A place forgotten

Lena Jakobsson arrived in New Orleans April 19, after spending weeks in the Bahamas covering the Anna Nicole Smith story for Court TV. What she found in New Orleans, by contrast, was a place that seemed forgotten, she said. Here are her observations:

Thursday 3:30 p.m.: Sitting in one of those white rocking chairs at the Charlotte airport, waiting for my NOLA connection, drinking a Starbucks. 5:50 p.m.: I have wandered along Magazine Street, settled on Dick & Jenny’s for dinner, and am at Winn Dixie (my first!) picking up coffee and wine for the Dart house. Fuel for the body, fuel for the spirit. 10:45 p.m.: All is well on Annunciation Street, and I head to bed.

I sleep like a rock. I meet Coleman Warner at noon Friday for my tour, and things change. Suddenly there are miles of gutted strip malls, abandoned homes, and the closet of a FEMA trailer where Coleman’s daughter has slept for the last 18 months. I’m not so much struck by what’s gone, but what’s still there; clothing on the steps of abandoned homes, a shard of something that says “Deluxe Edition” on the foundation left behind when the house above it was swept away.

Ruined clothes strewn on steps of an abandoned house.

I keep thinking, “Why is this still sitting here? Why has no one picked this stuff up?” I’ve thought about why this was my first impression. I grew up in a neat and orderly place (Sweden) where things are done by the book and punctuality is held above all else. My parents were orderly – and, yes, on time. I’m about to turn 38, am neither neat nor punctual, have spent nine years covering mostly murders, and I know by now that life is not always neat. But there is an overwhelming feeling to all of this of having been forgotten; people left to wait for help that never came, lives stuck in limbo, and houses spilling personal effects left behind to sit … and sit … Who should be picking them up?

Maybe the Swedes, I don’t know. It’s hard for me to get my mind around this.

Lena Jakobsson (right) with Gerry Queen.

There is no Muckraker’s project this weekend; the plan fell apart somehow, and instead Sharon Schmickle, my fabulously interesting roommate, and I join a neighborhood revitalization project and pick up trash for a few hours before Suzanne Stouse and Natalie Pompilio – those bottomless wells of enthusiasm and good cheer – find us a more challenging task: putting up sheetrock with a group of Texas Baptists. The house belongs to Gerry Queen. She takes a photograph of each of us for an album of the volunteers who have pieced her home together bit by bit: She says, “I’ve had the whole country working on my house, and Canada!”

Mrs. Queen is prone to hugging, and laughing. I have no idea whether the bathroom I worked on will ever pass inspection, but I think I did alright, under the watch of my new friend from Texas, who between carpentry tips threw in the occasional thought on finding Jesus, just in case there was hope for me still. (There’s not; I didn’t have the heart to tell him.)

Sharon Schmickle with Gerry Queen.

Jakobsson hanging sheetrock.

Before I know it, I am catching a cab back to the airport. I am left with impressions of some of the people who have come together here. People like Natalie, who is pouring all of her energy into this project, and scores of volunteers, like those Texas Baptists, who drive through the night to build for others. And, sure, moldy walls are torn down and new ones slowly go up – Mrs. Queen says she doesn’t get impatient: “Ain’t no use in trying to rush things!”

But the abandoned homes sit, block after block, neighborhood after neighborhood, and one can only imagine what their former inhabitants are going through. It’s vast, and has a feeling of permanency.

-- Lena Jakobsson

Lessons from New Orleans

Julia Lieblich turned her experience in New Orleans into a teachable moment for the students in her journalism class at Loyola University Chicago.

After years of traveling as a journalist, I went to New Orleans as a journalism teacher. When Times-Picayune city editor David Meeks gave me a tour of the devastated neighborhoods, I made mental notes about what I would say to my students more than a year and a half after the levees broke.

“What should I tell them?” I asked David, as we drove through the Lower 9th Ward.

“Tell them it’s like Berlin after the war.”

What I did tell my students at Loyola University Chicago -– many of whom had already volunteered in New Orleans –- was the story of the Times-Picayune journalists and the Dart Society's own Natalie Pompilio, who stayed in the city to report the story. They read reporter Brian Thevenot’s vivid account of those first days in American Journalism Review (ajr.org). And I told them about how David paddled two miles in a kayak to save his dog. (As David says, pet stories sell.)

The students responded enthusiastically:

“I found the determination of these people to get a newspaper out to their people and the world to be the most beautiful story of all, especially since these reporters were not obligated to stay, and the story obviously took a toll on them,” Karen Homsi wrote in a reaction paper. “I just hope I find something I am as passionate about.”

