"Look and Leave": My Story

As a photographer, I generally let pictures speak for themselves. But as a social worker, I know there is more to the story. So here's my story.

In my role as a social worker, I participated in a program called "Look and Leave." Organized by the City of New Orleans, the project was designed to provide residents of the Lower Ninth Ward, who had been scattered over forty-eight states, an opportunity to return to view their homes for the first time since they fled Hurricane Katrina and/or the flooding it caused. I was a member of a mental health team that began the first day with a bus trip through the neighborhood, and we were all devastated by what we saw. I remember feeling physically sick to my stomach after viewing the remains of the community. We later accompanied the returning residents on bus trips. What I experienced on these different bus trips is only a small part of a much larger story, whose ending has yet to be written.

While accompanying residents on the bus trips, I had the feeling of being with family members when they went to view, for the first time, the remains of a deceased member of the family. As one team member commented, "This is the longest funeral I have ever attended." The climate of each bus ride was different. Some trips were made in a somber silence. On other trips the residents tried to fit a puzzle back together: "Where did the Robinsons' house go?" "What happened to Miss Lacy's house . . . ?" One man, with a sense of humor, asked the bus driver to stop so he could recover only one item from his property: it was the Brinks Protection sign standing on his front lawn. Everyone on the bus had a good laugh about that moment. Otherwise, I kept hearing the word "gone" repeated over and over. There was also weeping and quiet singing, perhaps the beginnings of new gospel hymns. By the end of the two weeks and over thirty bus trips, I felt as if I had a fairly good sense of the neighborhood, its history and its residents.

* * *

Although she was suffering from a heart condition, Miss Victoria, a seventy-five year old widow, was determined to keep herself calm during this journey. Two National Guard soldiers had brought her and her daughters in a van back to her home, but, because of its condition, she was not allowed to enter it. She told Jonathan, one of the soldiers, that her wedding ring was in the house.

"Where is it, m'am?" he asked?

"Go into the bedroom to the dresser. It's in the third drawer, under the towels, toward the back, in a box wrapped in a blue sock."

"I'll try, m'am," he said.

Several minutes passed, and Jonathan came out of the house looking triumphant. He had the ring, he had some jewelry, and he had her late husband's driver's license. Miss Victoria was speechless with happiness. Her daughter, who had presented herself as jovial and strong, wept uncontrollably at the sight of her deceased father's driver's license.

* * *

I also spent time with Mr. Smith, an older man who drove in from Jackson, Mississippi, with his wife who was disabled. She stayed in the van while I went with Mr. Smith and one of the soldiers to his home, where he had lived for fifty years. We got out of the van and walked to his house. His eyes filled with tears, but he assured me that he would be all right.

"This happens sometimes," he said. He had been told that his house had collapsed, but it had not. "It didn't come down," he commented with pride. "See how tall it's standing."

I asked him if he'd like to take a walk down his street. We walked slowly, looking at ordinary objects strewn by the wind and the water in the strangest places. Mr. Smith told me about his neighbors: where Miss Bessie lived, where Miss Rose had her annual holiday...