A Mardi Gras for Reuniting, Reflecting

Mardi Gras, the quintessential celebration of debauchery, had a spiritual feel to it Tuesday, as thousands of Crescent City residents lined the streets to honor their wounded city and give themselves hope for a better future.

New Orleans officials had hoped the first Mardi Gras after one of the country’s worst natural disasters would bring with it tourism’s economic boost. But for displaced natives, this year’s Fat Tuesday was more than that. It was a time to reconnect with the city they were abruptly forced to flee six months ago.

“One day we had everything, then all of a sudden we don’t have anything,” said Donald Rhodes, who lost his job, house, neighborhood and church in the flood following Hurricane Katrina. He now lives near Houston.

“To see this today has brought a great joy to me,” Rhodes said, as the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club paraded up St. Charles Avenue near downtown. “This is more like a family reunion. Mardi Gras is bringing a lot of people back.”

Merchants and restaurant owners reported a larger mix of local residents than normal among the hundreds of thousands of Mardi Gras revelers, as fewer tourists came to town for the 10-day pre-Lenten celebration that concluded with Tuesday’s bash.

That set well with Sharon Hyde, Rhodes’ sister-in-law.

“That’s why I came down here, because it’s smaller and I could enjoy it,” said Hyde, whose house in the city’s Broadmoor district flooded, forcing her to move to the nearby suburb of Norco. “It’s not only good for the city economically; it’s good for us spiritually because it’s a day when we come together as a city.”

There was serious debate whether New Orleans should even celebrate Mardi Gras, given the extent of Katrina’s damage to the region.

“[But] we needed the psychological boost,” New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said. “We needed to send a message to ourselves and to the nation that New Orleans is coming back.”

Before Katrina, city officials said, tourism was a $5.5-billion industry, employing 85,000 people and accounting for 40% of city tax revenue.

Mardi Gras accounted for a $1-billion jolt for the regional economy each year, thanks to everything from bead sales to hotel stays, according to a 2003 Tulane University study.

The storm and flooding hammered tourism in New Orleans, destroying 13,000 hotel rooms and dispersing thousands of industry employees across the U.S.

With revenue plunging, city officials and business owners anxiously awaited this year’s Mardi Gras festivities.

Tuesday afternoon, they had no idea about the economic effect of the festival or even how many people had attended. Still, they were upbeat, pointing to the fact that virtually all of the 23,000 rentable hotel rooms were occupied for Mardi Gras weekend.

“We didn’t know what to expect,” said Sandra Shilstone, president and chief executive of the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp. “But this has been a wonderful Mardi Gras. It’s been a boost to the economy and to the spirits of the populace.”

Judy Bolton, co-owner of Bacchanal Fine Wine & Spirits at the corner of Chartres Street and Poland Avenue in the Bywater district, concurred: “For a moment, you can wander through the city, hear the music and the crowds, shut your eyes and forget.”

Yet New Orleans is years away from resembling what it once was. Huge swaths of the city -- including the Gentilly, Lakeview and eastern sections -- haven’t been touched since the floodwaters receded.

Two-thirds of the city’s pre-Katrina population now lives elsewhere. Fewer than a quarter of the city’s 3,700 restaurants and other eateries have reopened, according to city officials, and it still takes two weeks or more for a letter to be delivered to a New Orleans address.

Still, for Mardi Gras, locals mined what irreverent humor they could from their predicament.

One parade float mocked the “blame game,” which the Bush administration urged people not to engage in after Washington’s tardy response to the disaster. Much-criticized Michael D. Brown, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, had a float in his name.

Nagin said he’d considered dressing up as Brown, but opted instead for Army fatigues and a beret in honor of the first responders to the disaster and to the man he often referred to as the “John Wayne dude” -- U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honore, who eventually took command of government relief efforts.

Watching the parade from the stands was Minna Trumpy, whose home in the Lakeview neighborhood, near Lake Pontchartrain, took 8 feet of water when the levees broke. Trumpy has been living with a friend while she rebuilds.

But Tuesday, the marching bands playing and the beads raining down from the floats passing by along St. Charles Avenue stirred Trumpy to forget her problems and remember why she loved her city.

“We don’t have any houses,” she said, “but we have Mardi Gras. We got a lot of love and happiness. We’ll deal with FEMA tomorrow.”

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Times photographer Robert Gauthier contributed to this report.