by Hoda Kotb
Sitting on the road, hugging her knees, was a woman I didn’t know but could tell was in very bad shape. Rocking back and forth, with each movement she repeated, “My baby . . . my baby . . . my baby . . .” I knelt down with her and after a while she told me what had happened. She said a bus had arrived on her patch of highway to carry away the young and the old. As the bus began loading in a panic, she handed her two-year-old boy to someone aboard so she could reach down and grab her other son’s hand. She also grabbed a small plastic bag that held what Katrina hadn’t swallowed. There was a crush of people. The bus doors closed, and no one heard her screams as she chased after the bus. It was gone.
I asked her where the bus was going, and she said the rule was that they were not telling. They couldn’t have people asking to be on one bus or another. I’m waiting for the bus to Baton Rouge because that’s where my family went was just not practical during all that chaos. They needed to get everyone off the highway and out of the area. I motioned for a police officer to come over. I knew crews couldn’t help everyone, but I told him what the woman had told me. It hit home. He grabbed a Louisiana State Police sergeant and explained the situation. The sergeant sat down with the woman and reassured her he’d get her on the next bus. Then, instead, he took matters into his own hands. I guess he needed a win. (We all did.) He took the woman, her son, their dog, and the little bag of everything and sped off down the interstate. I just saw taillights and the cruiser, blue lights flashing, driving away past a sea of humanity. I thought, What in the hell is happening? I found out later that mom and baby were reunited in Houston.
Surviving Katrina
• • •
Tim Uehlinger and I were working together on the Katrina coverage. (Remember Tim? He was with me during the adventure in Pakistan to find Mukhtaran Mai.) We did most of our reporting out of our rental car. It soon became a cluttered, stinky home base. We stored all our wet gear in there, we ate in there, and we were not showering. The only reason we didn’t sleep in the car was that I knew someone at East Jefferson General Hospital. Graciously, she told us we could crash on the floor of a file room. Tim and I, as well as our photographer and our sound guy, were thankful to have a safe, dry place to sleep. We used old medical curtains for blankets. NBC eventually sent trailers for all the correspondents and crews, where we could rest and work.
In the first few days of our coverage, people on I-10 were lined up thirty deep—waiting. No sleep, no food, no water, no hope. As I sat in our stinkmobile, I could see a man trying to get my attention. He was yelling my name and holding up numbers. I didn’t know what he wanted, but I knew he was desperate. Pointing at the numbers again, he mouthed, “Call my wife . . . tell her I love her!” I started dialing like a crazy woman. Punching the numbers. The call would not go through. Redialing—dead end, over and over. Redial, dammit! Tim had approached the car and saw me dialing and crying. He started crying. The whole scene was bad. He just looked at pathetic me and said, “Change your shirt. You’ve got to do a stand-up.” He added, “God, you’re sweating.” Thanks, Tim.
I found a shirt somewhere in the back seat and started to wonder where I could change. Well, you know where. Right there. As I took off my shirt, I heard what sounded like the rumble of an idling bus. I looked up and out of the car window to see a bus full of people looking into my car window! Passengers were banging on the windows of the bus and yelling, “Hodie Kodie . . . we see your titties!” I burst out laughing! That weird hysterical guffawing when you’re out of your mind from the absurd mixing with the horrible, and all you can do is throw your head back and laugh. That was me—topless Hodie Kodie. Thank God my friends were still funny and still laughing!
These were the same strong, fun people who were my angels when I was so scared on my first day at Dateline. I remember walking into 30 Rock with my new badge and there was some sort of problem. I was supposed to get buzzed in, but the guard didn’t have my name. There was confusion and I was shaking. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, I heard “Hoda? Is that yeeeewwwwww?” A tour group from Metairie, Louisiana, was gathered in the lobby. My people! I turned to that group of women and said, “I am so scared.” Those ladies sprung into action. “You listen to me. You hold your head up. You are from New Orleans. You go in there and knock ’em dead!” My heart was in my chest and they were holding me up and calming me down. I am forever grateful to those beautiful ladies. Once you live in and love New Orleans, the city grabs you by the roots and claims you as its own—no matter where you roam thereafter.
