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Teacher Claudette Hunter welcomes Leondra Batiste during an open house at St. Rita's Catholic School Tonda and Leon Batiste, who stayed in Stafford after Katrina, check progress on their New Orleans home. |
By RUSTY DENNEN
NEW ORLEANS--Leondra Batiste is a little girl with a big smile.
One day last week, she was dressed up in her crisp white and blue school uniform to meet her fourth-grade teacher at St. Rita, a Catholic school in a working-class neighborhood not far from downtown.
"I have eight friends here!" she beamed, her mom and dad, Leon and Tonda Batiste, in tow.
She had good reason to be happy.
Leondra, 9, is one of the children of the storm, one of the tens of thousands whose lives were wrenched loose from their very foundations by Hurricane Katrina. It's been two years tomorrow since the monster hurricane wrecked the Gulf Coast.
For the first time since the storm struck. Leondra has felt a blessed state of normalcy.
Up to now, life has been a whirlwind of heartache and change. That journey brought them from a hopeful life in Louisiana's Crescent City, to hard times a thousand miles away from home in Stafford County. They finally got back home for good last month.
For now, the family is living in a rental a few blocks away from the home on Forshey Street that the couple bought in 1995 just before they got married.
Like the Batistes themselves, the small, trim rambler that had filled with putrid black water when a nearby levee broke is on the mend.
Their contractor, Mark Harris worked inside with a two-man crew last week, nailing up drywall. Plywood covers a floor once twisted and warped. Insulation is in the walls. Plumbing and electrical work has been completed; appliances will go in soon, and the house will be painted. In 45 days, Harris says, they should be able to move in.
"It's coming along, slowly but surely," Leon Batiste says, surveying the day's progress. He's done some of the work himself, even though he's disabled by a back injury and high blood pressure.
He comes by several times a day to check to make sure that no one has stolen anything from the house. Thieves often steal construction supplies, appliances, even copper plumbing pipe. That's one of the sad realities in a ruined city that is slowly rebuilding.
But with each passing day, the close-knit neighborhood is being reborn.
On their end of the block, "All but three families have come back," he says. There's "Miss Annie"--Rowan Brown--across the street. She's been here, with her son, for months. And two houses down is Marilyn Jackson, who lived with her husband in a government-provided trailer for months. "When we first got back here, it didn't look much like home. It was horrible. Like another world. Now it's looking so much better," Jackson said.
That's what the Batistes want back--the feeling of being home.
"We have neighbors who look out for each other in the block," Leon says.
The day Katrina struck, the Batistes, and many of their neighbors in the Hollygrove neighborhood, had to swim for their lives. They stayed out of complacency, a fear of leaving their belongings, and they didn't the money to go stay somewhere else for an indefinite period of time.
Water rose 6 feet inside the house; they floated on a door and were rescued. They made it to a succession of shelters, and eventually to an apartment in North Stafford, near relatives.
It was a long haul that made them dependent on others, and for a family that has never had a lot of money, broke. They got some aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency after the storm, and help from churches in Stafford. Aquia Episcopal Church, for example, held a fundraiser for them. One parishioner, Becky Monger gave them the first month's rent and security deposit when they returned to New Orleans July 9 in a well-used minivan, the Batistes said.
"Miss Becky really helped us a lot," Tonda said. She was not alone; many others chipped in to make one family of evacuees' ordeal less painful. They were lonely, missing home, and Tonda's mother and another relative died in the interim.
Still, "We want to let people in Stafford know we appreciate what they did for us," Tonda said.
Their journey is not yet finished: They've received a $69,000 Road Home grant from Louisiana to cover uninsured losses for displaced homeowners. But they've spent much of the sum and there's still work to be done on the house. Both Leon and Tonda are jobless because they are on disability. The family income is a few hundred dollars a month.
Two years after Katrina, Leon said it's hard because the storm has become a distant memory for those who were not affected. "Some people would say, 'I don't want to hear about the hurricane. It's over.' Well, it'll never be over for me."
Rusty Dennen: 540/374-5431| Staff writer Rusty Dennen and photographer Mike Morones visit the Gulf Coast on the two-year anniversary of the storm.
TOMORROW
Operation Photo Rescue works to salvage precious memories in pictures.
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