Wrote student Ashley Kaufman: “Instead of sitting at home and wishing there was something we could do, it’s important to remember people like Thevenot and Meeks and take the initiative.”

Many of us in the Dart Society have been struck by the generosity of David, Natalie, T-P photographer John McCusker and many others who have been willing to tell their stories again and again to let people know that this was a man-made disaster and that it will be years before houses are rebuilt and psyches healed.

John even offered to speak to my students. Ashley Williamson, a student in my human rights reporting class, interviewed him on the telephone about the lack of parity in mental health coverage. He talked to her about losing his home and seeing the wreckage -– and his subsequent depression and battle with insurance companies.

“After getting treatment for PTSD and medication for depression, McCusker began to feel better,” she wrote. “Then the unimaginable happened. He found he wasn’t covered.”

The photographer who had covered the early days of Katrina was denied the care he needed to survive.

“McCusker slipped into his uninsured depression,” she wrote. And Ashley learned a lesson about life after the storm.

-- Julia Lieblich

Project is 'Immersion 101'

When NPR reporter Michelle Trudeau agreed to join up on the New Orleans project, everyone was thrilled. She brought a bit of grace to the scrappy mission and showed how much she cares in numerous ways. “She is LOVELY,” Muckraker Suzanne Stouse wrote of Michelle. So is her essay.

I had never been to New Orleans before. I’d of course watched the coverage of Katrina on television -- about the Superdome, the people trapped on the bridges, the helicopters rescuing folks off the tops of homes. But I’m not a news junkie, so frankly, I watched only sporadically. And, I admit, after a week or two, in late August, early September, 2005, as coverage diminished, I moved on to other things. You know how it is -- family, work, next project around the house.

Then I received the invitation from the Dart people to go to New Orleans and help gut homes. I was very surprised by the call: New Orleans still needs help? A year and a half later? This stunned me. I wanted to see this for myself. Sign me up! Deirdre did her magic getting us all coordinated and ticketed, and I found myself jetting across the country from southern California to New Orleans, Thursday, March 22nd.

Debris outside a destroyed house in the Lower 9th Ward

First impressions on the way into town by cab from the Louis Armstrong Airport: poor, disheveled, industrial, flat, bleak. But as I traveled further into the city, the tones change. There are ancient live oaks reaching down over the streets, giving shade and welcome, blazing azaleas, dark pines, old stately homes, porches out front, wide boulevards with “neutral zones” of green cool between. Color and elegance and history. The cab delivers me to 4748 Annunciation, across the street from a barren lot with a dozen FEMA trailers. I let myself in. The place is clean, comfortable, inviting; goodies to eat on the kitchen counter; beer, cokes, water in the fridge. I am the only one staying at The Dart House this particular weekend.

Later, toward early evening, my cell phone rings. It’s John McCusker, a photographer from the Times-Picayune. “Welcome to the world’s favorite disaster zone,” he says cheerfully.

“I’ve never been here,” I tell him.

“Well, good, then you won’t know the difference.”

We talk about plans for the evening: “We gotta get you something to eat, and then go hear some jazz,” he tells me.

I’m in good hands, right from the start.

John takes me out to a local restaurant where I am introduced to char-broiled oysters, etouffe, bread pudding. All New Orleans specialties. We talk about what he went through during Katrina, and his experiences during the 18 months of post-Katrina. His recovery, at so many levels, has been slow and painful. John drives us through the French Quarter, heading toward “The Palm Court,” a favorite jazz spot of his. As we enter, John is greeted with great gusto by the musicians, standing at the bar, taking a break after their first set. John talks shop with them over a beer -- his knowledge of jazz is deep and passionate. Later, the musicians go back up on stage, pick up their instruments, tune them for a moment, and then start to play. Really play. Clarinet, trumpet, piano, drums, bass, trombone. All swinging and plowing the grooves.

Times-Pic photographer Kathy Anderson on the front stoop of a house the Muckrakers gutted.

Friday morning Kathy Anderson, a photographer with the Times-Picayune, picks me up at the Dart House. We head to the Ninth Ward –- an area that over the centuries has sunk to 11 feet below the water line. And it was here that the levees broke. We drive slowly along the remaining rutted roads. It is complete devastation. Leveled. Like it has been bombed till flattened. There are now just concrete slabs, the bare foundations, scrapped to the bone, where neighborhoods used to exist. Whole communities, blocks and blocks, no longer. Now a desolate moonscape. It doesn’t seem possible: just a short drive from where I’d sat listening to jazz the evening before. Here, this twilight zone of destruction. I can see no signs of recovery. No revival. No returning.

