Out of Katrina’s Havoc, Into the Arms of Family

When her doorbell rang at 3 a.m. on Friday, four days after Hurricane Katrina, Patricia Edwards opened the door and couldn’t believe her eyes.

There, standing on the lawn, were 40 members of her family. Toddlers and teenagers. Parents holding infants. Brothers and sisters. Cousins, uncles and aunts.

Two days earlier, her mother had called from a Dallas motel, saying the family had fled New Orleans and had run out of money.

“Y’all stay with me,” said Edwards, who began getting blankets ready for five visitors, based on the hurried, garbled conversation.

Instead, most of her extended family had piled into seven cars for the two-day drive to her home, 1,400 miles from Dallas. As she looked at their faces, Edwards recognized a few: her mother, Beatrice; her cousins Kathy and Deborah; her sister, Evelyn; her niece Shaday.

Others she knew by name only. She had left New Orleans 17 years ago, and many of those in front of her were children the last time she had seen them. Some weren’t even born.

They were hungry and exhausted. Edwards’ four-bedroom, 2 1/2 -bath Colonial in a quiet suburban neighborhood was nothing like the gritty working-class community where most lived. They had come from New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward, a largely black enclave, to a nearly all-white area only a few miles from the Amish Country.

“People were crying; they couldn’t believe that they had come so far,” said Edwards. “And the very first thing I did was to bring everybody downstairs into the basement so we could have a family prayer meeting.”

Edwards offered thanks to God for keeping her family safe. She didn’t know what lay ahead. The sheer size of the group surrounding her was daunting. But she was confident they would persevere.

On that first night, they laughed, wept in one another’s arms and stayed up until daybreak telling stories about the hurricane. They would focus on the future later.

‘The Patience of Job’

Edwards has worked for 17 years on a licorice assembly line at a candy factory. The mother of eight grown children, she was looking forward to an early retirement.

Three weeks before her family arrived, her husband, Timothy, had undergone heart bypass surgery, and he was at home getting dialysis treatment. He was bedridden, frequently in pain and unable to provide much help to his wife when 40 people suddenly moved in.

Five additional family members arrived from New Orleans several weeks later. Edwards, a soft-spoken, slightly built woman, had to take control. She felt ill-prepared, but knew where to find inspiration for the job ahead.

“I told God he had to give me the strength of 10 people,” said Edwards, 54, who aspires to establish her own ministry. “And you know, he did. That’s the only way I could have managed something as crazy as this.”

She imposed bathroom rules: Family members were told to line up peacefully and be considerate of others. With 19 children swarming through the house, there was a 10-minute limit on evening baths, a five-minute maximum for morning showers.

Edwards drew up sleeping arrangements: Her cousin Bryant, his girlfriend Leila and their three children slept in the basement, along with her cousin Tremaine, his girlfriend Belinda and their two children, plus her cousin Tyrone, girlfriend April, and their two children.

Cousin Natalie, cousin Deborah and Deborah’s son, Kenny, were assigned to one of the bedrooms, along with Deborah’s daughter Deketra and her three sons. Eight people slept in the living room while others were jammed into two additional bedrooms, as well as the family room, the dining room and briefly in the backyard.

Edwards had to feed them all. People lined up to serve themselves breakfast and lunch; three to four people prepared dinner in large pots on a four-burner stove. She also had to persuade the sanitation department to pick up the trash more than once a week.

“I don’t know how she did it,” said her son, Maurice, who served in the Marines. “When I saw her trying to bring order out of chaos in the house every day, she reminded me of a military commander. People had to respect her authority.”

Edwards put her own life on hold, taking a six-month leave of absence from work so she could help her family. She scraped together money from savings and private donations to pay her mortgage.

“My daughter had the patience of Job,” said her mother, Beatrice Duplessis, 72. “At one point, it was just too much for me to be in a house with so many small children. So she arranged for me to sleep in a neighbor’s house. It was an act of mercy!”

As in any family, people bickered.