Navigating the streets of New Orleans
Back on the interstate, so many people were roaming and wandering—and hurting. We began to shoot a story we called “The Nomads.” Sitting under an overpass, we spotted a group of four people slowly walking our way. There was a man and three women, one a teenage girl. They were sobbing. When they got close to us, we could see that their feet were making bloody footprints. “We haven’t slept since Sunday,” a worn-down woman cried, her daughter trying to console her. “We’ve been taking care of patients.”
The nurses had been tending to hundreds of storm victims. When rescue crews arrived at their flooded hospital, they took the sick, but no one ever came back for the medical personnel. “It’s just very disheartening,” she explained, her big toe bloody and swollen, “that no one would come to help us.” The four had stayed, waiting, until they realized that no one was coming. They set out on foot, and had walked for so long that their feet were raw and bloody. One of the nurses had a gash in his leg. He’d lost his home, was exhausted from caring for patients, and decided to simply start walking toward a relative’s house 50 miles away in Tickfaw. “I’ll get there sooner or later,” he said with tears streaming down his face. “Can’t take more than five or six days. I’ll get my feet on some dry ground and see my family.”
When an ambulance appeared in the distance, Tim ran out into the street to stop it. The sign on the side of the vehicle said it was from a particular parish. I gestured toward the nomads and said, “Hey, you need to take these people with you.” The driver said, “We can’t. It’s against our policy right now.” That’s when I went nuts. Lost it. I yelled, “Show me the book. Show me the book you’re using today—for this!” They asked us where the nurses were going. “They’re going,” I insisted crazily, “wherever you’re going. That’s where they’re going. Look at their feet!”
The ambulance workers finally let them in. Those four finally stopped walking. What didn’t stop was the insanity. Or the rain. (To this day, my reporter notebooks from that trip are warped, pages curled from the stubborn, depressing rain.) A stone’s throw from the French Quarter was my personal epicenter of insanity. Lying in the road, facedown, was a woman. She was dead. We must have driven by the body three or four times during our search for stories to tell. I kept thinking, I can’t believe someone is lying here, dead on the street, in the United States of America. I knew crews couldn’t get to everyone and they were triaging to get to the ones they could help, but . . . God. That image is seared into my brain. Did the people who loved her eventually find her? I barely slept. The struggle to maintain my journalistic “steel” was a challenge. Covering the destruction and sadness in the city I loved and watching my former neighbors’ pain was draining, to say the least. At the end of one of my live shots for Dateline, the wheels began to come off. A talented editor had put together a gut-wrenching video montage of the devastation, set to Bruce Springsteen’s “My City of Ruins.” I watched it, my heart said “uncle,” and the camera came back out to me live on the air. I begged my brain, Please hold it together! You have got to hold it together. The Human was sneak-attacking the Journalist. I was defenseless. I tried hard to focus on what I was doing, not what I was feeling. You can feel later, I repeated to my weak self. In my earpiece I heard, “Are you okay?” Kiss of death. Someone asks you if you’re okay and the dam breaks. It was Steve Capus, president of NBC News. He was worried about me and all of his crews there. Was I okay? Yes, I
was okay. I just desperately needed to see a tiny glimmer of something good.
That’s when we met Sister Desiree Watson Jones. Sister? Was she a nun? I have no idea, but she was a godsend to me. “You need ice, baby?” she called out. “You need water?”
Desiree was trolling the streets of Jefferson Parish in a battered white Cadillac. It was jammed with emergency supplies that she’d talked a Federal Emergency Management Agency crew into letting her have. Her fiancé had loaned her the car for deliveries of ice, food, or clothes. The storm had blown out the back side window, now covered with a plastic bag and duct tape. “I could be in their shoes right now . . . exactly where they are,” she told us. “Or even worse.” This forty-six-year-old woman—an army of one—lifted my weary spirits. She simply went about the business of helping anyone and everyone she could find. If she couldn’t provide material goods, she offered a kind word or prayer. Desiree took one look at me and Tim and homed right in on him, assuming he was homeless. (We were both so dirty and tired.) She handed him a piece of paper with her phone number. “I know you need some food, baby—you call me.” He and I laugh about it now.
