her parents' house in Chalmette, and was excited to have her own place and to start her first day of college in two days - or whenever this storm passed. She grabbed her senior pictures and letterman's jacket, her Doc Martens and other expensive things. Everything else she placed on top of her Hurwintz-Mintz armoire, which was six-feet-tall and sturdy enough to last a lifetime.
Even till this day, she replays that day over and over again in her head, thinking about what she would pack if she knew what was to come.
That Sunday, Molly, her aunt and her mother's room at the Columns Hotel was stocked everything they needed to ride out a storm - party food and copious amounts of booze.
Molly was lying in bed that morning thinking about how this moment was five years in the making. Her room at her aunt's house was all set up, and it was perfect. She had bought her books, the first time she was able to buy all her books herself, because of a full-ride scholarship that was sending her to a university in the city she had quickly fallen for.
Then, she heard her aunt's footsteps - back and forth - as she walked into her room. The quick pace was unusual for her, a slow, laid-back woman. Something was wrong.
"Get your stuff together, Molly - we're leaving."
WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE
Ten hours later after taking off that Saturday, Nathalie was in Baton Rouge to stay at her aunt's house. They weren't the only ones with that idea - besides her aunt's six children and Nathalie's mother and siblings, her sister's friends, her boyfriend at the time, her brother's best friend and grandparents were also staying in this four-bedroom, one story house.
Even after much protest, Nathalie's dad decided to stay in town. After Sunday, they wouldn't hear from him in over a week.
Meanwhile, Molly's evacuation crew was getting larger by the minute: it was her, her aunt, her mom, a cat, and now, someone she hadn't even met yet.
Molly had talked to Max Wendlandt on an online message board Loyola's Web site meant to connect the incoming freshmen. Max said he would evacuate the city on buses boarding at the neighboring Tulane University. But it was Sunday, and the buses never came.
"Can we please pick him up?" Molly said to her aunt. Her aunt was angry: "We have the cat, you and me, your mother, your mom's stuff. We can't take him."
"We have to take him. We can't just leave him here!"
Her aunt finally agreed under one condition --Molly would have to throw out her backpack, which contained her clothes, underwear and the books she worked hard to purchase.
Max was the only sign of life at Loyola, now a desolate campus after the mass exodus of evacuees. The silence was broken when a compact car, windows rolled down, filled with three crazy hippies and cat, pulled up to campus - nonsensically hollering and singing, and yelling "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" out the windows as they picked up this complete stranger. When Max walked in the car, Molly's aunt lit up a joint and turned to him: "Max, aren't you lucky? Fifteen hours with three beautiful women."
Hours later, outside of Biloxi, Miss., Molly and her mother decided to drive north, which Molly knows now is never a good idea - you should never head north on a little road, because it will flood. Eventually, they stopped. There was a boat floating across the road. For the first time in the entire trip, the car was completely silent.
Molly thought two things: first, that they were going to die. Second, they had better make this situation fun. "Max!" she said, "Take a picture - your parents are going to freak out!"
There is a book on the car floor, which started to float a little bit as water slowly seeped in the car.
Molly's aunt stops the car. "Well," she says. "If we're gonna die here, we're gonna die here."
THIS IS HOW THE CITY WILL FLOOD
Somehow, they made it to Molly's uncle's house in Jacksonville, Miss. They had found gas at a place called Larry's Bait and Tackle where, strangely, no one knew about any storms coming.
Her uncle's truck that was parked out front had a canoe strapped on top - they called him MacGyver because of his extreme resourcefulness. He also knew exactly what the storm was going to do.
After everyone got settled in, her uncle pulled out a map: "This is how the city's going to flood," he said. He pointed out where the levees were - he knew they weren't going to hold - and said that the bowl of a city would fill up until the water was even with the river.
Molly's mind drifted back to yesterday. She, her aunt and mother were in Walmart looking for some last-minute food and water, which was scarce at this point. They went to check out and the girl behind the cash register struck up a conversation. "Ya'll stayin' in town?" she asked. They said that they weren't. "Oh, I wish I could leave, but my boss ain't lettin' me off," she said. "And you know how expensive it is to leave. But I really wish I could go ... because I can't swim."
Molly's mind couldn't help going back to that moment as the days when on and more coverage of the storm aired on television.
That night, they didn't sleep. They just watched and waited.
AN AWFUL DECEPTION
Molly was on a bus to New Orleans about three weeks after the storm. She had found out about a relief group that was going down, and she signed on immediately. Molly just wanted to touch something, anything, from the life she was supposed to have started.
