Friends find hope in ravaged New Orleans

Bristol dentist Dr. Kerry Callery and two friends, Roger and Sandra Desaulniers, recently traveled to New Orleans to volunteer a week of their time helping residents of the Hurricane-ravaged city put their lives back together. Dr. Callery treated dental patients, Mr. Desauliers built houses and Sandra treated those with psychological wounds. During his stay, Dr. Callery kept a journal, excerpts of which follow.

The very first signs that New Orleans is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina appear as soon you step off the plane at the Louis Armstrong Airport.

Whether you travel a little or a lot, every airport you go through always seems to be bustling. Not here. It reminded me of when you fly into Green Airport on the last arrival of the evening. At that time of the night, there's only a few people working, and nobody is waiting for a flight out. It's not quite a ghost town, but you can see the airport is getting ready to close for the evening. That's what it looked like as we stepped off the plane in the middle of the afternoon.

My friend Roger Desaulniers (Bristol High School Class of '76, like me), his wife Sandra and I have come to New Orleans to help in whatever way we can. Roger will build houses in the hard-hit Lower Ninth Ward with Habitat for Humanity. Sandy, whose background is in counseling and art therapy, will help victims deal with their emotional trauma. You can see cuts and bruises on a Katrina victim, but it's easier to miss the injuries beneath the surface. Me, I'm a dentist. My practice has been located in Tiverton since 1992, and I'm also an associate with East Bay Dental. I will be working at a "MASH" style clinic overseen by a charity known as Operation Blessing. We're staying in the French Quarter.

Like most people, I was glued to the TV last October. But I remember the reporters saying that the French Quarter was not all that affected by the hurricane. They were right. The only hint that something's changed is that it's not as mobbed as usual.

But the next morning (6:30 a.m., 89 degrees!), when we all piled into the car to report to our respective locations, we could see all the scars as soon as we left the Quarter. There are houses pushed together, as if someone was trying to make one house out of two. Cars peek out from under houses. Three out of every four houses has seen no repair work. But then you'll get to that fourth and see that it's been cleaned up. Many houses have spray-painted messages on them: "Do not remove Dog ... Cat Dead," "Owner still in town ... Do not enter ... have gun," "FEMA...Fix Everything My Ass."

Our first stop is to drop Roger at the Habitat for Humanity project. In addition to being a middle school teacher in Coventry, my friend leads a double life from time to time as a carpenter. When the director of the operation learned of his level of competence and expertise, he was assigned his own group of young volunteers to oversee, and help him build these new homes.

I get dropped off at the clinic next. As I come up to the door I am greeted (confronted, actually) by a man who wants to know what my business is. I notice that he is carrying a side arm, but he does not look like a policeman. When I tell him I'm the volunteer dentist from Rhode Island, he becomes instantly friendly, and brings me into the clinic. He tells me his job is to control the crowd that forms outside the clinic every morning. Since this clinic operates on a first-come, first served basis, inevitably some people are going to be turned away, and told to come back the next day. Sometimes people get upset and sometimes people refuse to leave. Since the New Orleans police force is not yet at full capacity, Operation Blessing has hired this man as private security.

Before I came down to New Orleans, I spoke with the director of this clinic, and she informed me that most of the people I would see would need to have a tooth pulled. In addition to doing extractions, the clinic is also set up do simple fillings. Any other procedures, such as dentures or crowns, are not offered there. So in the four days I worked there, I did only two fillings. I extracted 100 teeth.

Because it's first come, first served, people will come and stand outside the locked gate as early as 4:00 a.m. The gate is unlocked at 6:30 a.m., and people sign up. The clinic is able to see just about as many patients as a private office would, depending upon the individual patient's needs.

It must be especially hard for these folks, because on top of being anxious about going to the dentist (most people have a little anxiety about it), most of these people haven't able to move back into their homes yet. Some of them never will. Some people moved in with relatives, others are living out of motel rooms. One woman who was evacuated to Houston told me she had taken a bus from Houston to New Orleans that morning to have me pull a tooth out. Then she told me that she had to take the bus back to Houston after I finished, because she had nowhere to stay. Imagine, she had to travel over 200 miles each way, to come to this clinic, because she couldn't afford to have her tooth extracted in Houston. I tried to imagine something like that happening here. She was the exception, though. Most people coming to the clinic were living in other apartments while repairs were being done to their homes. But basic services like getting the mail, or not having to worry about bacteria in the water, or even a stop light working ... things we take for granted up here. There is still a lot of New Orleans that doesn't have that yet.

Roger and Sandy and I were happy to be staying in the French Quarter. When we came back to the hotel every night, there was plenty of great food and music all around us. But each morning of the five days we were down there, it was almost like passing through a looking glass. We would leave a beautiful place, full of charm and grace and southern hospitality, and we would pass into an ugly, hidden away place. A place where the National Guard patrols the streets with machine guns. Like most people, I sort of forgot about New Orleans. Once it was off the front page, or not the lead story, it was easy to assume that everything was being taken care of. And while some improvements are getting done, I became discouraged, because I had expected so much more of New Orleans to be fixed up by now.

On our last day there, we went to an art gallery showing photos of the aftermath of Katrina. The exhibit was called "City of Hope." Harrowing images. But alongside those pictures, the curator also hung photos and newspaper clippings from other hurricanes that had hit New Orleans over the last 100 years. I was amazed to learn that a hurricane in 1947 (this was before they named them) destroyed more of New Orleans than Katrina did, and more people lost their lives as well. Now that we live in this age of instant news, it's easy to assume that Katrina was the worst ever to hit New Orleans. It wasn't.

For whatever reason, people keep wanting to come back to this place and rebuild here. After all, It is their home. Despite the many hurricanes that have passed through New Orleans over the last century, none was powerful enough to make the residents stay away. I remember reading in the newspaper some congressman saying that New Orleans shouldn't be rebuilt, and that you can't fight Mother Nature. Maybe some congressman in 1947 said the same thing.

Nevertheless, the people of New Orleans love their city almost as much as we citizens of Bristol love our town. God forbid Bristol should be in the crosshairs of some future hurricane, but in all likelihood, it will some day happen. And if Bristol ever gets hit by something of this magnitude, the town will rebuild. I was here for Hurricane Gloria and Hurricane Bob. My house was built before the Great Hurricane of '38, and it has withstood that one, as well as Hurricane Carol, Gloria and Bob. And on top of all that, I'm in a flood zone! Can you imagine somebody telling me (after some future Hurricane hits) that I shouldn't move back to Bristol, or that Bristol shouldn't be rebuilt? Not likely.

So I think most people can relate to the devotion the residents of New Orleans have for their city. That's part of why we came down to volunteer. But you don't have to go down there to help. When the news stories about the aftermath of Katrina dried up, the donations dried up as well. But if is at all possible for you to go to New Orleans to volunteer, you should try it. Even staying in a hotel and having a delicious meal helps the residents of New Orleans.

The patients I saw there were so warm and kind to me, and they won't let go of your hand until you know how much they appreciate what you've done for them. As we were flying back, Roger, Sandy and I all agreed that we'd gotten it backwards. We all went down there thinking we were going to help them out. But it turns out we were the ones who were helped.

Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez!

By Kerry Callery

Copyright © 2003, The East Bay Newspapers