[Rhodes22-list] Brad Mercer - What I Felt - Katrina (was Herb's sailing trip)

[Herb Parsons]

I'll write another one later, but for now, I'll share what my old 
college roommate wrote about Katrina. But first, a little background (I 
think I shared this writing on here before, but some of you weren't here 
back then)

I'm registered as a captain with a company that runs a sight-seeing tour 
system using DUKWs (pronounced duck). It's an amphibious WWII era 
vessel. They decided to send one of then down to NO to assist in 
rescue-recovery immediately following Katrina. Even though I had not 
actually worked for them, they wanted a USCG licensed captain operating 
it on this trip, so they called me, and I jumped at the opportunity.

In some ways, the trip was a bust - the boat developed engine trouble 
the second day, and we had to have it picked up, the company lost a LOT 
of money on the effort. On the other hand, we pulled 67 people out the 
day we ran it, and spent the rest of our time there running supplies to 
other parts of LA and MS, so I felt we were productive over all.

Brad Mercer was my old college roommate. He and I have stayed close over 
the years. We didn't do 1/10th of the "grand adventures" we planned as 
college kids, but we have gotten together a few times to revive the 
spirit of them. This was a good opportunity for that, so I invited him 
to come with us. "Us" turned out to be him, me, and Max, another guy 
that worked for the tour company.

Obviously, Brad and I made the trip in 2005. We talked about it a lot 
since then, and he wrote three very good journals about our experience. 
This was the best of the three. It's a bit long, but definitely worth 
the read.

Brad was seriously considering writing a book, but shortly after our 
trip, he moved to Australia to help another friend start a church. He 
and the friend, who was from Australia, had successfully started a 
church in the Dallas area, and now Brad felt it was time to repay the favor.

They got the church started, and it's still growing, but about a year 
after he moved down there, around March of last year, Brad called me 
with the terrible news that he had colon cancer. Not the "big C", but 
the big "C C", and it was amazingly aggressive. We lost him late 
November of last year, and though the world at large took little notice, 
we lost a good one.

This is what he had to say about our adventure
=====
Katrina, Part III, What I Felt

I have seen in this past week more literally overwhelming destruction * 
and more humbling nobility of spirit * than ever before in my life. I 
have felt more encouraged and affirmed than I can remember being in a 
long time. By the end of the week it felt like a badge of honor, a mark 
of distinction, to be able to call myself a human.

It began at the Coast Guard operation in Alexandria, Louisiana. The 
person in charge there, in certainly the biggest assignment of his life, 
and one for which he couldn't possibly be adequately prepared, had been 
working 20 hours a day for a week, and we civilians had shown up 
uninvited, offering to help with our amphibious vehicle (called a DUKW, 
pronounced "duck"). Yet he was as courteous and gracious as he could be. 
He showed us around the facility, introduced us to someone who could 
figure out how to plug us in, and bragged on his people, who had also 
been working 20 hour shifts, and who were also gracious and attentive 
and helpful. He told us about a girl in the Coast Guard in New Orleans 
who had just the previous week obtained whatever licensing or 
credentials are required to do aerial rescues from a helicopter. He said 
a typical Coast Guard helicopter pilot may do 20 aerial rescues in a 
career, and this girl had done 70 in her first week after qualifying. So 
before we got close enough to see the first sign of wind or flood
damage, my heart began to swell with admiration for all of the rescue 
and relief workers.

The sun was rising on Saturday morning as we entered the city of New 
Orleans, a major port and renowned tourist attraction, a city of a 
half-million people, the home of the Superdome and the New Orleans 
Saints NFL football team and the French Quarter and Mardi Gras * the  
city where the party never stops. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, 
the temperature was perfect, the roads were clear.

And the great city was empty, abandoned, desolate. We passed mile after 
mile of highways, homes, shopping centers, hotels, offices, churches and 
franchised fast-food places without people or traffic. I have seen a 
great city skyline standing black against a black sky. There was nobody. 
That was the single eeriest experience of my life. It was like being in 
some sort of post-apocalyptic movie. I felt the emptiness, the 
abandonment, the smallness and the weakness and the transience of the 
greatest human achievements. I felt what hell would be like for me * 
alone in a world that was built for relationships.

