‘It’s rough, but life is about survival,” said John Dede, a Katrina evacuee, about what he has gone through during the last year. On Sept. 7, 2005, Dede, along with 56 other evacuees, stepped off a bus at 3 a.m. and filed into his transitional quarters at the Madden Mental Health Center in Maywood.
What Dede went through in New Orleans during the eight days following the hurricane still haunts him. “I have nightmares,” he said, “and I’m not going to lie to you. There’s many nights I sit on that couch and think about all the things that have happened to me and cry. I watch TV and feel sorry for people in Iraq, but it doesn’t get to me like when I see scenes of what happened in New Orleans. When they show people in the water, I can’t look at it.”
Since coming to Forest Park, Dede still struggles to survive although he says he has been treated well. He feels his caseworker has been very slow in responding to his needs and is disappointed that he has not been approved for disability because of the “arthritis all over my body.”
The owners of the building just off Madison Street, where he lives in a studio apartment, allowed him to stay there rent-free for the first six months after moving out of Madden. FEMA gave him $2,000 which allowed him to pay for three more months and CEDA paid for another month. But all rental assistance ended at the beginning of September. “Tomorrow,” he said on Sept. 2, “I will have to go to my landlord to see if this month I will have a roof over my head.” To date he is still in his apartment as he looks for a way to pay the rent.
Dede’s friend, Patrick Donaldson, reports having symptoms similar to some service people returning from Iraq.
“I can’t work no more,” Donaldson said. “[Katrina] is messing with me.” Donaldson, who lives in a studio apartment near West Suburban Hospital in Oak Park, listed the symptoms he began experiencing in the wake of Katrina: a rash, high blood pressure, collapsing, sweating profusely, panic and anxiety attacks leading to nightmares and 17 trips to the hospital.
“I’ve been to hell and back,” said Donaldson, a former assistant manager at a Shell station in New Orleans who was holed up for eight days with 30 other residents in an SRO hotel. “I had to survive drinking hot beer from morning to night until the National Guard brought water. It would turn your stomach upside down. Some of the people living in the hotel broke in a grocery store and got food for us.
“I thought it was the end of the world. We were attacked by water moccasins who came into the hotel-three big ones. We fought them off with sticks. I saw bodies of people floating in the flood water that had been partly eaten by alligators. There were a lot of guns everywhere.”
The future bothers Donaldson as much as the past. FEMA is helping him pay his rent, but that will soon end. His food stamps have already been cut off, and his disability checks are not sufficient to cover his expenses. He plans on applying for Section 8 housing but is uncertain and fearful of what lies ahead.
“The roughest thing I’m dealing with right now is money,” he said. “I’m barely surviving right now.”
Dede estimates there are around 35 evacuees from the Madden group who are still living in Chicago and the western suburbs. Some seem to be doing better than Dede and Donaldson.
Earl Netter, a licensed practical nurse who lives in Forest Park, got a job at The Pavillion nursing home soon after leaving Madden. Although he recently lost that job, he has the credentials to find work somewhere else. He was also able to find a support community at the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Maywood.
Maurice George found an apartment in Maywood and is now enrolled in barber school. Ken Gilson, who also now resides in Maywood, is disabled by surgery done to the vertebrae in his neck but still finds fulfillment in mentoring children at the Maywood Library. The money he receives from his disability checks is enough to cover his expenses. He is happy with the new life he has put together.
Starting over in Oak Park
Debbie Cannatella, an artist who was in the process of moving to Oak Park from Baton Rouge with her husband when Katrina hit, is making progress starting a new life here.
“We love Oak Park,” she said, “and I’m enjoying re-establishing myself as an artist here, though it is difficult at times because without an established business the paintings aren’t selling as I’d like. But I’m getting more and more opportunities around here. I just hung a show at Prairie Title Company with an opening coming up [Sept. 22]. The Oak Park Art League has been really good to me.”
Cannatella carries sad and sometimes frightening memories.
“The hurricane itself was scary,” she said. “I remember watching out my window as the pine trees nearly bent in half in the wind. I had minimal damage [to my house], but the horror was watching on TV what began to happen to New Orleans. Most of my fellow artists in the Louisiana Watercolor Society resided there. I sat and watched TV and cried.”
