Picking up the pieces
By CLAUDIA FELDMAN
Houston Chronicle
Posted 12 November, 2005
NEW ORLEANS — Ed and Virginia Dingeman loved their
home. It was built on pilings on Lake Pontchartrain, and when
they looked out their windows or sat on the back deck, they
could see mullet swimming, seagulls swooping and a constantly
changing view of big sky meeting big lake.
The water beneath the house was shallow, says Virginia, 66.
"I always told my kids and grandkids, 'If you fall in,
just stand up.'"
That was before Hurricane Katrina smashed their home of 36
years into tiny bits. Now there's not much left but chunks of
concrete and ruined treasures buried in mud.
Ed and Virginia, who fled with their family two days before
Katrina thundered ashore, are among the first wave of New
Orleanians returning to face the devastation. They thought
the sight of broken pilings where their home once stood would
feel like a punch in the gut. It is more like a knife in the
heart.
Ed, 72, points to the spot where his favorite pecan tree once
grew.
Nothing there now.
To his right is a buckled sidewalk. Years ago he poured the
concrete himself. At his feet, scattered and broken, is the
stuff that made the family's house a home.
The old man has the profile, the timing, even the
ever-present cigar of the long-gone comedian, W. C. Fields.
But it's been hard to find much to laugh about lately.
"I roll," says Ed, trying to sound lighthearted
when he is dead serious. "This ain't that bad. We're
going to come back strong."
The Dingemans are among an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 New
Orleanians who lost their housing in one of the worst storms
in United States history. Most are just starting to unravel
FEMA and insurance issues and reconnect with schools and
jobs. Meanwhile, the city treasury is depleted. Millions in
tourist dollars are lost every week. A long-term flood
protection system, which could cost as much as $20 billion,
is only in the talking stages.
Icing on the cake, says Brad Paul, a spokesman for the
National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness: There's
not a single emergency shelter functioning in town.
It's been a rough couple of months, even for the relatively
lucky Dingemans. They had the wherewithal to gather their
loved ones, do some chaotic packing, and decide when to
leave.
In the heat of the moment, Ed grabbed a few clothes and
money.
"He's not a collector," Virginia says ruefully.
She is. Which meant she spent hours packing porcelain
figurines, Christmas ornaments, coins and stamps. And wedding
photos.
And kitchen supplies. After all, they had to eat.
Ed organized the troops. Even though the Dingemans' four
children are grown with families of their own, Ed and
Virginia wanted to leave in a caravan, a united front.
They pulled out of town the night of Aug. 27 and settled into
a Houston hotel in the wee hours the next morning.
The Dingemans stayed just a few days. By mid-week New Orleans
was under water, and they needed a plan B.
On Aug. 31, 15 family members repacked their trucks and vans
and headed for Pierre Part, La. Relatives there had offered
them a port after the storm.
As they crossed the state line and continued their push east,
at least in the same direction as home, their spirits lifted.
Briefly.
They did find generous relatives, a comfortable house, food
and shelter. Still, the Pierre Part period was awkward.
"It was good in the beginning," Virginia says.
"Then they got kind of snippety and we didn't feel
welcome anymore. I guess we stayed too long."
But they had no place else to go.
The Dingemans freely admit they created some of the tensions
in their relatives' home. One day, for example, two of them
had a ferocious argument over who got to use the dryer, when,
and why a certain party took so long to do laundry. The
family wasn't used to so many people living under one roof,
trapped.
Eddie, the Dingemans' older son, left first. He was on
vacation from the New Orleans Fire Department when the storm
hit, but as soon as he could get back to the city and his
post, he did.
Darlene Gillespie, the Dingemans' older daughter, also found
a way to pass the time. She'd been working on the
prerequisites for a registered nursing degree at Delgado
Community College when Katrina blew in. She and her son,
Lester, who also was a thwarted college student, re-enrolled
at Nicholls State University.
Ed and Virginia, who had less to do, tried to take up as
little space as possible. Ed spent a lot of time in the
backyard, smoking his cigar and getting to know the
neighbors.
Virginia cooked.
The younger Dingeman siblings, Anthony and Brenda, busied
themselves with their kids. And, they worried.
Anthony, a car mechanic, worried about the miniature horse,
Nugget, he'd left behind. Brenda, a New Orleans traffic court
clerk, worried about her husband, Kenny Watzke. The sergeant
for the New Orleans Police Department has logged hundreds of
hours on duty since the flood.
It was a phone call from a traffic court judge, Brenda's
boss, that knocked the family out of their holding pattern.
He wanted Brenda to come back to work. Ed, Virginia and
Anthony and his family interpreted the call as a green light.
It was safe, and it was time, to go home.
On its way back
Parts of New Orleans look remarkably normal. It's easy to
get a beignet, a gourmet meal, a drink in the French Quarter.