“We were all jammed together,” said Evelyn Brooks, 51, Edwards’ sister. “And of course people had arguments. Like, why did that person jump the bathroom line? Patricia had to settle most of those fights.”

Though most were grateful to Edwards, some were convinced she was hoarding money and gifts given to the family. Others felt slighted, accusing her of being more generous with some family members than others.

Edwards rarely had a moment alone. On those few occasions when she could steal away for an hour in the afternoon, she drove to a Barnes & Noble, bought a cup of coffee and curled up in a chair to read her favorite passages from the Bible.

Time and again, she returned to Psalm 91, reflecting on the turbulence in her home: “No evil shall befall you, nor shall any plague come near your dwelling.”

Friction and Festivities

Despite periodic friction, the family had raucous, festive parties at Thanksgiving and Christmas. They danced to Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder, and gave thanks for being alive.

The garage was turned into a kitchen, and the family feasted on sweet potato pies, red beans and rice, spicy gumbo, and bell peppers stuffed with crab and shrimp. They toasted the New Year with beer and wine.

Outside, the children enjoyed the surreal novelty of snow. They all seemed content. But Edwards knew that big changes were coming.

Within days of the family’s arrival, there had been an extraordinary outpouring of generosity. Hundreds of neighbors brought food, clothing, diapers, toys, bedding, detergent, cooking utensils, appliances and other goods that piled 6 feet high in the front hallway and driveway.

Church groups, nonprofit community organizations, and local and state officials came by the house and told Edwards about temporary homes for her relatives. In many cases, they offered housing rent-free for six months.

Employers interviewed family members about jobs. School officials waived state regulations and allowed 10 of the children to enroll just as the academic year had begun.

When federal disaster agencies were slow to reimburse family members for damaged property in New Orleans, private citizens and volunteer organizations filled the void with cash donations.

“We wanted to help this family from the minute they arrived,” said Doug Hopwood, director of service ministries for the Lancaster County Council of Churches. “They were going through a huge crisis and we couldn’t stand around waiting for FEMA to send them checks.”

Edwards began working with the Community Action Program of Lancaster County, a nonprofit group, to identify apartments that might be suitable for her relatives. That agency, in turn, contacted state officials to secure as much as six months of rent subsidies.

Anne Floyd, director of outreach and case management, said that although Community Action organized the housing search, “Patricia was the key to sorting everything out. She put people together. She knew the area so well. This couldn’t have happened without her.”

One by one, family members began moving out.

“The holidays were a turning point,” Edwards said. “I wanted to keep my family close. But they had to go out on their own.”

The decision to leave “the big house,” as family members called Edwards’ home, was not easy. For some, like her mother, Duplessis, “it was like leaving a cocoon. We didn’t know how many of us would stay up here, or go back home.”

Six months later, answers have begun to emerge. Some couldn’t wait to leave. Others are thrilled by their new lives in Pennsylvania. Some are torn. They know that Lancaster holds better long-term opportunities than what awaits them in New Orleans. Yet they feel sadly out of place.

All told, 25 have remained. The rest returned home.

Starting Over

Deborah Major didn’t want to leave New Orleans as the hurricane approached.

She didn’t even want to get out of bed when her brother, Bryant Major, began knocking insistently on her door at midnight. He said the whole family had to get out of town.

They had been through this before: an order to evacuate. A storm that passed through, with minimal damage. A return to normality within days. Deborah Major, 49, vowed she wasn’t going to budge this time. But her brother insisted that Katrina was different.

So she and her son, Kenny, 12, joined the family caravan and headed for a Dallas motel. When they saw the devastation on TV, family members began to panic. Although they had an offer of shelter from Edwards, many were still anxious.

“All this time I’m thinking, ‘This is a nightmare, I don’t want to be going anywhere,’ ” Deborah Major recalled. “I had lost my job in New Orleans, which I had for 19 years. I have no home to go back to anymore. My son is out of school. What on earth do we do now?”

