To see mountains of wreckage where homes once stood in New Orleans is to see a landscape of devastation and bewilderment, a tragedy. But if you look closely, you see a Pacific Palisades family inserted into the frame, working alongside a man, a resident of the Ninth Ward, cleaning up the soggy remains of his life. It has been six months since Hurricane Katrina blew over New Orleans covering four-fifths of the city in water, destroying thousands of structures and displacing hundreds of thousands of residents. “It was so much bigger than what we were seeing on TV,” Carol Sanborn says, simply. “I remember listening to a man describing to a journalist that his wife had just gone, and the journalist, a pretty blond in her yellow raincoat, quietly ended the questions.” A thoughtful woman of steady conviction, Sanborn decided that she had to do something, and felt compelled to go to New Orleans. Not knowing exactly how to go about her mission, she called her Paulist friend John Collins, who was serving at St. Paul’s in New York. He told her to call Faye Blakely, who had a friend, Sister Loretta Theresa, a nun with the Sisters of the Holy Family whose order was working in Louisiana and Mississippi. The Sisters of the Holy Family was established on November 21, 1842 by a free woman of African descent, Henriette Delille, who began the work of educating the children of slaves and caring for the sick, the poor and the elderly. While denying a superstitious nature, Sanborn believes that signs were there, such as the coincidence that November 21 is her birthday, which she took as encouragement. Sister Loretta put Sanborn in contact with Sister Kathleen, who would be working with her. “It was difficult to contact her because the sisters had been displaced, and there were no phones,” Sanborn recalls. “I told her that my family wanted to help; we’d clean, read books to children, anything.” Although acting on her convictions is familiar to Sanborn’in August she had gone to Crawford, Texas, to keep vigil with Cindy Sheehan’she wanted to include her husband and particularly her children in the New Orleans mission. “I wanted the kids to know that it is not enough to say that this was terrible. I wanted them to know that these people had done nothing wrong to have this horrible tragedy come upon them. Ironically, I realized that we were buying some hardship for them, children who are so privileged living in the Palisades.” As plans unfolded through the fall and Sister Kathleen put Sanborn in touch with the Rev. Doug Doussan of St. Gabriel Parish in the Ninth Ward, it looked as if the Sanborn family would be traveling to post-Katrina New Orleans for a week during the kids’ Christmas break to help two families. The Sanborn children, Jessica, 19, Erica, 17 and Ander, 13, while lacking the fervor of their mother and insisting on staying home for New Year’s Eve, agreed to a diminished Christmas and took off on New Year’s Day. “This was something that Carol had to do on a small scale and we supported her,” says her husband Scott, a gynecologist/obstetrician at Kaiser Hospital. The Sanborns say that even though it was four months after the hurricane, it was as if the staggering devastation played on endlessly. The carpets in the airport were still pulled up, and warnings were clearly displayed: “You’re going to be in contact with mold.” “The Marriott looked like a once-decent hotel that had gone to ruin, and the services were diminished: towels twice a week, maid service three times a week. For every one business that was open, 10 were not,” Scott says. The angels in the story were the people they met. “Once we were there, we saw such deserving people, such expressive people,” Scott says. Father Doussan had told his parishioners that he couldn’t promise them much, but that “they wouldn’t do this alone.” He is the director of Priest Personnel for the Archdiocese of New Orleans, but so much more. His flock was scattered, but his commitment to the community and to recovery was constant. Father Doussan had arranged for the Sanborns to assist two families from St. Gabriel Parish, remove the contents of their homes and then demolish the walls and ceilings’the first step in reclaiming their homes and lives. “St. Gabriel Parish is located in the Ninth Ward in a section known as Gentilly Woods,” Carol says. “Their homes sustained about 8-1/2 feet of flooding when the levy broke a few blocks from their neighborhood. The brackish water stood for weeks before it was finally pumped out, and residents had only been permitted to return in January to see the damage for the first time.” They first met Eric Hornsby, whose family had a long tradition of support of the parish and who was the church organist. “He told us how his father delivered mail to the Marsalis family, most famous for sons Wynton and Branford, and negotiated music lessons for Eric with Mr. Marsalis,” Carol says. “Eric worked part-time as a librarian at Delgado College and is engaged to Lynette, who is confined to a wheelchair. They have been living temporarily in Houston since August 29.” Dressed in hazmat suits, rubber gloves, face masks and bandanas, Carol and Scott approached the house, a two-story home Eric had inherited from his parents. “Our first impression was the smell of rotten food and the sweet pungency of mold,” Carol says. “We went into the house, opened the windows and pulled down the drapes so the light could come in.” The children, overwhelmed by the stench, stayed away for a day, preferring to help ferry trash from the house to the piles of debris in the “front” yard. The Sanborns had to reckon with other obstacles, too, such as no water, no power and no gas stations. Although some 200,000 homes were destroyed in the neighborhood, FEMA would provide trailers and tarps to those whose houses could be inhabited once again. But few applied. “Only one out of 50 has taken advantage of the assistance because they don’t know about it and there are no services,” Scott says. The Sanborns began to shovel out 18 years of stuff, using simple tools’shovels, hammers, trash cans’and muscle. On one occasion Carol was clearing out the kitchen and reached up on top of a cabinet and felt something. She jumped back thinking it was a cockroach’which in those parts are the size of a loaf of bread’but no, it was a Nintendo game. “I realized that this had once been a family, and for the first time we could not pretend that these people were not us.” While Scott doesn’t share his wife’s Catholic religion, he does embrace the spirit. “Whatever you do, you do it well,” he told the kids. “Manual labor brings satisfaction every day.” After long days, the Sanborns would return to the hotel and quickly remove their clothes. Most items were ditched, leaving the blue jeans for the Laundromat. Shoes, caked with mud and mold, were tossed into the trunk of the car until the next day. They threw out their hazmat suits before lunch and again after a day’s work. “In the evenings we’d go to the French Quarter, where we were the only people in the restaurant besides the FEMA guys,” Scott says. “We’d be eating in places where normally it might have taken months to get a reservation.” After two days with Eric, the Sanborns moved on to assist Harold and Barbara Hamilton to clear their house. Eric wanted to be with the Sanborns, so he joined in the work party at the Hamilton’s, and later Harold and Barbara returned to Eric’s house to help complete the job. A proud man, Harold was wary of accepting help. “He told Father Doussan that this was serious business and wanted to make sure ‘these people’ were trained,” Carol says. “Fr. Doussan assured him that we were trained, after having worked two days at Eric’s.” The families became close, sharing the details of their lives, even jokes, and adding new chapters. “For these people to heal, they need one another,” Carol says. “There is such a feeling of abandonment. My kids asked, ‘What difference does it make? It’s only two homes.’ I tell them, ‘If we had an earthquake in Pacific Palisades and somebody decided to help us, it would make a whole lot of difference.'” Carol is planning to return to New Orleans, perhaps with a small group of women from Corpus Christi. “So many people have supported these people by giving money,” she says. “Giving money is a noble act, but it is important for me to see a face with this crisis. One of the things that I’m left with recently is that, when you’re gone, it’s not what material wealth you had, but what you did and the people you met and touched.” Those interested in more information may call Carol Sanborn at 503-7690.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
