tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1990338437877873686.post7254159285490542354..comments2024-03-28T08:30:57.453-04:00Comments on Murder is Everywhere: Tragedy in ParadiseOvidia Yuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05749549092493567689noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1990338437877873686.post-91959755867906991512010-08-23T15:10:52.910-04:002010-08-23T15:10:52.910-04:00Leighton, it is always unfortunate when places tha...Leighton, it is always unfortunate when places that are special become irrevocably associated with tragedy. People seem to be more affected by the tragic than they are by remembering the wonderful things that have happened in other places.<br /><br />The fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is coming up on August 29. That is when it hit New Orleans. My uncle was a priest who had lived in the city for 35 of the 50 years of his priesthood. He died before Katrina. He was a hospital chaplain and I know he would never have left the city even with the mandatory order for evacuation.<br /><br />When family would visit, he made sure we met just about everyone he knew. He gave everyone nicknames; in fact, at a memorial service, people who spoke introduced themselves by those nicknames so people could put the names they had always heard with the faces.<br /><br />In part because of that habit, after Katrina we had no way of tracking down so many of those people who had been family to him. The handful of real names and phone numbers we had were no longer in service after the hurricane. We have no idea what happened to all those wonderful people. <br /><br />We met some of the doctors associated with the hospital and we met his personal physicians when we came when he was dying, but many of them left New Orleans. So many people never came back to the city, that many doctors no longer had practices to which they could return.<br /><br />Most of the people we met were those who kept the hospital functioning smoothly, the porters, the kitchen workers, the housekeeping staff. Those were his people. We used to tease him that he participated in more Southern Baptist funerals than Catholic ones. If anyone who worked at the hospital had a death in the family, he would be there. These were the people whose jobs required that they stay and who wouldn't have the money to leave anyway. These were the people who he would refuse to leave. He was ordained in 1945. He certainly saw racism is flower.<br /><br />It is hard to believe that New Orleans got less attention in desperate circumstances than third world countries half a world away. There are many people who have a lot to answer for because they let a city, and the people in it, die.<br /><br />BethAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com