They had been glued to the television as the coverage from Hurricane Katrina unfolded. She watched her aunt in front of the TV completely break down as she saw someone she knew who had died in the storm.
On the trip, the group gave Molly some time to retrieve some items from the Laurel Street house. The house had missed the floodwaters by about two blocks, but had still suffered some roof damage. Having seen the devastation around the city, she didn't know what to expect.
She opened the door of the house, and it was like opening a time capsule. Aside from the small spores of mold in corners of the house, it looked like a storm never came.
She briefly thought to herself that she wished she had lost everything instead. Because what is worse: losing everything, or having all of the physical things intact, while still knowing that this community, this culture, this people would never be the same? To her, it was an awful deception.
When Nathalie was finally reunited with her father, he wasn't even the same color anymore. His former olive complexion had become awash with a ghostly pallor. She knew he had seen a lot.
Nathalie and her mother returned to Chalmette when residents were allowed back in. "I didn't want you to come," her mother said. "But you're an adult now - I know you can handle this."
The initial glimpse inside took her breath away. The very first thing she saw were her two cats both lying dead, unable to get out in time. She went back to her apartment. The whole room was covered in a thick coat of oil, part of the 30-million-gallon oil spill from the Murphy Oil Refinery n Meraux. The furniture she thought was so sturdy had crumbled. All the clothes in her closet were sepia-toned, coated in a brown dust. Her paintings were ruined. She tried to sort through the rubble to find something worth recovering, but aside from a few shoes there was nothing. Even jewelry had been stolen.
Twenty-five feet of flood water sat in that house for weeks. It was the first house her parents owned.
A SACRED PLACE
Molly went on many subsequent trips with relief groups back to New Orleans, each time returning to Washington, D.C. - where she was at temporary student at American University - with an illness. The mold, the "Katrina Cough" was too much for her body. Her doctor recommended she not return for the Spring semester.
That semester turned into two semesters, and then three at American. She wanted to return to Loyola, but things kept getting in her way: her health, issues arranging scholarship money and financial aid and just the fear of instability. After working so hard to create a sense of community in D.C., it was hard to willingly return to a situation that was not stable.
But as the semesters went on, New Orleans kept returning to Molly's thoughts. The city had an almost religious way of remaining in her mind and calling her to return.
It was Spring Break, and Nathalie was the only one left in Biever Hall. After seeing that her home was unlivable, her family relocated to Mississippi and she moved back home that January to start the spring semester at Loyola. Because housing was so hard to come across, she had to live in the dorms. Nathalie just wanted to go home - to her real home.
COMING BACK HOME
About three years later, Molly is finally back at Loyola to finish her degree. She couldn't ignore the city's calls any longer. While at first worried about how different the community would be upon her return, her fears subsided when she participated in the Loyola Community Action Program's "Into the Streets" volunteer day during her new student orientation. The spirit of solidarity and cry for social justice in the air was everything she hoped post-Katrina New Orleans would be. Molly will be completing her degree in Latin American Studies this May.
When Hurricane Gustav threatened New Orleans, the first thing Nathalie thought was "Not this again." But she had learned from the mistakes of last time: this time evacuating, she packed her pictures. Her high school diploma. Not the most expensive things, but things that can't be replaced. Her mom said that if Gustav was anything like Katrina, they weren't coming back.
The false alarm of Gustav came as a relief to Nathalie's family, who had finally rebuilt and moved back in to their home that April. They were finally home, and for good.
After the ceremony, the masses overflowed onto the lawn facing St. Charles Avenue. Lost amid the flurry of conversation and movement, a man holding a camera shouted "CLASS OF 2009 - PICTURE!" With an unusually large freshmen class this year, it would be difficult to wrangle the students together. But finally, he managed to arrange the group in the Horseshoe. It was the class of 2009 - or, most of it - convening for the first time.
As the photographer snapped the camera, a nascent hurricane that had formed over the Bahamas began to move across Florida.
HOW TO RUN FROM A HURRICANE
Molly Thomas had just missed the beginning of orientation that Thursday. She was busy taking trips across the country with New Orleans as her eventual destination, after spending time in Switzerland as an au pair. When she finally arrived in New Orleans, it was too late to head to Loyola. With her mother in tow, the two instead bought furniture for Molly's bedroom - which would be in her aunt's uptown home - and went to all the typical New Orleans spots. People were talking about a storm. If Molly was going to listen to anyone, it would be her aunt. Besides being a long-time New Orleans resident, she was a blogger on the Weather Underground Web site. She knew her weather, and Molly had her faith in her. Plus, the 57-year-old was a laid-back hippie type, an artist, and not easily rattled. Neither was Molly.
