LAUREN HOBAR
Staff Writer
Naming hurricanes can be strange. The Aug. 29 category -five hurricane is destined to be catalogued by the first letter of its name in a catalog of other names that seem harmless, common and even childlike.
Katrina was the opposite: destructive, singular and jarring. Katrina may be the Atlantic’s third deadliest storm, if the estimated 10,000-person death toll is correct.
When Katrina came, it destroyed people’s lives and affected families across the nation, including at Pepperdine.
It trashed the very materials of their memories. It wasn’t just homes and cars, it was images of baby pictures, hand written letters, dogs, porches, cemeteries, the land, the places where people grew up. Families were strewn like paper, rich and poor, Americans of all colors.
Video footage relayed how people’s minds went, as Katrina broke apart life, shaking people to their knees, as if they were the physical representation of the state of a broken heart or the human form of the aftermath of a storm.
“The Mississippi Gulf Coast, from the east in Pescagoula all the way west, has been decimated,” said junior Ryan Dapremont, who is from Gulfport, Miss.
“Even though we all knew it was possible, nobody thought they would live to see the day it finally came true.”
Katrina’s after-pangs are shooting up the veins of this nation, and Mississippians, Louisianans, and Alabamians who are at Pepperdine said they realize they can only fight to a point.
“All of our cars, and both my Mom’s and my Dad’s homes were ruined,” Dapremont said.
“Luckily, all of my family was fine. When my two brothers and I finally heard from them, we were devastated but thankful they were still alive.”
Pepperdine students from the Gulf Coast are experiencing the eye of an emotional hurricane, swirling happening all around, while they sit here watching from a safe place.
“It’s hard not being able to be with my family,” said Kathy Lee, a senior from New Orleans.
“I don’t feel OK about being here and carrying on my life pretty normally while they are there dealing with all the hardship directly. We don’t have a home anymore, and my parents have become dependent on other people for such a basic need.”
So the disjoint remains. Pepperdine students from New Orleans and south Mississippi, are only getting half of the story, through television, through families’ and friends’ accounts told over the phone and written in e-mail.
“When news reporters, who usually report facts with little emotion, were physically not able to do that anymore, it hit me — this tragedy is really happening,” Lee said.
“I watched footage of people who lost everything, literally holding the remains of their possessions in their hands — and this was where I grew up, where I have spent my whole life.”
They are experiencing a very public loss, very privately.
Though Pepperdine, churches and organizations are doing all they can to support students, their families and the region, it is not always enough.
“My future and my family’s future are so uncertain now,” Lee said. “Everything has changed.”
For many people, everything has changed.
Perhaps there is hope between this tragedy. Perhaps people who did not know Katrina personally will help people who do. Perhaps people can see. Perhaps they have ears and will hear.
Katrina’s victims have much to endure.
“Long after the news cameras leave New Orleans and Biloxi, long after the politicians finish shifting the blame and passing the buck for their failures in the region, long after the media, the government and the American people suffer amnesia and move on, and they will,” Dapremont said,
“We, the residents of New Orleans, of Gulfport, of Biloxi, Slidell, Bay St. Louis, Ocean Springs, those of us from all over the affected region, will still feel the pain that Katrina has wrought. This has changed our lives forever.”
09-08-2005