Although Cannatella’s encounter with Katrina was difficult, she had the emotional, personal and financial resources to make a good recovery. To a lesser extent, so did Gilson, Netter and George. But for those with few resources, life in their new home remains a struggle.
Dede is stoic about the future. He tries to work out every day, finding that exercise seems to help his arthritis.
“I get up in the morning,” he said, “say my prayers for the living and the dead, and I say to myself, ‘Have confidence. Don’t be paranoid and be aware of what’s around you.’ Every day I get up and say to myself that I’m going to make it.”
He would rather live in Forest Park than go back to New Orleans, but if he can’t find the money to pay the rent, he thinks that he’ll have to go back home where he has a room in the house his family owns.
“If I can’t pay my rent,” Dede said, “I”ll probably wind up going back home because I can’t let myself get wind of homeless. At least I have a fighting chance back home.”
No matter how well the evacuees have adjusted to life, the one thing they all say is how grateful they are for the people who volunteered to help them.
“The people of Forest Park, Oak Park and River Forest have treated me good,” Dede said. “It’s just like living at home. I haven’t been discriminated against once since I’ve been in Forest Park.”
Life-changing experience
He refers to one volunteer, River Forest resident Christie Hunt, as “his angel.” He said she would work from early in the morning till the time her children would be coming home from school. Then she would make the girls supper and bring them along with her in the evening.
Hunt felt compelled to help from the day she learned that evacuees were being housed at Madden.
“I went right over to the Volunteer Center in Oak Park to fill out an application to volunteer,” she said. “When I told my kids about what I had done, they begged me to let them come with to Madden. That was the beginning of it all.
“We met people who were to become our new friends, and started getting to know them by asking them how they were doing, listening to their stories of the past week, and offering a shoulder. I was so proud of my daughters-they started walking around this group of strangers, introducing themselves and starting conversation.”
Hunt began her volunteer work by sorting clothes and soon moved to making runs to buy “creature comforts” for her new friends. She searched the Internet helping parents look for children they were separated from. She found herself rejoicing vicariously when something good happened to an evacuee.
“One of my favorite memories,” she said, “was the day I walked into Madden and one of the evacuees came running up to me with tears in her eyes and exclaimed, ‘I found my kids. I found my kids.’ She had the biggest smile on her face.
“Volunteering with the evacuees definitely changed my life,” Hunt said. It showed me and my daughters how a little caring can make a huge difference in someone’s life. It also showed us that although we may have different backgrounds and life experiences, we’re all people deep down inside, and we should help one another. Finally, it provided a great lesson about how most of our everyday concerns aren’t really all that important in the grand scheme of things.”
Dale Nowicki and Carla Lawless actually had a Katrina evacuee live with them in their Berwyn home for three weeks. Nowicki met Armand Houston and his Schnauzer, Jazz, the day after they had arrived at Madden. Nowicki remembered how upset and despondent he looked, but he responded willingly to Nowicki’s attempt to start a conversation. For some reason he always wound up talking to Houston when he came to work at Madden.
Houston decided to return to New Orleans three months after arriving at Madden, but came back to this area in July after discovering that not all services were up and running in New Orleans, most businesses were still boarded up, there were no jobs and the city still had no evacuation plan for the next hurricane.
At that point Nowicki and Lawless invited Houston into their home where he and Jazz lived with them for three weeks. In the home alone while Nowicki and Lawless were at work, Houston would make the beds, do the dishes and “just keep things very tidy.”
He did this without being asked,” Nowicki said. Having Jazz in the house helped him and his wife deal with the recent death of their own dog.
“Volunteering is a very rewarding experience. I am always aware of the joy they give me with their sincerity and gratitude. I would encourage anyone with a little time to give to spend it with those who really need it. We are all children of God, and I believe we are here to take care of one another.”
Settling in : John Dede Jr., Patrick Ivory, Christie Hunt, Ronald Hunt, Katie Hunt, Annie Hunt and Kenneth Gilson in one of the evacuees’ studio apartment in Forest Park.
Photos by Frank Pinc
