What do you say to New Orleans?

I have just returned from New Orleans and it was an experience that has changed my life forever. I have meet people that are not victims, but heroes – heroes greater than any I ever anticipated meeting in a lifetime.

The people there have suffered beyond endurance, yet they somehow manage to have the courage to go on.

Everyone you meet in New Orleans has a story. Ask and they will tell you.

I found myself overwhelmed.

What do you say to the housekeeper making your bed when she tells you about being trapped in the Superdome, witnessing rapes and murder, too afraid to sleep or eat for five days because she was worried about her 14 grandchildren?

What do you say to the valet who parks your car who lost his wife and three children to the flood and found their lifeless bodies?

What do you say to a high school principal who brought people through a second story window into the school where seventeen hundred people lived for nearly a week on breakfast cereal and water?

What do you say when you meet a man while walking your dog that lost his children, a son and a six month old baby daughter, because he couldn’t keep their heads above the water?

What do you say to a city that drowned because it couldn’t keep its head above the water?

“The water came so fast,” they said, in matter of 20 minutes the water rushed in and the city filled up like a bathtub.

When rescue finally came they were scattered to cities all over the U.S. After three years, some have managed to return. They love New Orleans. There is a great spirit of community and most people have generations of extended family.

It is a city that deserves to be saved.

They go on with the help of volunteer organizations, people that have come to help them rebuild, heroes like a minister whose congregation has left the pews and gone to the streets to work. Heroes like a young couple who left good jobs to come to St. Bernard parish and begin a rebuilding project.

What’s left?

Before I went, more than one person asked me why I was even going there since there was nothing left. But, the people are friendly, welcoming, and grateful when someone cares.

There is devastation beyond belief. Even after three years, ghost houses stand empty in the areas that were flooded worst. Some have been torn down and only concrete pads remain as silent testament that a family once lived there. Some houses wear red crosses showing that they too are marked for destruction and cannot be saved.

No one seems sure of the statistics, but most believe half the population is gone.

Yet, the French Quarter is as rowdy and beautiful as it ever was. The founders of the city knew to build on the high ground, and so the oldest areas received the least water.

Life goes on.

There is music literally on every corner. There are flowers. The famous restaurants are open and serving up Creole food. The hotels are open with business as usual.

The most critical need is for affordable housing. A waiter in the French Quarter who swam out of the flood, said he now pays twice as much rent and is lucky to have a place.

The heroes just keep turning up.

A shopkeeper in the Quarter told me she was worried about the people in Iowa. “We know what it's like,” she said.

There are other tragedies, other stories, and even other heroes.

But the story of New Orleans is an American tragedy -- a story that isn’t over. After nearly three years, people are still dying there, from stress, from grief, from being forgotten.

What do you say to people who are still suffering?

You say "I care."