Katrina: The Untold Story

AARP magazine ran an article on the elderly since Katrina. Here are 2 links to the story.

This one has a bit of video with it: Click here

Here is the link to the story: Click here.

Katrina: The Untold Story

By Barry Yeoman, September & October 2007

When the monster hurricane ravaged New Orleans, its older residents were hit hardest. Two years later, the

Shortly before Hurricane Katrina tore its terrible path through the Gulf Coast, Shirley Thomas purchased a blue-green duplex where she planned to spend the rest of her life. The property, in New Orleans’s Seventh Ward, needed a lot of work. But there was a guest cottage in the back where the 68-year-old retired contractor planned to live while she did the repairs. The property was, she says, “in the heart of Gangsterville.” Drug dealers had taken over the front porch. They rolled dice and drank while waiting for their customers. That didn’t bother Shirley, an evangelical Christian who was used to doing outreach with some tough characters. She’d just chase the men off the porch, insist they pick up their beer cans—and then talk to them about cleaning up their lives. To her, this new home and her circumstances were all part of a divine plan. “Okay, Lord, I don’t have to wonder which corner I’m going to do my ministry on,” she prayed. “This is my ministry right here.”

Two miles away, Maurice Frisella was enjoying a quiet and genteel retirement in his meticulously kept Victorian home. The house was filled with antiques, including his collection of Blue Willow dinnerware and many original paintings of ships. Frisella, 83, had devoted most of his life to serving the parish church in his St. Roch neighborhood. “I was the oldest altar boy in captivity,” he says. “I washed the bishop’s hands, brought him the wine, put the sacred vessels on the altar, lit the candles.” After the church was closed, he and his friend Frederick “Buzz” Burkhardt, 80, whom he calls his adopted brother, developed comfortable rituals of their own. “We were just like two old monks,” Maurice says. “We’d get up; we’d have our coffee with chicory, real cream, and sugar. We’d put on the television and watch our beautiful, our wonderful, Martha Stewart. Then we’d have a little glass of wine. Four o’clock, we’d have our lime cocktail.” It was a good life for both of them.

In another New Orleans neighborhood, Althea Washington was getting used to the new circumstances of her life. She and her husband, Bertrand, had raised three children in Pontchartrain Park, with its neat brick houses and tree-lined streets. Bertrand, a retired assistant principal, loved Mardi Gras. “He rode on the floats,” recalls 75-year-old Althea, a retired teacher. “Sometimes I just sat there waiting to see him on the television, so I could record it to send it to my daughter.” In January 2005 Bertrand suffered a severe stroke. Althea shuttled him from one caregiver to another until finally she had to admit him to a suburban nursing home. (There is more story at the links above)