Saturday is a day of work –- gutting a house. Organized by the master, Suzanne Stouse from the T-P, founder of “The Muckrakers,” a group of volunteers from the paper who are helping in the recovery, gutting homes so families can begin to rebuild. Our group drives to a poor but fairly intact neighborhood. There are children, cars, street signs, sidewalks. FEMA trailers outside several houses along the street -- a good sign: this community is coming back. The house Suzanne targets for help is owned by a young man, early 30’s. When the levees broke, water rose up the first floor. He and his family fled to the second floor, waited for help there for five days. No one came. Finally, the young man and his uncle walked waist-high through the flooded streets the several miles to the Superdome to get help. His uncle, though, got a deadly infection in his leg from walking through the contaminated water, and had to have his lower leg amputated. Now, 18 months later, the young man and his family are still living in a FEMA trailer parked next to his house. He says he tried to gut the house himself, but it was just too much for him. Our work group is about 20 strong. With crowbars, hammers, sledgehammers, wheelbarrows, it takes most of the day to complete the gutting. The interior of the first floor is now just a shell. Bare struts and supports. Ready, though, for the owner to begin building anew.

I came to New Orleans to be educated about what had passed here. To see how the city had been laid waste. And to see how it had recovered. What I had not expected to see is so much devastation a year and a half after the storm. New Orleans seems severely and permanently altered –- physically, socially, psychologically. Whole neighborhoods no longer exist; and it seems unlikely they will recover. Over 1,500 of its citizens have died. Over 1.36 million of its citizens are dispersed around the United States. The loss of communities, of a culture, of a heritage unique in America is tragic and painful to witness. I thank the Dart Society for making it possible for me to witness this, and for making the commitment to never forget New Orleans. And I thank my brave colleagues at the Times-Picayune for taking me in and sharing their stories and their lives in New Orleans. They are a group of extraordinary survivors who have lived through the worst with courage, grace, and resiliency. I will return in a heartbeat if they need me.

-- Michelle Trudeau

Dart's weekend warriors

Frank Ochberg, M.D., came to the Crescent City to check out the Society's project and check in with friends old and new. He joined Ochberg Fellows Penny Cockerell, of Dallas; Keti Bochorishvili, of Tblisi; and Kevin McKiernan, of Santa Barbara, in what is now the Dart House. Here's what Frank wrote ...

Five days in New Orleans and I have a new respect for this city. We members of the Dart Society (I’m an ersatz member) are here to hang out, pitch in and learn from local journalists who are not only doing their jobs, but are also volunteering on weekends to gut houses.

Gutting takes place in teams of 6 to 12 with crowbars, hammers, brooms, shovels, wheelbarrows, gloves, masks and adrenaline. At first the journalists gutted one another’s homes -- houses that sat in six feet of water for a week, then molded and mildewed and died. Now the reporters -- just a few -- are joining various volunteer groups organized by churches to do that work on behalf of folks who can’t afford to hire professionals at $3.00 a square foot.

Frank Ochberg takes a whack at some sheetrock during the gutting of a house. (Photo by Kevin McKiernan)

I worked a morning shift, ripping out trim, pounding out plasterboard, folding fluffy fiberglass insulation and contributing to a mountain of debris on the sidewalk. We were in East New Orleans, on a deserted street. The homes were modest and middle class, not ramshackle poor like the Ninth Ward.

Every once in a while I’d see signs of caring from the former life of this dead home -- a gilt-framed mirror, a paneled room. But others had taken out all the furnishings, all the personal effects, so we were there to eviscerate the rest, leaving floors, ceilings, outer walls and joists.

We were the jackals and buzzards who move in after the lions leave, clearing the carcass down to the bone.

There is something exhilarating and gratifying about house gutting. Maybe it is the teamwork. We automatically move in a collective rhythm. The fittest set the tempo and the past-prime folks like me strive to keep up when two of us are ripping out plasterboard together, trying to remove huge chunks without having them crack and crumble into shards and powder. Then we find a vacant wheelbarrow and move down the narrow hallway, through the litter-strewn garage, out to the warming blue-sky morning, the sidewalk, and the growing pile of innards there on the lonely street.

Frank Ochberg, left, and Kevin McKiernan, right, peer out of a home ravaged by Katrina. (Photo by Penny Cockerell)

Five of us are Dartians: Natalie Pompilio, who planned it all; Penny, who leads the Society; Keti, who came all the way from Tbilisi and is clearly enjoying the work. Kevin, the world’s expert on Iraqi Kurds, is here, too, going with the flow.

