Journalist shares Katrina experience with new freshmen
“Dear America, I suppose we should introduce ourselves: we are South Louisiana … We’re a fiercely proud and independent people, and we don’t cotton much to outside interference, but we’re not ashamed to accept help when we need it. And right now, we need it.”
While Chris Rose was stuck in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, he penned a letter to America. He included it as part of the introduction to his book “1 Dead In Attic: After Katrina.”
Just two days before the sixth anniversary of Katrina, 2,000 incoming USU freshmen gathered in the Kent Concert Hall to listen to Rose, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, share his experiences and the lessons he learned.
Each year a committee selects a book to be used as the Common Literature Experience. Students taking the Connections class, along with anyone throughout Cache Valley who wants to participate, read the book and are invited to attend the convocation at the end of Connections week.
This year the committee selected “Zeitoun,” the story of a Muslim family living in New Orleans at the time of the hurricane.
Abdulrahman Zeitoun ignored the warnings to evacuate the city, but sent his family to Baton Rouge. He stayed behind to take care of their home and their business, thinking it would just be a couple of days.
Among the crime and looting, during the weeks after Katrina struck, Zeitoun found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, which led to doing time in a makeshift jail and a high-security prison. With no official charges given to him, no attorney and no contact with the outside world, his family – who by then were in Arizona – did not even know if he was alive or not.
When Katrina hit, Rose worked for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and said he knew the chance to cover the effects of Hurricane Katrina were once in a lifetime.
He jumped right into the battle, comparing it to a soldier who had spent 25 years in training only to get out just as a war was starting.
“You just don’t do that,” he said. “These were the kind of things we’d been preparing for our whole careers.”
Being in journalism is a great place to be in situations like these, he said.
“I was one of the lucky few who got to get on their soapbox and rage about the world,” he said. “I got to get in the newspaper and scream. I didn’t have to hold it in.”
Provost Raymond Coward called Rose a “writer, performer and a defender,” explaining why they asked him to come speak.
While he was in Logan, Rose spent a lot of time interacting with students. He took an hour to meet with two Connections classes to talk about writing, then ate lunch with a select group of students who had won an essay contest to be there.
Hurricane Katrina brought the people of New Orleans together, Rose said.
“You got the idea that your neighbors actually had your back,” he said.
The weeks after the disaster taught the people to fight and work hard.
“If we lost the battle, we lost our homes, our jobs and our city,” he said. “The most important four-letter word in the English language is home. New Orleans is my home.”
Josh Rasmussen is a freshman who participated in Connections. After the convocation he said he was pleased with what he had seen and heard.
“He was real. He was himself. A lot of people come up in front of people and they put on kind of this different face,” he said. “I connected with him a lot more because he was real. He seems like someone I would like to get to know.”
Tenille Holmes, also a freshman in Connections, said she enjoyed reading “Zeitoun” because it helped connect Hurricane Katrina to her.
“It’s easy to just blow off what’s going on when it’s just facts,” she said. “For me, learning the personal stories of someone – of one of the heroes – makes it much more real.”
Rose spent the morning telling stories and sharing some of the lessons he learned during the Katrina experience.
Though everything is starting to work out, he said he went through many difficult times that changed his life entirely. He and his wife eventually got divorced, he became addicted to pain killers and dealt with depression.
“When the storm came, it started knocking down the dominoes,” he said.
Rose said whenever people complain about the “stuff” they lost in the hurricane, he comes back with “I lost my sanity and my marriage. I’ll trade you.”
Six years later, Rose realizes that only the people of New Orleans really think about what happened.
“The anniversary is this week,” he said, “but most likely people will bring up the fact that it would have been Michael Jackson’s 52nd birthday.”
Things are getting better though, Rose said. Rebuilding has been successful and the city and its residents are getting back to normal.
“We laugh more than we cry, and that’s a good start,” he said. “We’re happier, we’re funnier and still talking too loud.”
To close his letter to America, Rose said “Don’t pity us, we’re going to make it. We’re resilient. After all, we’ve been rooting for the Saints for 35 years, that’s got to count for something.”
– megan.allen@aggiemail.usu.edu