I found your wonderful blog while doing a google search for "Mama D" after seeing her on a CNN interview post Katrina.
I found the following news article and couldn't help wondering if this is the same "Mama D" that you mentioned in your earlier journal entries from NOLA.
NEW ORLEANS' HOLDOUTS HAVE NO REGRETS
By EILEEN FLYNN
Cox News Service
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
NEW ORLEANS — As Welbert Collins takes his first steps on dry land Tuesday, he carries a pink rag in his back pocket, pulling it out from time to time to wipe sweat and tears from his weathered 72-year-old face. There is so much to absorb from the past two weeks he's spent in his Seventh Ward home without power and plumbing, trapped by the 5 feet of floodwater that gathered on Dorgenois Street after Hurricane Katrina.
"There wasn't nothing we could do but pace the floor," he says.
They had plenty of canned food, Collins says, but his wife Beatrice couldn't take it. After four days, she left in a rescue boat. He has no way of reaching her.
After that, military troops and other rescue teams passed by offering Collins a way out. He says a policeman kicked in his door at one point. But after 37 years on this corner, "I had nowhere to go."
His lip quivers, and his leathery hand reaches for the pink rag again.
But Collins, like the few other residents in this established, close-knit Central New Orleans neighborhood who refused to leave, has no regrets. The retired truck driver who wears a horseshoe-shaped belt buckle and draws on a thin black pipe, says simply, "I'm satisfied I didn't leave."
The plumbing works again, the streets are dry, and Collins has work to do in his garage, a dark, cluttered room that houses a light blue Lincoln on blocks, a tractor and an assortment of knickknacks.
He's glad his wife isn't here now, he says. "Too much mess."
Down the street, the neighborhood's matriarch, who everyone calls Mama D, sits on the high steps of her yellow brick porch. She wears a turquoise turban and tells stories of the boat rescues she made with her "soul patrol" — friends who stayed with her after the storm. Her hands are constantly in flight. She talks with her whole body and calls everybody "boo."
Her neighbors needed her, she says. Her home became a revolving door of diabetics, people on dialysis, an elderly man with a pacemaker and others. She sanitized everyone on her front porch before letting them in. In the first couple of days, all they got were "hard rock" Horehound candies dropped from a Red Cross plane.
But Mama D says the police and U.S. marshals still harassed her and her soul patrol, accusing them of looting and telling them to get out of the city.
"Why would you not want me here?" she wonders. As a longtime sanitation worker and community activist, Mama D (her legal name is Dyan French Cole) believes she can play a part in putting New Orleans back together.
She's made friends with the 82nd Airborne troops from South Carolina who she says have helped her get supplies and food for the neighborhood's abandoned dogs.
Later, wielding a shovel almost as big as she is, Mama D scoops heavy wet leaves from her front steps. She has removed her turquoise head wrap, and her long dreadlocks swing against her back as she works.
Her friend Manuel Mercadel helps her clean before taking some water to an orphaned Rottweiler around the corner. Mama D says they share with the animals "to keep them from going mad."
That's her job, she tells a New Orleans police officer who comes by to drop off Gatorade mix and granola bars. Protecting all the creatures of his neighborhood.
A couple miles away, Anthony Pierre Sr. and his 17-year-old son Anthony Pierre Jr. return to a coat of slippery mud on the front lawn and steps of the New Orleans Street house, mold and filth inside and what looks like a break-in attempt on the back door. Few possessions are spared from the flood. They find their cat Kim emaciated but alive and wet cash the elder Pierre kept in his 1,600-pound safe.
"Woo-whee," he exclaims. "Money's all screwed up, but I guess it's still recognizable."
The Pierres have been staying at a shelter in Baton Rouge and talked their way past military checkpoints to enter the city Tuesday. They brought their neighbor Maynard Saylas.
"We'd read in the paper about people getting into New Orleans," he says, "so we just took a chance to save what we could."
Two weeks ago, when the floodwaters came, Pierre piled his family and neighbors into his 24-foot party barge "like Noah's Ark." On this afternoon, they will drive back to the shelter with some possessions, but with firm resolve to eventually come back home.
"The boat is messed up," announces his son as he ambles around the corner carrying a hammer.
"Well, it got us out of the city," the senior Pierre says. "That's all that matters."
Eileen Flynn writes for the Austin American-Statesman.
