Bob's Bounce Back

When I was hired with my current agency, I was coming off a one year contract with the Red Cross. I had been with the Red Cross when Hurricane Katrina hit, and my agency was one of the first in town to offer assistance to the many survivors who drove until they could find an available hotel room

There was one man who worked with us, Bob Foster, who proved to be particularly challenging. He'd had a lifetime of mental illness and, except for the six years that Bob served in the Army as a mechanic, he had lived his whole life in New Orleans, safe in the supportive nest of family and long-time friends who understood his mental illnesses and could check up on him and assist him as needed. More importantly, his employer understood how to work with him, and he was able to live independently with the means to support himself.

On the morning after Katrina pushed over the region, Bob got up to sweep the leaves from his porch that had been scattered by the hurricane winds. Suddenly, he heard a loud booming sound that was very upsetting to him, as it sounded almost identical to bombs that he had heard in the military. In the half hour that followed, he noticed that a great silence had spread over his neighborhood, as the dogs stopped barking, the birds stopped chirping, and no cars sped by on the local freeway. Within another 30 minutes, he could hear the voices of his surprised neighbors as they discovered that the water pipes in their apartment complex had broken. Several minutes later, the electric power went off.

Confused and in the dark, Bob and his neighbors attempted to make sense of the domino occurrences. Then water began to creep into the street, the parking lot, the yard. The water rose from the ground to cover the base of the apartment, and then slipped uninvited into the building. Cold water stung unprepared toes as it seeped into individual apartments and began to cover the floors. Over the course of that first day, the water rose past the first floor and began to flood the second floor and into Bob’s apartment. At first he tried to mop the water up, however, he soon realized the futility of his efforts as the water climbed, unchecked, over his possessions. To escape, he climbed from his balcony to the roof of the building where he sat without food or water for two days until he was rescued by the Wildlife Fishermen.

He was airlifted to safety and then on to Illinois, where he learned that the deluge of water was not caused by broken pipes, but by a breached levee. In fact, the bomb-like sound that he had heard was the sound of the levee breaking. His entire neighborhood was underwater. He did not know where his family or neighbors were, he did not have the medications he required, he no longer had his job and he knew no one. Bob’s nest had blown apart.

Bob came to town to receive the assistance that was beginning to be made available to Katrina survivors by various agencies like mine. Furthermore, he took advantage of various programs available to him to secure permanent employment. Despite this, for many years, he struggled. He had to build a completely new home, and this took a lot of time and patience, particularly trying to get his medication in order and his symptoms under control.

So many years later, he still comes in for lunch from time to time, and we greet each other like old friends. I rarely have the opportunity to know my guys over time, particularly who have recovered so successfully. He is lucid and logical, and it warms my heart to see how well he doing, knowing how far he's come.