As we roamed the desolate city, I felt the perspective of the looter. No 
one else was around. No one seemed to own anything or be in charge of 
anything or responsible for anything or able to provide anything or to 
care about anything at that location. It was like being the only person 
left alive after a world-ending nuclear war. The whole material remnant 
of the "developed" world is now just your unexplored urban jungle for 
hunting and gathering, which is what you are reduced to in a place that 
is, for the moment at least, too primitive even for agriculture, much 
less manufacturing. I could see the signs on the small shops that said 
things like "We shoot looters" and identify with the person determined 
to protect at any cost what was left of his property, but for the first 
time in my life, I could at least imagine what the world looked like to 
the looter, too.

One of the most remarkable emotional experiences was just the spirit of 
the workers. We must have seen agencies from 20 states represented. We 
saw every possible law enforcement and military agency from every 
possible level of government, as well as countless private organizations 
like us. It could have been a bureaucratic nightmare, but every leader 
we encountered, no matter how harried and overworked, was kind and 
willing to help and be helped. Every one of them offered to share their 
food and drink (but not their gasoline), and looked for ways to keep 
structure and coordination intact while still incorporating unexpected 
offers of help. Every one of them was working as hard as they could to 
make it work and get the job done. One Louisiana Parks & Wildlife leader 
snapped dismissively at us when we pulled up and tried to ask a 
question, but I spoke to him affirmingly and encouragingly and 
sympathetically for no more than two minutes before he was nearly in
tears, talking about the challenges that he faced, offering us food and 
drink and a place to park our duck. That was probably the first moment 
in our adventure when I actually felt useful and valuable. I couldn't 
captain the boat and I wasn't a mechanic, but I could reflect to people 
their own value in a way that made it possible for them to work
with us.

We found people at the Crossroads Church of the Nazarene like all the 
other workers. Their brand new building had sustained damage, but the 
pastor and a group of Red Cross volunteers formed a bucket brigade-style 
line and helped us unload 217 cases of Similac like it was a party.

I came close to feeling something less than admiration for the actual 
people we were trying to help, which is never a good thing. People who 
don't want to leave stinking, flooded homes in an abandoned neighborhood 
without utilities are not apparently normal people. Most of them seemed 
to be kind of marginal in some way. They were physically sick and weak 
and frail, or they were a little mentally deficient, or they were just 
emotionally unstable. They seemed to be totally out of touch with 
reality. We tended to be in a hurry, trying to reach as many people as 
possible before sundown. The National Guardsmen and professional Search 
and Rescue people who directed us were allowing one bag per person and 
no pets. I'll never forget the little old lady who came to the boat, and 
then remembered that she had forgotten her Bible, so we waited for her 
to go back into her house for her Bible and come back to the boat.

When we picked up one group of 25, they were actively engaged in their 
situation. They didn't seem disconnected at all. When Herb asked for a 
head count, one man immediately jumped up and counted for us. Another 
told him some of what he needed to know about what was under water, that 
we were going through or over. Another wrote our names down on a pad for 
the book she hopes to write someday, and to pray for us. They helped 
each other sort out their bags when they left the boat for the big 
helicopters. One chatted with me about where I was from, and about 
relatives he has in this area.

They were people, like me. For all their differences of accent, skin 
color and lifestyle, we were linked by an extraordinary circumstance, 
and I felt what it means to talk about our "fellow men". We were part of 
the same extended family, and when push came to shove, we would help 
each other. In the commonest of people is the spark of the divine. In 
people for whom it would be easy in other circumstances to feel contempt 
or incomprehension there is something admirable and likable and akin to 
our own family and heroes.