Shortly after noon the job is all but done. Light streams through the exposed joists. The house is ready for sale, as-is, and eventual reconstruction. This one is a keeper. But the elderly owner will not return. Her neighborhood and community is no more. Something will eventually rise from this ruin, as happened in Hiroshima and Pompeii, but that will be years from now, a lifetime too late for her.

What a different scene in the afternoon: St. Patrick’s Day parade on Louisiana and Magazine streets, throngs of people in gay green garb, huge floats, marching men in tuxedo tops, kilts and garlands of beads, people throwing beads and flowers and cabbage heads (a tradition to mark the poverty and panache of the Irish immigrant). No sense of suffering here. And striking up conversation with strangers, we heard about New Orleans rebounding –- about the spirit, the camaraderie, the communities full of people helping one another.

I toured the Times-Picayune newsroom, meeting some I’d met before and others for the first time. I’m still sorting out what really happened and what we, the Dart visitors, can and will do to help.

John Pope, a reporter who has become a friend, said, "Don’t forget us, Frank."

That much I can promise. The memory will not be lost. But I know we must do more than that. We need to make others aware that New Orleans -– a city with a special flavor, pulse and purpose -- is alive enough to recover, but hurting enough to need our help.

-- Frank Ochberg

"Kicking Katrina's ass"

2005 Ochberg Fellow Mike Walter -- a Washington, D.C., broadcast journalist -- shot video during his weekend in New Orleans that the society hopes to use for a documentary about the project ...

Mike Walter (WUSA-TV)

Friday morning starts early: We are on the road at 8 a.m.

We are to meet at a house behind a church on State Street. We spot the group on the porch and know that we have found the right place.

I walk up and introduce myself to the leader, a guy named Will. Where there's a Will there's a way! This Will is young, earnest and knows he's making a difference. He confides in me later in the day that he also needs a break. Ten months ago he answered the call and moved here from North Carolina. In that time he's probably gutted more homes than he can count. He'll be leaving soon, and there will be another one just like him to take his place.

Today he's very much in charge, and deftly assigns the eager volunteers to their appointed tasks. It's a patchwork group of volunteers. Most are college students who will work hard during the day and party hard at night. I can tell this largely by the enthusiasm they exude as they talk about the pub crawl in the Quarter tonight. They are pliable, reliable and ready to work.

Once they jump into the job there is no resting, no talking, just action. It's just hard physical labor.

All of it is impressive to watch and to take part in. But the most impressive part of the day is watching Will talk to the homeowner. He is treated with respect. These are battered people. So much has been taken from them by Katrina. Will will do all he can to make sure that their dignity isn't taken as well.

Will asks the homeowner if it's OK if a videographer and I shoot video of the work effort. Will also asks what the homeowner wants to save, although all of us here know that there is nothing worth saving.

No judgments are made when the homeowner asks that we save his moldy sofa and love seat.

It is easy to forget why we are here. We think we are here for the experience, or, as journalists, for the story. We are here to witness the wrath of Katrina. We are here to see firsthand the damage and the recovery effort.

But as you stand inside this house -- what's left of it -- and watch Will talking to this elderly man you see the real story. You see a man whose hopes and dreams and life played out in this home.

Suddenly you recognize why we are all coming here: It's the people. It's about the people who care enough to come here and contribute, the people who care so deeply about a city that they refuse to leave or give up.

This is a story about the human condition. It's a story about Hope. I see it on this day and I see it throughout the weekend. I hear it in the voices of the people from the Times-Picayune.

Editor Dan Shea tells me that a lot of weekends he'll go out and gut homes and take his 10-year-old son with him. Before they leave he asks his son, "What are we doing today?" His son replies with a smile, "We are kicking Katrina's ass!"

Dan's wife will work alongside me on Sunday. She's mighty tough with a crowbar. I can see that spirit is alive in every member of the Shea family. It's alive in all the people from the newspaper whom I met and worked with all weekend long.

I'm getting ready to board a flight back to Washington, and while I know I didn't kick Katrina's ass, at least I helped people like Dan Shea, his wife and 10-year-old son. I know that Katrina tried to kick their asses, but in the end it's hope and not the hurricane that's prevailing in the Crescent City.

--Mike Walter

Five-year-old Will is fabled fund-raiser

Will Manware, son of Dart Center Ochberg Fellow Melissa Manware, baked goodies to help raise money for the recovery effort in New Orleans.

