September 8, 2005

Yellow Springs resident Roger Cranos scanned the baked goods being offered by a group of village youth, including Hannah Brown, left, and Lilli Rudolf, downtown on Labor Day to raise funds for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

As the toll of death and damage from Hurricane Katrina continues to mount this week, it’s clear that the huge storm’s effects have rippled far beyond the Gulf Coast.

Along with communities across the country, Yellow Springs has been colored by the tragedy, as residents with connections to New Orleans mourn the city’s devastation, and others open their homes to hurricane victims.

Family ties to New Orleans

For villager Paulette Olson, New Orleans is a sacred place filled with wonderful memories.

Although Olson grew up in California, New Orleans was the family’s ancestral home, where her mother was raised and her grandparents still lived during her childhood. Every summer she visited her grandparents and reveled in the exotic, tropical city that she still visits whenever she can and that she holds close to her heart.

“I cry myself to sleep every night,” Olson said last Thursday. “I feel like I’m losing a friend.”

Still, Olson, who teaches economics at Wright State, said she feels very lucky that her family is safe. Her mother, who moved back to New Orleans and lives in the family home, and her sister and her family, who also live in the city, are all healthy and safe. They evacuated early Sunday morning, Aug. 28, before the hurricane hit, driving to Houston, where they are staying with friends. Her sister and her husband are planning to temporarily relocate in the Houston area, and Olson’s mother will eventually stay with another daughter in Maine, and then with Olson in Yellow Springs. The day after the hurricane came ashore, Olson’s cousins also got out of the city safely.

While her sister’s home was on higher ground and may not have been damaged, her mother’s home, which was built in the 1920s by her grandfather, was probably flooded and may be destroyed.

Scenes from New Orleans of human misery last week, showing tens of thousands of poor people, mainly African-Americans, who were stranded in the city, were almost unbearable to watch on TV, she said, and along with grief, she felt anger. Olson said she could not fathom the federal authorities’ slow response to the disaster, and the growing number of tragedies resulting from that delay.

“It’s horrific, what’s happening,” she said. “It’s obscene.”

Olson did receive good news several days later, when her aunt, an ER nurse who was working through the disaster and had not been heard from for several days, surfaced unharmed after those in the hospital were evacuated. And aerial photographs of her sister’s house showed that both the house and her beloved oak trees were still standing, although the fate of her mother’s house was still unclear.

John Fleming is the sixth generation of his family to have grown up in New Orleans, and he believes the home in which he grew up, which was in a heavily flooded area, was destroyed, although the family has since sold it. At the end of last week Fleming was grateful that his four siblings who live in the New Orleans area had all evacuated and were safe, although an 84-year-old uncle who worked in a hospital had still not surfaced. (Several days later, Fleming heard from his uncle, who was safe, and who will be temporarily living in Yellow Springs.)

Three of his siblings lived in the northern suburbs of New Orleans and their homes probably escaped serious damage, he said.

Fleming was troubled by the comments of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who questioned last week whether the government should restore the city back to health, since it is below sea level and extremely vulnerable to hurricanes.

“New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz, the city that introduced multiculturalism to the nation,” Fleming said. “And it’s not worth it?”

Fleming said he feels grateful for the number of friends who have called asking after his family’s welfare. Like Olson, he feels a huge sense of loss, but he also holds fast to his belief that New Orleans is, if nothing else, resilient. He has plans to attend next year’s New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, which he believes will take place next spring regardless of the city’s damage.

“New Orleans likes to celebrate itself,” he said. “As soon as people do that, things will get better.”

Organization hit hard

Diana Dunn, a former Yellow Springs resident who now lives in New Orleans, found shelter in the village with her longtime friend Joan Chappelle when the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast.

Dunn lived in Yellow Springs for 14 years until she and her late husband, Jim Dunn, moved to New Orleans in 1985. With the late Bill Chappelle and other Yellow Springs residents, Jim Dunn had founded Help Us Make A Nation, or Human, out of which grew the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, a nonprofit community organizing group that is now located in New Orleans.