She was depressed for a few days after arriving in Lancaster. Then, she said, “I had to take care of business.”

Deborah Major is bursting with pride over her new life. Edwards and housing officials helped her and her son find a split-level apartment for $683 per month; it’s a five-minute drive from Edwards’ house and looks out on a tranquil golf course.

“Deborah is a good example of someone who worked hard to get what she has,” Edwards said during a visit to the apartment. “She never felt she was entitled to anything.”

Furniture was recently delivered to Deborah Major’s home, bought with money from a long-delayed insurance payment. She doted over the beige pseudo-suede sofa and chairs, the brown-tile dining room table, and the large wooden sleigh bed that were being assembled.

“We are truly blessed,” Deborah Major said, offering up a platter of fresh blueberry muffins. “But it almost didn’t turn out this way. I needed a job to stay here.”

Enter Bob Manley, a human resources director with the Acme Distribution Center in nearby Denver, Pa. He had heard of the family’s plight and contacted Edwards; he told her there might be jobs for some with his company, which is owned by Albertson’s Inc., one of the nation’s largest retail food and drugstore chains.

After interviewing Deborah Major and 10 others in Edwards’ living room, Manley said he was able to place seven of them in full-time positions.

Deborah Major began a job inspecting inventory in the frozen meat department; she works from 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Her daughter Deketra comes over in the mornings to help Kenny get ready for school.

It’s very different from her work as a desk clerk with the state Department of Labor, as well as a part-time job she held in sales at a department store, she said. But if this is what it takes for her to survive here, she has no complaints.

“You gotta do what you gotta do,” she said. “My son has enrolled in a great public school. He’s made friends. I’m surrounded by family. We’re hanging in there.”

At the John Henry Neff School, educators are pleased by Kenny’s progress. Although he had difficulty at first, they said, his grades are good and he’s popular.

During lunch, Kenny hung out with pals in the cafeteria. He talked about the differences between his new and old homes. “I miss people back there,” Kenny said. “But I like it here better. There’s no violence. Back home, people had guns and knives.”

A Cultural Divide

Natalie Wilson also counts her blessings. Wilson, 61, suffers from diabetes and high blood pressure. Although she fears she may be in the wrong place, too far from home, she’s thankful for the kindness people have shown her.

“To be truthful with you, I have never in my life seen Caucasian people who are so nice,” said Wilson, sitting in her sparsely furnished living room. Her wood-frame house was donated by a church group after Edwards made an appeal on local TV.

“Most of the time back where we lived, they could be nice but they were standoffish. Not up here,” said Wilson, another of Edwards’ cousins. “They try to incorporate you in every phase of their life, and it’s just overwhelming to me.”

Soon after she moved in, Wilson began attending services at an Episcopalian church across the street. She was befriended by seven members of a Bible study group. They treated her to lunches and dinners, and celebrated her birthday. They worried about her health and took her on errands.

For all the kindness, however, she feels a gulf between them.

“When we go to church, we believe in feelings,” Wilson said, recalling her Baptist church in New Orleans. “It’s a church where you have stomping and singing and praising God. They don’t have that kind of church here. Everything is so solemn.”

Wilson discussed this with her church friends, and they urged her to bring up the issue with the choir director. But she doesn’t think it would be right for her to change their routine, adding: “What I’m talking about is a pretty big difference.”

Edwards, who visits Wilson regularly, understands her cousin’s discomfort. At first, she was concerned that her African American family might not be well-received by neighbors.

“I don’t have time to worry about the color of someone’s skin, and we’ve received a tremendous amount of help from people here,” Edwards said. “Natalie understands that, and I think others in my family have learned that lesson too.”

Wilson has decided to stay and wants to find a job that will pay her bills and medical prescriptions. She realizes that going home is not an option. She visited her old neighborhood before Christmas and found her house filled with debris. Everything in it was ruined.

“After what we’ve been through, I’m grateful for what Patricia did by taking us into her own home,” Wilson said. “But I realize that in a big family, you can’t always please everyone. Not everybody appreciates Patricia’s kindness.”