Desiree willingly popped on a halo and became an angel of mercy, even when she could’ve used some mercy herself. She’d lost her house in Jefferson Parish and all she owned in the storm. Earlier in the year, her son was killed in a drive-by shooting. Just three months ago, she’d had a heart attack. So much loss. What remained was her business, a tiny thrift shop in Jefferson Parish. Desiree was now living and sleeping in the Blessed Dressed Thrift Store. “If it wasn’t for the thrift store, I’d have nowhere to sleep myself.” Needy people crowded her storefront as she handed out all she could, no charge. Somehow, power had been restored to her little shop. She was a tiny bright spot in a very dark and dreary bayou.
• • •
Even the roaming Sister Desiree would have never found Gene Lala. He was out of sight, scared, and holed up in the attic of his house. And that’s the last place you would normally find Gene, a New Orleans staple. Born and raised in the city, he’s the guy who is first on the scene of every Mardi Gras and bellied up to the local bar telling stories. He is friends with everyone.
But there he was. Alone in his attic but for his beloved dog, Humbug. His house was located in the Lakeview area, hardest hit by flooding from the broken levees. As the water rose, the two kept moving up a floor. They were ultimately driven to the attic. Seventy-six years old, Gene salvaged two bottles of water and two bottles of Ensure. After three days and three nights, Gene heard a boat motoring around outside his house. His only option was not pleasant: take the dog and a deep breath, and swim under and out of a window, then up again to the boat. “Back in 1940,” Gene said, “I was a brilliant swimmer. I used to swim in mile races. I never won any, but I swam in ’em and that was an accomplishment.” And now, more than sixty years later, Gene swam again—this time for his life. Sheriff’s deputies pulled him and Humbug into the rescue boat and asked Gene who they could call. Days earlier, Gene had dropped his wallet (where his phone numbers were) into the water. Lost. He had no children to call, no phone numbers for friends. He had only a credit card. Deputies had no choice but to take him to a nursing home in Baton Rouge. Humbug went with him.
Concerned friends eventually found Gene by tracking his credit card, charged to the nursing home. Humbug was so loved by the old folks, he stayed for a while at the home. Gene made it back to New Orleans, where he lived for months in a relative’s gutted house with no walls. Humbug later rejoined him there. “Doesn’t bother me,” explained Gene. “I’d rather have no walls than a house full of water.” With his dog and a gun for protection, Gene lived in the ramshackle house for nine months, waiting for a government-issue trailer that eventually arrived. Gene now lives in a new, modular home also in the Lakeview area. His house of thirty-six years was destroyed forever, but Gene has what matters most—his life and little Humbug.
• • •
I’ve talked a lot about my love for the city of New Orleans, but after Katrina, I now redefine that sentiment as my love for the city’s people. Thank God they are so resilient. New Orleans would simply be a dot on the map without them. They are the square peg that fits only in the square hole that is their fine city. No surprise, then, that just two months after the hurricane devastated the region, the food section of the Times-Picayune reached out to the heart—or rather the stomach—of beleaguered residents. The paper began a project to “rebuild, recipe by recipe.” Because so many people had lost their cherished recipes to Katrina’s appetite for destruction, the paper put out an APB for any and all recipes people could remember. With sweet irony, they came flooding in: red beans and rice, bananas foster pie, crawfish, and corn chowder. Eventually, a cookbook was created—what you could call the most delicious Lost & Found of all time.