Diana Dunn continues to hold a leadership position in the organization, and was in Yellow Springs to hold an anti-racism workshop at Antioch College, when talk of evacuating the city was raised the week before the hurricane struck, she said. Dunn decided to stay here, knowing that her children were safe, her son, Demian Robinson, in Texas and her daughter, Myisha Dunn, in California.

But the flooding most likely destroyed the building that housed the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, which was located in an area where floodwaters were high, she said. All of the organization’s 12 employees had evacuated and were safe, Dunn said at the end of last week, although all had friends and relatives in New Orleans they had not yet heard from. Especially upsetting, Dunn said, was the possibility that most if not all of her husband’s writings had been destroyed.

Her own home was probably seriously damaged, said Dunn, who plans to return to New Orleans soon to assess the damage and determine the fate of her three dogs, who had been left behind.

Dunn was especially affected by the images of the stranded people in New Orleans last week because her organization works with the city’s poor, and, she said, she could only imagine the suffering of those who found themselves with no way to escape, with water rising in their homes amidst unbearable heat and humidity and no food or water.

Dunn said she was troubled that the media focused on looters rather than on the human tragedy of the disaster.

“These are the poorest of the poor,” she said. “This nation cannot characterize these people as criminals but as poor people with no resources who are trying to survive.”

The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond will survive, she said, and has already planned to relocate to Baton Rouge. The organization is accepting donations through its Web site, PISAB.org.

Villagers open homes

The three children of former Yellow Springs resident Greg Smith, who had been living in Ocean Springs, Miss., will be temporarily staying in Yellow Springs in the home of Joanne Caputo and Michael Fleishman. The children arrived Tuesday morning and will stay as long as necessary, Caputo said.

The children, Greg, Donovan and Berkeley, who will attend the McKinney School and Mills Lawn School, are staying here because the home of their grandparents, Jim and Adelia Smith, with whom they lived, was flooded and suffered considerable damage, Caputo said. The Smith family had built the house as their retirement home in Ocean Springs, which is east of Biloxi. Previously, the Smiths lived in Yellow Springs, where Jim worked for YSI Incorporated and Adelia taught English at McKinney. Jim Smith has returned to the home and is attempting to clean up the damage himself, according to Caputo.

Greg Smith has temporarily relocated to Outlook Pointe in Xenia. Smith, who has muscular dystrophy, was the subject of a documentary, On a Roll, which Caputo made about his life and the challenges he faces. He was forced to leave behind his electronic wheelchair and specially adapted van, which have probably also been damaged or destroyed by flooding, Caputo said.

Caputo said that she would appreciate receiving clothing donations for the children as well as school supplies. She can be reached at 767-7955.

Villagers Paula Cordell and Steve Cheney have opened their home to a friend and family member, Agate Lawson. Lawson, who is divorced from Cordell’s cousin, Phillip Lawson, has lived in New Orleans for 25 years and works there as a freelance tour guide, specializing in giving French-speaking tours.

Lawson was in Miami Beach leading a tour when Hurricane Katrina first threatened the area, she said. Instead of returning to New Orleans, she contacted Cordell, who invited her to come to Yellow Springs for as long as she needs.

Lawson said she is grateful for many things, including that her house, located on relatively high ground in the city’s Garden District, was not damaged by the hurricane and flooding. However, her business was seriously affected, since she makes a living showing New Orleans to tourists, who will likely be in short supply for the foreseeable future.

Lawson said the situation breaks her heart, especially because she doesn’t know if she can move back.

“I love New Orleans, but frankly I don’t know if I can live there any more,” she said. “I’m 58 years old, and I don’t want to go through this again.”

Lawson remembered the first time she visited New Orleans, when she was relocating from the United States to Mexico many years ago, and stopped on the way. Later, she came back to the city and stayed.

“My jaw dropped, it was so beautiful,” she said of that first visit. “All of the old oak trees, the people of all colors, the music, and everybody so nice.”