It's spic and span, with the faint smell of bleach in the
air.
Algiers, where Brenda works these days, also is in good
shape. Ditto, the Garden District, home of Tulane and Loyola
universities. Some other parts of the city, however, haven't
been touched since the storm. There still are boats parked
like cars on the side of roads, rusting, moldy vehicles
strewn every which way, mattresses and refrigerators parked
curbside, entire buildings and apartment complexes still
boarded up or simply abandoned.
Most folks who are ready to clean up and start over, like Ed
and Virginia, are stuck in a web of Catch 22s.
They want to rebuild, for example, but almost three months
post-Katrina, they don't have their insurance checks or the
substantive FEMA money they need to proceed.
Also, Ed and Virginia qualify for a FEMA trailer, which would
give them privacy and a place of their own, but federal
officials won't drop one in their driveway until they have
electricity and water.
Instead, they camp together in Anthony's house, tote in water
and use a generator at specified times. At mealtime, they
cook on a little grill on the deck and battle flies at the
kitchen table.
Ed hates to admit it, but the misadventures of the past few
months have taken their toll. He gets choked up when he
remembers his first view of his property. That's when he
realized his home, his castle, wasn't just damaged — it
had vanished.
Ed also got upset when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
started to bulldoze his lot. They may have meant well —
they were trying to wipe the slate clean — but they were
about to destroy whatever few possessions the Dingemans hoped
to salvage from the mud.
That dispute was settled when Anthony, so mad he was
spluttering, called everybody he knew to protest. In the
process, he found an official who had lost his home, too.
The bulldozing stopped.
Virginia was surprisingly calm throughout.
"She took the whole thing good," Ed says. "I
think she found all her dolls."
Accommodations at Anthony's are tight. Ed and Virginia sleep
in Anthony and Tammy's bedroom. The younger couple sleeps in
the living room.
"It's all wearing," says Ed, a New Orleans police
officer but not back to work yet. "I don't want it to
seem like we're trying to take over.
"During the day, I'll be watching TV but I don't know if
I'm watching the program they want to watch. When I go to the
icebox, I'm worrying about taking someone else's drink."
Virginia worried more about being in the way in Pierre Part.
Even without electricity and water, she says, "Anthony's
place is comfortable. I can put my pajamas on and walk around
the house."
Sometimes, that's everything.
Tough lessons
In the past few months, the Dingemans figure they've
learned a lot from Katrina. Mostly, it's nitty-gritty,
school-of-hard-knocks kind of stuff.
Darlene figures she and the kids are stronger for their
Katrina experience. They learned they're survivors. They
learned they're lucky.
That's heady stuff for teenagers feeling their way and for
Darlene, too. The single mom has sometimes felt remarkably
unlucky. Powerless, too.
Anthony, who spent days combing his parents' beach for family
treasure, says he's learned about accepting loss. He found
his Cub Scout shirt while the Army Corps was chasing him
away.
"You think I'm stupid for picking this up," Anthony
told one worker. "But I'm getting closure on this part
of my life."
Brenda was drawn to her parents' property, too, but she
didn't try to salvage anything, even when she found her
satin, beaded wedding dress half buried in the sand. She
already has a house full of soggy, spoiled possessions.
And, she says, material goods don't count for much.
Eight years ago, she was pregnant for 42 weeks. The healthy
baby boy died from a knotted umbilical cord a few hours
before she was scheduled to deliver.
Brenda says, "Compared to that, Katrina is minimal. This
is Six Flags."
She got pregnant again quickly, then had Kenny Jr., now 7.
What's important, Brenda says, is taking care of him and his
dad. Their marriage is stronger than ever, she says.
"Through thick and thin and all that."
While the Watzkes clean the muck out of their house and make
plans to remodel, they are staying with friends. Every night
there's a good dinner, lots of laughs, a house filled with
kids.
Whenever he can, Big Kenny comes to enjoy the scene. Slowly,
he says, the city is coming back to life.
"The traffic lights are coming back on," he says.
"The debris is getting picked up. I'd say we're 20
percent back."
The Watzkes expect to spend Thanksgiving, Christmas and
probably Mardi Gras with their friends. That's how slow the
progress on their flooded house is, even though he and Brenda
spend every weekend reclaiming it.
"I did the floors the first time," he says. "I
can do them again."
There were times during Katrina that Kenny was on duty and
scared for his life. He remembered some important lessons, he
says.
"The wife, the kid, the dog, I used to take a lot of
things for granted. That's not happening again."
Just a small example. A few years back, Brenda wanted a
little swimming pool. Kenny agreed to the project, but he
hardly ever swam.
Now he can't wait to turn the pool, now an inky black mess,
blue. And jump in.
claudia.feldman@chron.com