My mother and my youngest sister, Mary, were in a New Orleans hotel in late August of 2005 when the National Hurricane Center officially shifted the track of Hurricane Katrina from the Florida Panhandle to the Mississippi and Louisiana Gulf Coast. Mary was about to begin her senior year at Tulane University.
The next morning, before the storm reached the city, they left, driving down mysteriously open roads, a presage to the congestion that would come hours later.
The winds came, and then the rain. When the levees broke, entire neighborhoods flooded.
For the first time since the American Civil War, Tulane closed its doors. My sister spent the fall term at Harvard, part of a unique group of students who migrated across the country to continue their education, tethered to one another by history.
Students came to Arkansas, along with thousands of others, suddenly peripatetic and in search of shelter, food, and jobs. Many stayed and built a new life in our state. For Mary, though, it was never in doubt that she would return to New Orleans that spring, after the waters had receded but still a long way from recovery, to finish her education.
In the spring of 2006, 10 months after Katrina, I went to New Orleans for her graduation and saw firsthand the effects of the storm. Walking the streets of the Lower Ninth Ward, I saw houses piled on top of cars. Relief workers were operating under makeshift shelters. Toys and photographs and furniture were strewn about, rotted, reduced to rubbish. I turned a corner to see BAGHDAD spray-painted on the side of a dilapidated house. Numbers of the dead were still posted on door fronts.
At commencement the band played the gospel song “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton spoke about clear skies and new beginnings. Resilience and solidarity echoed through the arena. I understood New Orleans’ ethos after that; I understood why Mary loved it so.
That same year Mayor Ray Nagin’s post-Katrina epoch began. He unveiled an ambitious “100 Day Plan” meant to invigorate the city with desperately needed support only to have it fail. Four years of unfulfilled promises and empty rhetoric spoiled what could have been one of the greatest second acts in American political life. Mr. Nagin left office with an approval rating in the low 20s, a major budget shortfall, and violent crime on the rise (he has since been indicted on charges of corruption; he pled not guilty to those charges in February).
In a city eager for change, Mitch Landrieu was elected mayor in 2010 with 66 percent of the vote. In his first State of the City Address he urged people “to stop thinking about the city we were and start building the city we want to become.”
In 2012, New Orleans created 4,000 new jobs, brought in 9,000 new visitors, and financed 128 new small businesses. An $826 million revamp of the airport is underway. The Super Bowl and the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Final Four have come to town.
The movie and television industry has grown significantly. Louisiana is now the third largest state for film production in America, behind California and New York. In New Orleans, off Baronne Street, is the mise-en-scene for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. True Detective, a new series for HBO starring Matthew McConaughey (Mud) and Woody Harrelson, is also in production there. Treme will conclude this year after four boozy, lyrical seasons.
The hospitality industry is on the rebound. In the French Quarter alone, 109 of the 129 hotels closed their doors after Katrina. Ninety-nine have re-opened. Eight years ago, the hospitality industry employed 85,000 people. Ninety-one percent of those jobs exist today. Significant projects like the refurbished Hyatt Regency, a state-of-the-art convention hotel, hold promise for future growth in the industry.
Food has long been a mark of New Orleans’ vitality; the celebrity chef is very au courant nowadays. Cochon, the venerable eatery in the Warehouse District, was recently named one of the “20 Most Important Restaurants in America” by Bon Appetit. This year, Alon Shaya of Domenica and Tory McPhail of Commander’s Palace were finalists for a James Beard Award, the Oscar of the food world (Mr. McPhailwon). More impressive, perhaps, is Wendell Pierce’s successful effort to open grocery stores and convenience stores with fresh produce in the food deserts of New Orleans.
Music is the soul of the city. After the storm Habitat for Humanity, partnering with Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr., built a Musician’s Village with 72 homes for displaced musicians and a multi-million dollar arts, educational, and community center. The historic Saenger Theater, closed since 2005, will re-open this autumn after a $52 million restoration. Kermit Ruffins, the horn master, plays at Vaughn’s on Dauphine; Frenchman Street still grooves. The Neville Brothers passed the Jazz Fest torch to Trombone Shorty earlier this year, an historic thing.
Over Memorial Day weekend, my wife and I took a slow, beautiful, sun soaked drive to New Orleans. There, commercial development projects lined Canal Street. Streetcars and double-decker tour buses were crowded with people. Police sirens blared as traffic piled up.
Blocks away, in quieter, less eccentric places in the French Quarter, people shopped for antiques and art, drank cocktails on balconies, watched painters in Jackson Square, listened to brass bands, and lost track of time at Crescent City Books.
Uptown was bright and hot. People boiled crawfish and drank beer and laughed in the front yard of an antebellum home on St. Charles Avenue. At the gates of Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, the above-ground tombs conjured up memories of gothic horror.
Life was bleaker in the Lower Ninth Ward, a consequence of Mr. Nagin’s ill-conceived laissez-faire approach following the storm. Much of the area, which is four times the size of the French Quarter, remains uninhabited. But a new effort to spur growth is underway, which includes public investment for a community center, fire station, and street repairs.
It has been eight years since the storm. Is New Orleans back? I don’t know. But I am reminded of a passage Dave Eggers wrote in Zeitoun, one of the better books published about Katrina: “Yes, a dark time passed over this land, but now there is something like light.”
Blake Rutherford is vice president of The McLarty Companies and lives in Little Rock. He can be reached at Rutherford.Blake@gmail.com.
Perspective, Pages 91 on 08/25/2013