Hello and Happy New Year to All –
Thought it was time for a quick update now that I am back in New Orleans. I spent Thanksgiving Day on a 10-hour drive from my displacement home in Dallas back to my apartment in River Ridge. My Thanksgiving Day meal consisted of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some ginger snap cookies court esy of my hosts in Dallas. I didn’t mind at all because even though Dallas was nice and I liked my little garage apartment, I was more than ready to come home. Just to sleep in my own bed – what a luxury!
I was home for a day before heading up to Hattiesburg, Miss. for the 11th and final football game – we lost to finish 2-9, but once again the media followed us in force so we were extremely busy. In addition, we had to start planning to send a group of players and Coach Scelfo to Orlando to participate in a couple of awards shows.
My apartment, and in fact much of Jefferson Parish, where I live, was in pretty good shape. There are shingles in the trees, mangled billboards and small yard signs crowding every median (or “neutral ground” as we call it here). The signs announce that stores, doctors offices, restaurants are open. However, many places still have limited hours and limited menus because of the lack of workers. The other big difference is the number of elderly couples now living in my apartment complex – you can tell because they have door decorations and mats and plants, and they are much friendlier than my usual neighbors. You know that they are people that had a lot of damage or lost homes due to the floodwaters.
Driving into New Orleans for work on the Monday after Thanksgiving was eye-opening. I really thought that things would look better. But crossing from Jefferson Parish into Orleans Parish was like going into another world. Many stop lights are still not working and there are four-way stops all over the place. Abandoned and flooded-out cars still line some roads. There are entire neighborhoods that are completely deserted and that is really sad. Of course you can see the water lines on the houses. The medians are filled with debris – and the debris shifts as one pile gets picked up, two more homes are cleaned out and that debris left. It seems to be never-ending. People greet you by asking “How’d you do?” – meaning, how much did you lose or ho w much damage did you have?
However, the longer I have been here the more signs of progress I see. Every week, a new street light is up, replacing the stop signs, and more and more businesses are open for longer hours. And truthfully, many neighborhoods are up and running and in very good shape – but you never see that on TV. There are still “blue roofs” all over the city and that may not change for a while. Mail delivery is still slow which is good and bad. I am not getting much junk mail, mainly because I’m not getting much mail at all – only about 5-6 letters a week.
The area around Tulane is OK – not perfect by any means. There are definitely some damaged and deserted streets, and our athletic office building, the Wilson Center, took on about four feet of water and is filled with work crews trying to get it inhabitable again. For the first three weeks we were here, our mini-staff was stationed in Gibson Hall, which is the main campus building located on St. Charles Avenue. There were six of us working in one conference room with about three phones. It was a little crazy. There was no such thing as a private conversation but we also kind of “bonded” and worked together very well.
During this time, the two main things we had to do were 1) plan and prepare for our basketball teams to return “home” to play games in December and 2) put together the plan for when the Board would announce the changes to the university and to our athletic department on December 8 and a plan for our department moving forward.
That was a sad day. The Board announced that we would suspend eight of our 16 programs effective next year. It was also very crazy trying to organize the announcing of it to coaches and student-athletes spread across Texas while the formal announcement was made by our president in New Orleans. I stayed here to help at the press conference downtown while putting together an itinerary for my boss that included stops in College Station and Dallas so that he was able to see the affected student-athletes in person. It was a hard day – emotionally – because we are taking away opportunities for some really great kids and coaches.
On December 18, we held the first college or professional athletic event in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina when our women’s hoops team played Central Connecticut State. We got a lot of press on that one too with ESPN in town.
I did escape to Atlanta on the 20th for a week’s holiday with my family. As usual, it was a crazy yet fun time. My sister’s boys are getting so big (and so are the pricetags on the Christmas gifts!) but are really sweet, wonderful boys (14, 12, 10 and 7 now) – and I don’t just say that because I’m their aunt. They are always on the move and keep everything hopping. When my brother came up with his girls on Christmas night, we had nearly everyone together for a couple days which thrilled my mom.&nbs p; The trampoline got a workout!
On Monday, we officially moved back into the Wilson Center with our diminished staff back together for the first time in months. The first floor is not done yet, but we are going into the second and third floors. Things are going to be different as we lost 25 staff members. We all know that our job descriptions may be radically changing; my staff and I (I lost one person off my four-person staff) will be taking on marketing and event management plus who knows what else. We also have to figure out where we are g oing to play baseball, get our once-flooded fields back in shape out back and help our student-athletes from suspended teams transfer if that’s what they want.
Well, sorry that this is lengthy. I wanted to give you guys a taste of what it is like back here now. A lot of people are wishing/hoping that things will return to what it was like “pre-K” but there is no going back. We have to concentrate on going forward. The city has a lot of challenges ahead of it and so does Tulane University and Tulane Athletics.
I don’t think anyone can help but be changed by an experience like this. I have never considered myself a materialistic person and this experience has made me even less so. The “stuff” I own is not important (although Thank God for my sturdy car which got me through 8,000 miles and seven football road trips and 16 different total locations during the four months) and I think I have become more laid back and less prone to worrying over small things.
Some things which used to seem important are just not anymore. Small things seem much less important and what is important is the people – friends, family, co-workers – that you encounter along the way.
Anyway, it’s been a wild 2005 and who knows what 2006 will bring – except probably more change. I thank you all for your friendship and good wishes, and I especially thank all the people who helped me along the way during the four months I was evacuated from my home.
Continue to pray for us in New Orleans and may you and yours be safe, healthy and happy this coming year.
PS – I am back to p rimarily using my dturner1@tulane.edu e-mail although for right now my cell phone is still a Birmingham, Ala. number (205-213-4408).