Even as concerned family members called, they remained jovial. Molly's aunt always had a joke: "Molly first lesson in school is going to be how to run from a hurricane."
PACK YOUR THINGS
Nathalie Delise was asleep on Saturday morning when her mom called her, frantic, telling her to pack her things - there was a storm coming. It was strange, because every time a storm came they would always ride it out. A Chalmette native, Nathalie always heard about hurricane Betsey growing up. Her mother remembers sirens going off at the river. She remembers walking through the floodwaters with Nathalie's grandmother. But everything would be OK, they said, if you put all of your important stuff up high. The water would only be six-feet deep at most.
Nathalie started to pack her bags for her first time evacuating. She was living in the apartment in the back of her parents' house in Chalmette, and was excited to have her own place and to start her first day of college in two days - or whenever this storm passed. She grabbed her senior pictures and letterman's jacket, her Doc Martens and other expensive things. Everything else she placed on top of her Hurwintz-Mintz armoire, which was six-feet-tall and sturdy enough to last a lifetime.
Even till this day, she replays that day over and over again in her head, thinking about what she would pack if she knew what was to come.
That Sunday, Molly, her aunt and her mother's room at the Columns Hotel was stocked everything they needed to ride out a storm - party food and copious amounts of booze.
Molly was lying in bed that morning thinking about how this moment was five years in the making. Her room at her aunt's house was all set up, and it was perfect. She had bought her books, the first time she was able to buy all her books herself, because of a full-ride scholarship that was sending her to a university in the city she had quickly fallen for.
Then, she heard her aunt's footsteps - back and forth - as she walked into her room. The quick pace was unusual for her, a slow, laid-back woman. Something was wrong.
"Get your stuff together, Molly - we're leaving."
WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE
Ten hours later after taking off that Saturday, Nathalie was in Baton Rouge to stay at her aunt's house. They weren't the only ones with that idea - besides her aunt's six children and Nathalie's mother and siblings, her sister's friends, her boyfriend at the time, her brother's best friend and grandparents were also staying in this four-bedroom, one story house.
Even after much protest, Nathalie's dad decided to stay in town. After Sunday, they wouldn't hear from him in over a week.
Meanwhile, Molly's evacuation crew was getting larger by the minute: it was her, her aunt, her mom, a cat, and now, someone she hadn't even met yet.
Molly had talked to Max Wendlandt on an online message board Loyola's Web site meant to connect the incoming freshmen. Max said he would evacuate the city on buses boarding at the neighboring Tulane University. But it was Sunday, and the buses never came.
"Can we please pick him up?" Molly said to her aunt. Her aunt was angry: "We have the cat, you and me, your mother, your mom's stuff. We can't take him."
"We have to take him. We can't just leave him here!"
Her aunt finally agreed under one condition --Molly would have to throw out her backpack, which contained her clothes, underwear and the books she worked hard to purchase.
Max was the only sign of life at Loyola, now a desolate campus after the mass exodus of evacuees. The silence was broken when a compact car, windows rolled down, filled with three crazy hippies and cat, pulled up to campus - nonsensically hollering and singing, and yelling "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" out the windows as they picked up this complete stranger. When Max walked in the car, Molly's aunt lit up a joint and turned to him: "Max, aren't you lucky? Fifteen hours with three beautiful women."
Hours later, outside of Biloxi, Miss., Molly and her mother decided to drive north, which Molly knows now is never a good idea - you should never head north on a little road, because it will flood. Eventually, they stopped. There was a boat floating across the road. For the first time in the entire trip, the car was completely silent.
Molly thought two things: first, that they were going to die. Second, they had better make this situation fun. "Max!" she said, "Take a picture - your parents are going to freak out!"
There is a book on the car floor, which started to float a little bit as water slowly seeped in the car.
Molly's aunt stops the car. "Well," she says. "If we're gonna die here, we're gonna die here."
THIS IS HOW THE CITY WILL FLOOD
Somehow, they made it to Molly's uncle's house in Jacksonville, Miss. They had found gas at a place called Larry's Bait and Tackle where, strangely, no one knew about any storms coming.
Her uncle's truck that was parked out front had a canoe strapped on top - they called him MacGyver because of his extreme resourcefulness. He also knew exactly what the storm was going to do.
