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

Fri Oct 31 07:03:39 EDT 2008

Herb,

Beautiful story, thank you for sharing it with us.  As you know from
your first-hand experience, there were thousands of acts of courage
and selflessness in the aftermath of Katrina.  Natural disasters of
that magnitude tear the thin fabric of civilization that binds us
together, and often the bad actors of our communities appear. To
balance that, courageous and kind souls, such as your friend Brad,
find strengths that perhaps they didn't know they possessed to fill
the void.  May he rest in peace.

Here is a video of the USCG rescue swimmer he spoke of -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxEKHzgEDDA

Brad

On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 12:28 PM, Herb Parsons <hparsons at parsonsys.com> wrote:
> 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
>>
>>
>>
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