I had one emotional experience that I can't imagine anyone could ever 
understand who hasn't been there. We had only experienced the emptiness 
and desolation of the evacuated New Orleans for two days. For only two 
days had we had to drive 70 miles to Baton Rouge each day for gasoline 
and a restaurant and a place to sleep. But when a Domino's Pizza place 
opened up on Monday morning, it was like seeing a loved one's eyes 
flutter and open when you had thought they were dead. It was shocking 
and exciting. The only drinks they had were two-liter bottles, and they 
only had four available toppings: pepperoni, pineapple, jalepeno and 
olives, so I ordered a two-liter coke and a large thin crust pepperoni, 
pineapple, jalepeno and olive pizza, and it was very heaven. It wasn't 
so much the food that was wonderful, as just the ability to order 
something, and hear the cash register and sense hope for a returning 
normality. And then a man walked in and announced to the crowd of 
customers and employees that a service station down the road at such and 
such a location actually had gasoline for sale! This crowd of normal, 
simple people were a victorious community in that moment. Domino's 
Pizza, which was never anything special to me until then, will 
henceforth always represent to me the indomitable human spirit, and the 
determination to rebuild what is destroyed, and to revive what is 
mortally wounded, and to regain normality that catastrophe has stolen. 
Civilization is not normal. It is a phenomenal pinnacle to which 
humanity claws its way by superhuman effort, and which it maintains at 
heroic cost. With the help of my own overactive imagination, in a mere 
two days, I caught a glimpse of that truth.

The most impacting emotion of the whole week, though was an odd mixture 
of humility and pride. I don't have any military or governmental 
affiliation that makes me "official". I don't have any practical trade 
skills that makes me "essential". I was just tagging along at the last 
moment, doing whatever I could, lowering and raising a ladder, landing 
out or loading and unloading boxes of water or formula, rolling a flat 
tire out of the way. I can't imagine anyone who had the opportunity that 
presented itself to me, choosing differently than I chose. But for a 
week, I was treated like a hero.

Driving down the road with a load of baby formula, we were passed on the 
left by a white pickup truck from the maintenance department of some 
local school district, and the driver gave us a thumbs up sign as he 
passed us. A few minutes later a woman in a sedan passed us on the 
right, made eye contact with us, and mouthed the words "thank you." We 
would stop for gas or a meal in Baton Rouge and someone would hear us 
talking to each other, or see something on our truck that suggested what 
we were doing, and * male and female, young and old * they would come up 
to us, and their eyes would water and their bottom lip would quiver, and 
they would say with a thick, choked voice "thank you for everything 
you're doing. This is our home. You are our heroes." And we would get to 
say: "You're welcome. You're worth it. Everyone's just doing what they can."

We were looking for a way to reduce the number of trips we would need to 
make to Baton Rouge to get gas, so we asked a customer at a gas pump who 
had 3 5-gallon gas cans tied on top of her car, where she got them or if 
she knew where we could get some. She said we'd probably have to go all 
the way to Lafayette, another hour and a half past Baton Rouge. A couple 
of minutes later she came back to us and asked us where we were heading. 
We said we were doing relief work in New Orleans. She said: "My home was 
destroyed, and you're going there to help. You take my gas cans. And 
thank you." Of course, she refused payment for them.

I have never lived before in a culture of such sincere mutual admiration 
and gratitude. Surely that's what the church is supposed to be like, and 
what heaven will be like. People who were providing us with food and 
shelter and a shower were thanking us as we were thanking them. The 
National Guardsman who guided us on the boat, who made it possible for 
us to do anything useful at all, thank us as we thanked him, for making 
it possible. And every night that we went back to the Baton Rouge 
church, we'd find a mint or a piece of candy on "our" bed, with a thank 
you note * sometimes a printed one from an adult, but usually one 
written in crayon by a child from a local Christian school. The one I 
saved and brought home with me is written in red crayon. In a childish 
scrawl it says:

"Thank you. Thank you so much for coming down here you are so brave. You 
are risking everything for us and I want to thank you. You will be in my 
prayes. You will always be blessed by God. I hope you get enough food 
and rest. Sense you have treated us so well here is a treat for you.

Ryan
Victory Academy" * and at the bottom it had a cherry-flavored Jolly 
Rancher candy taped to the note.

I came away from this week feeling grateful for a God who is bigger than 
the big storm, and grateful that he has made us in his own image, and 
allowed me the companionship of creatures who are only a little lower 
than the angels.


Brad Mercer
September 10, 2005


Chris Geankoplis wrote:
> Wow Herb,
>             Thanks for so elequently sharing the story.  Great imagery and
> human connections.  I am so glad you told me about the trip.  Thanks, and if
> you have any other stories please share them.  Tell you what.  I found some
> old journals I wrote as a kid over in Italy and some old negatives, all in a
> box of my late mother's.  The day after these elections I'll pass some of
> the stuff on if you will tell me another story.
>
> Chris G
>
>   
>