Regretting the Journey

Bryant Major played a crucial role in the family’s flight from New Orleans. He convinced most of his relatives that they had to leave; he organized the auto caravan and made motel reservations in Dallas. He led them on the drive to Pennsylvania.

Today, Bryant Major, 45, believes the trip was a mistake.

Edwards arranged for him and his family to move in November into a small house in York, Pa., 20 miles away.

He praised Habitat for Humanity for donating the home rent-free through March. But he said that the neighborhood was unsafe and that he once saw a drug dealer with a gun on the street.

His family thought about moving to a better apartment, but Bryant Major said he couldn’t get decent work to pay the rent. None of the jobs he interviewed for had come close to paying the $12 an hour he earned as a painter and sandblaster, he said.

The worst insult, he suggested, came from his family. He said Edwards, his cousin, did not like him because he didn’t always agree with her; he suspected her of taking thousands of dollars that should have gone to needy family members like him.

“I’m the only one who speaks out and says these things,” Bryant Major said angrily.

People were generous to the family, he added, but where was all the money now? How much had Edwards pocketed?

“She won’t ever answer any of these questions,” he said. “She didn’t come to visit us once after we moved in here. What kind of family is that?”

Bryant Major got so angry, he asked police to investigate Edwards and the cash given by donors. “They told me it was a civil matter, there was nothing they could do,” he said.

He recently moved his family to Houston. He plans to return to New Orleans to work and will visit them on weekends.

“We never felt we had much of a future up north,” Bryant Major added. “A lot of people believe that this was one big happy story, what Patricia did. But it wasn’t true for me.”

Getting on Their Feet

Edwards’ normally sunny tone gave way to anger when she was asked about Bryant Major’s accusations. She expressed relief that he and his family left Pennsylvania.

“They think it’s all about money,” she snapped. “But it’s not about money. It’s about trusting one another, so the family could survive at a very tough time.”

She doesn’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars hidden away in a secret bank account, Edwards said. The cash donations that her family received totaled a little more than $9,000, and she has no problem saying how the money was used.

“We tried to help everyone,” she said. “And I used some of the money to help pay my mortgage, because I wasn’t working. My heart is pure. I have no secrets.”

During the last six months, Edwards became a celebrity. People stopped her on the streets to say hello, saying they had seen stories about her on TV. They wanted to shake the hands of a woman who took in so many relatives.

By early March, all but one set of family members had moved out of her home. Kathy Major, 49, and her three sons were looking forward to moving into their own apartment soon. Edwards drove her around the neighborhood recently to see vacancies in several buildings.

After dropping Kathy Major off at the house, Edwards visited auto dealers to see if they would give a discount on a used car for Deketra -- Deborah Major’s 22-year-old daughter -- so she could drive to work.

“I know how this game works by now,” Edwards said, driving on a rain-slick highway through downtown. Car dealers “get good publicity if they help out somebody in our family. And we get something we need. I’m fine with that.”

Next, she visited her mother in her apartment to see whether movers had removed the temporary furniture. Then she went home to give her husband medicine. Later, she called the Federal Emergency Management Agency to ask about reimbursement checks for family members.

As the day ended, Edwards visited Deborah Major to see how her job was going. She made appointments to visit furniture dealers the next morning.

Edwards’ schedule was supposed to change March 1, when she planned to return to work at the candy factory. But she learned in the early morning hours that her 68-year-old aunt, Victoria Major, died after a long bout with cancer. The aunt had made the trip north with the family and had been living a few miles from Edwards’ home.

“It was a blessing, because Victoria had been suffering,” she said. “We decided to bring her back to New Orleans for burial.”

Once again, the family piled into cars for a caravan, this time traveling south. Despite periodic friction and disagreements, they again came together.

“I look back on what’s happened in the last six months and I’m proud of us all,” said Edwards. “I did what I had to do. I took care of my family. It was nothing special.”