After everyone got settled in, her uncle pulled out a map: "This is how the city's going to flood," he said. He pointed out where the levees were - he knew they weren't going to hold - and said that the bowl of a city would fill up until the water was even with the river.
Molly's mind drifted back to yesterday. She, her aunt and mother were in Walmart looking for some last-minute food and water, which was scarce at this point. They went to check out and the girl behind the cash register struck up a conversation. "Ya'll stayin' in town?" she asked. They said that they weren't. "Oh, I wish I could leave, but my boss ain't lettin' me off," she said. "And you know how expensive it is to leave. But I really wish I could go ... because I can't swim."
Molly's mind couldn't help going back to that moment as the days when on and more coverage of the storm aired on television.
That night, they didn't sleep. They just watched and waited.
AN AWFUL DECEPTION
Molly was on a bus to New Orleans about three weeks after the storm. She had found out about a relief group that was going down, and she signed on immediately. Molly just wanted to touch something, anything, from the life she was supposed to have started.
They had been glued to the television as the coverage from Hurricane Katrina unfolded. She watched her aunt in front of the TV completely break down as she saw someone she knew who had died in the storm.
On the trip, the group gave Molly some time to retrieve some items from the Laurel Street house. The house had missed the floodwaters by about two blocks, but had still suffered some roof damage. Having seen the devastation around the city, she didn't know what to expect.
She opened the door of the house, and it was like opening a time capsule. Aside from the small spores of mold in corners of the house, it looked like a storm never came.
She briefly thought to herself that she wished she had lost everything instead. Because what is worse: losing everything, or having all of the physical things intact, while still knowing that this community, this culture, this people would never be the same? To her, it was an awful deception.
When Nathalie was finally reunited with her father, he wasn't even the same color anymore. His former olive complexion had become awash with a ghostly pallor. She knew he had seen a lot.
Nathalie and her mother returned to Chalmette when residents were allowed back in. "I didn't want you to come," her mother said. "But you're an adult now - I know you can handle this."
The initial glimpse inside took her breath away. The very first thing she saw were her two cats both lying dead, unable to get out in time. She went back to her apartment. The whole room was covered in a thick coat of oil, part of the 30-million-gallon oil spill from the Murphy Oil Refinery n Meraux. The furniture she thought was so sturdy had crumbled. All the clothes in her closet were sepia-toned, coated in a brown dust. Her paintings were ruined. She tried to sort through the rubble to find something worth recovering, but aside from a few shoes there was nothing. Even jewelry had been stolen.
Twenty-five feet of flood water sat in that house for weeks. It was the first house her parents owned.
A SACRED PLACE
Molly went on many subsequent trips with relief groups back to New Orleans, each time returning to Washington, D.C. - where she was at temporary student at American University - with an illness. The mold, the "Katrina Cough" was too much for her body. Her doctor recommended she not return for the Spring semester.
That semester turned into two semesters, and then three at American. She wanted to return to Loyola, but things kept getting in her way: her health, issues arranging scholarship money and financial aid and just the fear of instability. After working so hard to create a sense of community in D.C., it was hard to willingly return to a situation that was not stable.
But as the semesters went on, New Orleans kept returning to Molly's thoughts. The city had an almost religious way of remaining in her mind and calling her to return.
It was Spring Break, and Nathalie was the only one left in Biever Hall. After seeing that her home was unlivable, her family relocated to Mississippi and she moved back home that January to start the spring semester at Loyola. Because housing was so hard to come across, she had to live in the dorms. Nathalie just wanted to go home - to her real home.
COMING BACK HOME
About three years later, Molly is finally back at Loyola to finish her degree. She couldn't ignore the city's calls any longer. While at first worried about how different the community would be upon her return, her fears subsided when she participated in the Loyola Community Action Program's "Into the Streets" volunteer day during her new student orientation. The spirit of solidarity and cry for social justice in the air was everything she hoped post-Katrina New Orleans would be. Molly will be completing her degree in Latin American Studies this May.
When Hurricane Gustav threatened New Orleans, the first thing Nathalie thought was "Not this again." But she had learned from the mistakes of last time: this time evacuating, she packed her pictures. Her high school diploma. Not the most expensive things, but things that can't be replaced. Her mom said that if Gustav was anything like Katrina, they weren't coming back.
The false alarm of Gustav came as a relief to Nathalie's family, who had finally rebuilt and moved back in to their home that April. They were finally home, and for good.
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