No time to retire
82-year-old braves hardships to rebuild Lower 9th Ward shotgun
April 27, 2006
Gwen Filosa
New Orleans Times-Picayune
At 82, Herbert Gettridge Sr. figures he can do what he likes with his Lower 9th Ward home.
"I built this with these two here," Gettridge said the other day, studying his outstretched palms while reluctantly taking a break from shoveling backyard topsoil into a wheelbarrow.
He heard the dirt may be toxic after soaking in the floodwaters that tore through his neighborhood eight months back. So he is removing it. By himself.
Gettridge built his shotgun home 54 years ago when the birth of his first daughter prompted him to move his family from a deteriorating 7th Ward neighborhood.
"I had four boys, but I couldn't raise a girl there," he said.
Fifty-four years later, his white stucco house stands tall among the ruins, a lone survivor in the 5000 block of North Roman Street.
Gettridge, a former merchant seaman, house builder and all-purpose working man who said he has yet to retire, is one of a half-dozen people living in the worst-hit part of the Lower 9th Ward: the lake side of North Claiborne Avenue, on the side where the Industrial Canal raged through the levee. There is no safe city water, limited electricity at best, and no word on just when a rebuilding plan will spring into action.
No matter, Gettridge said. He isn't going anywhere.
Instead, he has gutted and treated and cleaned his flooded house, mostly by himself but finally with help from Common Ground, a multiservice agency formed after Hurricane Katrina that has attracted volunteers from all over the country. The group, centered in Algiers, maintains a presence in a damaged house in the Lower 9th.
Once home to about 14,000 people, the Lower 9th Ward today is a vacant, lonely place adorned with only ruins, from the hollowed-out homes and rotting cars to the weeds growing wild.
Gettridge sleeps on a cot-like bed in a house that he tidies meticulously.
On the bed -- neatly made up the other day when a visitor stopped by without warning -- rests his black hardcover Bible. His kitchen is a butane stove. Cans and boxes of food stand in orderly rows along crosspieces between wall studs, still exposed in the gutted house.
"I am very busy," Gettridge said. Even as he sat to talk, he kept stabbing at his back yard with the shovel. "I can't sit still. I never could."
From either side of Gettridge's porch, all one can see is destruction. The house next door was rocked off its foundation. A wooden chair is stuck up high on what was once a porch column, frozen in time as a constant reminder of when the Industrial Canal levee failed on Aug. 29, sending a tide of water hurtling to the east.
For the past six weeks, Gettridge has lived alone in his house. He left his ailing wife of 67 years in Madison, Wis., with a daughter, saying the city isn't safe for her. They talk on the phone every other night, but haven't laid eyes on one another since Christmas.
"She understands why I have to be here," Gettridge said. "We haven't been apart since World War II."
Gettridge built the house with lumber he bought from demolished Uptown homes. The lumber could be a century old, he said.
His driveway is crafted from decorative stone salvaged from a French Quarter renovation, then fractured and pieced back together like a jigsaw puzzle.
"My grandfather taught me how to get by with less," said Gettridge, who was nattily dressed for his backyard shoveling in belted brown slacks and a clean white shirt over an undershirt.
As he worked, he spoke of his wife and children, and his days as a plasterer. When work dried up in New Orleans, he said, he would travel to Chicago, New York, wherever, to work and send money home. It was not uncommon for him to plaster all day in New Orleans and work all night on the riverfront.
Gettridge wants, and needs, no handouts. Asked about his insurance, he said, "That is my private business," but added: "After you give them money for 40 years, you catch hell getting your money."
No matter. His house is clean, mold-treated and on its way back. He is replacing his wood floors section by section.
Gettridge attends church every Sunday and takes in a parade when he can. Other than work, "my biggest thing is the prizefights and some cold beer. I belong to five different social aid and pleasure clubs," he said.
Before Katrina, his nine children lived nearby. Now they are scattered across the country.
A daughter in Baton Rouge has been urging her father to join her.
"She has everything I could need," Gettridge said. "I could be sitting there with a cold beer. I don't want to be out of it. This is home."
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Gwen Filosa can be reached at gfilosa@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3304.