I can’t help myself—I just have to include Maria Vicknair’s recipe from Cooking Up a Storm for one of my favorite New Orleans dishes:
BARBECUED SHRIMP
(Makes 8 to 10 servings)
1 to 1 1/2 pounds butter
1 cup olive oil
3/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
3 tablespoons cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon hot sauce
6 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup Italian seasoning
4 teaspoons paprika
1/4 cup seasoned salt
6 bay leaves
4 lemons, cut in half
6 to 8 pounds medium or large shrimp with shells and heads on
French bread for serving
1. Preheat the broiler.
2. Put all the ingredients except the lemons and shrimp in a large saucepan. Squeeze the lemons, then add the rinds, too. Heat and stir the sauce ingredients together over medium heat until the butter is melted and everything is well blended.
3. Place the shrimp in a single layer on one or two large shallow baking or broiling pans, and pour the sauce mixture over them. Discard the lemon halves and bay leaves. Broil for 4 to 5 minutes on each side. When done, the shells should pull away from the shrimp.
4. Serve with warm French bread to soak up the sauce.
I go back to New Orleans several times a year for work, play, and barbecued shrimp. I do see improvement there, but I have revised my inner timetable to feel better about the rebuild. My friend Angela Hill, beloved news anchor at WWL, helped put it in perspective for me, helped reset my clock. “Yesterday, my mailman came back,” she told me. “And it was a great day.” A sign. A small sign of progress. The lesson is, don’t look for a rebuilt highway, look for the mailman. Find strength and hope in the little victories.
I try to remember that when I go back to New Orleans. I try to remember how long it took for the Big Easy to ease its way into the unique spot that it is. I will wait. And it will marinate back into a rich stew of people and places, seasoned by time.
11
SUPER BOWL XLIV
On Monday, February 8, 2010, the front page of the Times-Picayune used just one word to speak for millions of people: “AMEN!”
Amen indeed. A prayer was answered and 106.5 million people watched it happen. I was lucky enough to be one of the thousands who got to see it unfold in person—to watch those New Orleans Saints go marching in to Miami’s Sun Life Stadium and battle the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIV. You’ve read enough now to know who I was rooting for, right?
The final stretch of the road to the Super Bowl was the night the Saints won the NFC Championship title against the Minnesota Vikings in the Superdome. I was in Florida watching the game (Did you hear me screaming from where you were watching?), and the moment the Saints won, our fourth-hour producer, Tammy Filler, emailed me to ask if I wanted to go to the Super Bowl. I warned her and everyone else from the get-go that I could not be objective. The ultimate decision-maker was my boss, Jim Bell, and (Thank you, Jim!) he agreed to send me. Hooray and Who dat! Over the next week, my phone exploded with emails, voicemails, and text messages fr
om friends all over the country, and of course, from New Orleans.
I can’t believe we’re going to the biiiiiggggg daaaaaance!!!!!!
It’s oooooour time!!!!!!!!!! (Every message had repeating letters and exclamation points.)
My friend Matt, who was born and raised in New Orleans, held up his phone inside the Superdome the night of the victory. All I could hear was wild screaming. Other friends described how men and women on Canal Street were jumping out of their cars and doing “the Bus Stop” in the road. Strangers were hugging strangers. Music was blaring as car radios and boom boxes blasted the newly penned Saints anthems. Once again, the streets of New Orleans were flooded, but this time with elated, hopeful people. I could only imagine how nuts the scene would be in Miami. I packed up my black and gold, and left all my objectivity at home.
My dear friend Karen, whom I told you about, got her Boston news station to send her to our former home of New Orleans to cover the Super Bowl story, too. She was in heaven and sent me a fantastic photo of a priest wearing a Saints jersey, welcoming his flock into church. Most of the congregation was sporting black and gold gear, including “Breesus Christ” T-shirts. Can you imagine the prayers offered in churches throughout the city all week?
When I got to Miami on Friday night, I actually felt like I was in New Orleans. South Beach was Bourbon Street, and a sea of fleurs-de-lis greeted my eager eyes. Many people came up to say hello and share their joy with me. (And there were, as always, comments about that darn Mardi Gras Moss Man incident!) It was so much fun to mix it up with my old friends and neighbors, and to tap into an emotion we hadn’t felt for so long: hope.