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I found the following news article and couldn't help wondering if this is the same "Mama D" that you mentioned in your earlier journal entries from NOLA.
NEW ORLEANS' HOLDOUTS HAVE NO REGRETS
By EILEEN FLYNN Cox News Service Wednesday, September 14, 2005
NEW ORLEANS — As Welbert Collins takes his first steps on dry land Tuesday, he carries a pink rag in his back pocket, pulling it out from time to time to wipe sweat and tears from his weathered 72-year-old face. There is so much to absorb from the past two weeks he's spent in his Seventh Ward home without power and plumbing, trapped by the 5 feet of floodwater that gathered on Dorgenois Street after Hurricane Katrina.
"There wasn't nothing we could do but pace the floor," he says.
They had plenty of canned food, Collins says, but his wife Beatrice couldn't take it. After four days, she left in a rescue boat. He has no way of reaching her.
After that, military troops and other rescue teams passed by offering Collins a way out. He says a policeman kicked in his door at one point. But after 37 years on this corner, "I had nowhere to go."
His lip quivers, and his leathery hand reaches for the pink rag again.
But Collins, like the few other residents in this established, close-knit Central New Orleans neighborhood who refused to leave, has no regrets. The retired truck driver who wears a horseshoe-shaped belt buckle and draws on a thin black pipe, says simply, "I'm satisfied I didn't leave."
The plumbing works again, the streets are dry, and Collins has work to do in his garage, a dark, cluttered room that houses a light blue Lincoln on blocks, a tractor and an assortment of knickknacks.
He's glad his wife isn't here now, he says. "Too much mess."
Down the street, the neighborhood's matriarch, who everyone calls Mama D, sits on the high steps of her yellow brick porch. She wears a turquoise turban and tells stories of the boat rescues she made with her "soul patrol" — friends who stayed with her after the storm. Her hands are constantly in flight. She talks with her whole body and calls everybody "boo."
Her neighbors needed her, she says. Her home became a revolving door of diabetics, people on dialysis, an elderly man with a pacemaker and others. She sanitized everyone on her front porch before letting them in. In the first couple of days, all they got were "hard rock" Horehound candies dropped from a Red Cross plane.
But Mama D says the police and U.S. marshals still harassed her and her soul patrol, accusing them of looting and telling them to get out of the city.
"Why would you not want me here?" she wonders. As a longtime sanitation worker and community activist, Mama D (her legal name is Dyan French Cole) believes she can play a part in putting New Orleans back together.
She's made friends with the 82nd Airborne troops from South Carolina who she says have helped her get supplies and food for the neighborhood's abandoned dogs.
Later, wielding a shovel almost as big as she is, Mama D scoops heavy wet leaves from her front steps. She has removed her turquoise head wrap, and her long dreadlocks swing against her back as she works.
Her friend Manuel Mercadel helps her clean before taking some water to an orphaned Rottweiler around the corner. Mama D says they share with the animals "to keep them from going mad."
That's her job, she tells a New Orleans police officer who comes by to drop off Gatorade mix and granola bars. Protecting all the creatures of his neighborhood.
A couple miles away, Anthony Pierre Sr. and his 17-year-old son Anthony Pierre Jr. return to a coat of slippery mud on the front lawn and steps of the New Orleans Street house, mold and filth inside and what looks like a break-in attempt on the back door. Few possessions are spared from the flood. They find their cat Kim emaciated but alive and wet cash the elder Pierre kept in his 1,600-pound safe.
"Woo-whee," he exclaims. "Money's all screwed up, but I guess it's still recognizable."
The Pierres have been staying at a shelter in Baton Rouge and talked their way past military checkpoints to enter the city Tuesday. They brought their neighbor Maynard Saylas.
"We'd read in the paper about people getting into New Orleans," he says, "so we just took a chance to save what we could."
Two weeks ago, when the floodwaters came, Pierre piled his family and neighbors into his 24-foot party barge "like Noah's Ark." On this afternoon, they will drive back to the shelter with some possessions, but with firm resolve to eventually come back home.
"The boat is messed up," announces his son as he ambles around the corner carrying a hammer.
"Well, it got us out of the city," the senior Pierre says. "That's all that matters."
Eileen Flynn writes for the Austin American-Statesman.
- Dianne 9-25-2005 7:12 am