It's the talk of Target: New Orleans -- Charlotte Observer reporter Melissa Manware and her 5-year-old son Will raised a chunk of money for the Muckrakers with a bake sale at the paper. Their fund-raising drive has done more than melt the hearts of Muckrakers, it's spurred donations from others, including Ochberg Fellow Michelle Trudeau, who's donating two wheelbarrows ...

I wanted to make sure my 5-year-old understood why his mommy -- who already works too many hours -- would leave him and his daddy for five days. I wanted to make sure he knew I wasn't going on vacation without him, but instead going to work helping people who really need it.

We'd talked before about Hurricane Katrina and how it ruined people's homes. So I told him that I was going to New Orleans to help rebuild some of those houses. He seemed impressed and asked lots of questions. How many houses are broken? How many will I fix? And, can he help, too?

I explained to Will that only adults could rebuild the houses. The work is too difficult for little boys.

But then I thought of a way he could help.

We spent an entire Sunday afternoon baking chocolate chip cookies, brownies, Rice Krispie treats, and cream-cheese cookies. I measured each ingredient and then called him over. He poured the sugar, butter and flour into the bowl, he cracked the eggs, and mixed until his little hand hurt. He helped pour the batter -- and he licked the spoon! Then he drew a picture of a house with green grass in front and the sun shining brightly over the rooftop.

I attached the picture to a shoebox and wrote on the front, "Help Build New Orleans."

My colleagues have decided that Will has a future as a baker. They also contributed $355 to the cause. I gave the money to the Muckrakers, so they can buy more wheelbarrows, shovels and gloves.

Will is quite proud of himself. And I think he should be.

--Melissa Manware

Massive rebuilding effort is required

Fellows Melissa Manware (far left) and Gina Barton (second from left) pose with their work crew in New Orleans.

Charlotte Observer public safety reporter Melissa Manware reports being struck by how massive the clean-up and rebuilding effort is -- and will be -- and she wonders how tourists in the French Quarter could party through their vacations without being exposed to the devastation ...

Imagine a two-story house with fresh paint, a newly manicured lawn and a front porch perfect for a wooden rocking chair. Plants sit on the porch and in boxes outside the windows.

Now think about the homeowner -- so proud to have rebuilt -- standing on his porch. As far as he can see there is nothing but gutted-out houses, most still bearing the ominous markings of a search for the dead. If he's lucky, a few neighbors might be living in FEMA trailers parked in the front yards of their flooded-out homes.

This is post-Katrina New Orleans. The scene is similar in most every neighborhood. To me, it looked like a sad and a lonely place. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen.

There is so much work to be done.

Years ago, I rode a school bus to eastern North Carolina with a high school football team that was going to gut a house flooded by Hurricane Floyd.

The images -- and smells -- of that trip came rushing back as I toured New Orleans. It was early on a Saturday morning when the school bus turned onto the street and people were already working, not just on the one mucky, moldy house the team was there to gut. People were working on every house on the street.

New Orleans isn't like that -- at least not now, a year and a half after the levee breeches. The houses are mostly dry and the smell is mostly gone.

But so are many of the people who made New Orleans the quirky, wonderful place it used to be. There is still so much work to be done.

And then there's the French Quarter. I know a lot of people see hope there, but not me. At least I didn't see it on this trip.

The Quarter -- with all its mixed-drink specials, funky art and beignets -- made me even more sad. A few books and smart-ass Katrina T-shirts were the only signs of the storm. A tourist could easily spend a long weekend and have no idea of the devastation just a few miles away. I know it's necessary to get us shallow Americans to be tourists there again. But it's not right!

Make people see the mess. Make them aware of abandoned neighborhoods. Do whatever it takes to get them to stay a few days longer so they can help rebuild. There is so much work to be done.

Don't get me wrong, I did see hope:

* A large group of college kids chose New Orleans instead of Cancun for Spring Break. They were there to work, not party.

* An older man mostly just watched as we gutted his daughter's house. But he filled a cooler with bottles of cold water and offered me one. It was his way of saying thank you. It was the best water I ever drank.

* The daughter of another homeowner -- the mother has died since the storm -- told workers 15 times about a barbecue she's planning to thank workers who've helped their family through the storm. She said she'll have it at their new home in a neighboring town. She told me she hoped I'd make a trip.

I hope so too. I will do my best to be there. Not because I think I earned a cheeseburger for scraping up and carrying away her dead mother's tile floor. But because I want her to know I care.

I care about her and her city. And if I can get back that weekend, I can do a little more to help. There is so much work to be done.

--Melissa Manware