New Orleans mourns Katrina’s dead with jazz funeral

By Jeffrey Jones

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – Yvonne Wise recalled many customers
of her clothes alteration business as she marched past smashed
homes and rusting, overturned cars of New Orleans’ Lower Ninth
Ward to the joyous sounds of a brass band.

Moments before, in New Orleans jazz funeral tradition, the
Treme Brass Band’s renditions were somber as Wise and dozens of
others stood where a levee gave way nine months earlier to the
day, sending a torrent through the streets of the Lower Ninth.

There, residents of the neighborhood read the names of more
than 1,000 Louisianians killed by Hurricane Katrina and its
aftermath. Wise, 58, recognized some of them.

“It went to the heart, you know? To lose that amount of
people, and there are still people unaccounted for,” she said
as the parade wound around the predominantly black and poor
community that remains largely a debris field. “I lost a son,
not in Katrina but after Katrina. I think he just basically
died of heartbreak.”

The Memorial Day service and jazz funeral parade was to pay
tribute to the more than 1,500 people killed in the disaster,
along with U.S. military personnel killed over the years in
battle. It was organized by the Lower Ninth Ward Neighborhood
Empowerment Network Association, formed by residents who aim to
make sure their community gets rebuilt.

Jazz funerals end on a lively note with the band belting
out signature tunes like “When the Saints go Marching In” and
“Down by the Riverside.” Monday’s version was no exception.

‘HISTORY’

“That’s history, that’s home, that’s what we do,” said
Patricia Jones, president of the neighborhood group. The
31-year-old accountant also recognized some of the names read.

Several pastors were on hand to offer encouragement, and to
lead a prayer for the newly repaired concrete floodwall three
days before the start of the 2006 hurricane season.

Offering optimism is no small feat with destruction, empty
homes and now, yards full of weeds, just steps away. Only a
small area of the Lower Ninth has running water restored.

“What we should learn from all this is that we need to
transcend or rise above what we can see with our own eyes, from
our own perspective,” the Rev. Oliver Duvernay of Central
Missionary Baptist Church told Reuters. “We need to get up a
little higher.”

Post-Katrina New Orleans is a city of stark contrast. Some
neighborhoods are slowly recovering, their streets lined with
government-supplied trailers that are temporary homes for
families who are renovating.

But not the Lower Ninth. City officials and the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers have warned residents here and in New
Orleans East their communities face the greatest risk of
flooding again in the event of another hurricane this season.

Attendees at the service were told it was not a time to
point fingers over the disaster that struck the neighborhood
where black families have owned homes for generations.

But residents could not hide their frustration with
governments and the Corps, which have been accused by
independent engineers of not adequately maintaining flood
protection systems.

Across town, about 200 people gathered near the spot where
the 17th Street canal breached, sending salty waters of Lake
Pontchartrain through the Lakeview neighborhood. Mourners
dropped 1,577 carnations into the canal’s muddy water, one for
each person who died in the storm last year.

A bagpipe played against the thump of a pile driver
pounding supports for flood gates at the opening of the canal
onto the lake. The gates are designed to stop a storm surge
from swamping the canal.

(Additional reporting by Peter Henderson)