Losing everything after Katrina in Lakeview
Patsy Ashton by Caroline Gerdes, 2012; 4700.2427
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Patsy Ashton.
TEMPESTS: Storms in the Archives
Patsy Ashton: Lakeview isn't the same place [after Katrina] because . . . You know, sometimes people tell you, "My house burned down. I know how you feel having lost everything." When I . . . When we lost everything in Lakeview, we also lost our neighbors, we lost our church, we lost our grocery store, our drugstore. Some of that has come back. But the bagger that bagged our groceries, we don't know what happened to him. That lady that worked at the cleaners, we don't know what happened to her. It certainly is coming back, but it's not the same place. So when somebody says they know how it feels, I don't know that anybody really knows how that feels. It was . . . It was a day that changed our lives forever. My mother . . . You know I always put this as an addendum, that my mother was eighty-five when Katrina hit. I think people around the country think that we flooded all the time. My mother had never been involved in a flood, had never lost anything in a flood. Betsy came up to our steps, but never came into our house. So it was a new thing for all of us. My mother's sister had flooded for Betsy because she was in St. Bernard [Parish]. But, you know, we didn't flood. We didn't know what it was like to lose our wedding pictures and lose everything.