Leah Chase

Figure 1.

Leah ChasePhoto by Wendell Gorden, © 2006

ROWELL: I think of your restaurant, Dooky Chase, as a New Orleans institution. I have known it since the 1960s—the period I lived and worked in Baton Rouge. It is closed now. Why did you close it?

CHASE: We had a lot of water from the flooding. We had five and half feet in some places and two and a half in others in this neighborhood. Water was all over the floors. We had to rip out everything. The water didn't just come in and move back out, as it did with Hurricane Betsy. This time the water came in and stayed for over a week. The water stayed so long that there was water all over the place. We had to rip out all of the walls, and we had to take out every nail to get all of the mold out. There could be different kinds of mold. We learned that that isn't good; it's dangerous. You have to do what is called "remediation" in order to get the mold out of your house or building. It takes a long time to get it out. We had to tear the walls out to get the mold remediated. The electrician is there now. He had to take out all of the electrical wiring. He had to do a lot of work. People have been very kind to me—people all over the city and all over the country. I have been all over this country, and people want to come back. I want to come back. I can do any kind of work; I can do anything. I'll take in washing and ironing, if necessary. There is nothing wrong with that kind of work. You can make a fortune on it. You could make a fortune ironing clothes, but it's not about me; it's about the neighborhood. The restaurant was like an anchor in this neighborhood. You could look across the street at the public housing units over there, and you didn't see a bit of graffiti on those walls, because they always said, "We can't have people coming into the neighborhood to Dooky Chase's see writing all over the walls." The only thing you'll see on the wall now—and it baffles me to see it—is, "Dog food dropped here." I looked at it, and I said, "Well, they got reading dogs these days." That's my USA government.

ROWELL: You told me earlier that you evacuated to Birmingham, Alabama.

CHASE: Yes, I went to Birmingham, and Dooky, my husband, went with his daughters to Houston, because we all thought we were returning soon. We thought it would be just as we had done before: we'd go away for a short period and then come back. But it wasn't that way this time. After I looked back at all of what happened, you know what I then thought? "Our city was in serious trouble before Katrina. We were in serious trouble." That's what I think about even now.

ROWELL: Are you talking about before Nagin became Mayor?

CHASE: Yes, before. I'm talking about way back. We had too many people who couldn't fend for themselves. Somebody, even me, should have tried to uplift those people. We should not just throw them a little welfare check and little food stamps; we should have tried to give them some kind of direction. Say, "You listen. We have to do this. You can help me." I think if you go to a person and say to him, "I need your help," he will begin to feel good about himself; he will begin to feel needed. Maybe you didn't do that, and maybe I didn't do that. None of us did that. We just said, "Hey! That's it. Let them go." We cannot to continue to do that. You cannot run a city like that, you cannot run a business like that...