New Orleans: Devastation widespread, but local optimism stays strong
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5,000 garbage bags of supplies to Al
giers, a New Orleans suburb. She
biked around, delivering supplies.
“There were people there from all
over the United States and Canada,”
she said. “It was amazing to see all
these people who had just dropped
their lives and everything to come
and help.”
Using fake press credentials to re
turn to the city a few weeks after Katri
na passed, Hasuly began helping oth
ers with food and supplies.
“We all wanted to come back and
help,” she said. “We feel like we can’t
exist anywhere else.”
Farther down the street, Mary Poatt
is raking up the remainder of the oak
tree that fell in front of her house.
“All these oak trees were here,”
Poatt said, pointing to her front yard.
“You couldn’t get in my house. ”
She arrived in New Orleans Satur
day. She lost half of her roof and, con
sequently, her second story to Katrina,
but she said she will definitely stay in
the much-loved city.
“There’s no other place like New Or
leans,” she said. “People go bad
mouthing it, but they’ve never lived
here. They don’t know the community
... everybody knows each other.”
Poatt has only been back a few
days, but she’s already seeing progress.
“Last week, this (street) was horri
ble, but it’s all been cleaned up,” she
said, gesturing toward a block strewn
with scant traces of debris.
A U.S. Army Humvee rolls by, fol
lowed by a telephone utility truck.
Poatt smiles.
“I’m pretty impressed with what the
city’s doing — well, trying to do. Let’s
put it that way,” she said.
It’s nearly impossible to walk down
the sidewalks; huge piles of furniture
and personal belongings sit every few
feet. A headstone inexplicably sits in a
front yard on Broadway Avenue.
In the house next door, Irma Stiegler
is preparing her lunch, a Meal Ready
to Eat, from the military. Stiegler has
lived in her house since she was 2 and
lost her basement to the flood.
“My basement was loaded with all
my memorabilia, because I had so
many things from other people that I
was trying to store and distribute to all
the right places,” she said.
She gestured to a dilapidated piano
sitting on the median. Her most
painful loss, it was her grandmother’s
piano from 1867. She saved the ornate
top and brass handles before the piano
was dragged out.
Kelly Terrase is tending bar at The
Boot, a popular college bar, despite the
fact that there’s only one customer.
The Boot re-opened three weeks ago,
and Terrase said that the crowd has
been smaller but generous with tips.
The Boot had about two feet of wa
ter outside — a widely circulated pho
to showed a man canoeing by — but
is slightly raised off the street, leaving
about eight inches of water inside.
Beyond The Boot, huge yellow
tubes snaking into the windows of Tli
lane University’s buildings are clearly
visible. Giant blue dehumidifiers are
helping dry out the buildings, some of
which had two feet of standing water.
No Tlilane University officials will
comment on the school’s status, but
it’s been widely reported that Hilane
will open for the spring semester.
Rodney Owsley, a splice worker for
BellSouth from Missouri working on a
switchboard at the edge of Tblane’s
campus, said that the job facing utility
crews is enormous.
"I’ve worked ice storms, but never
nothing as widespead as this ... they’re
going to have to re-engineer their
whole infrastructure,” he said.
The relatively unscathed campus of
Loyola University New Orleans has be
come a makeshift Army base.
Humvees fill the parking lots, and an
armed guard checks credentials.
A student union ballroom is filled
with hundreds of cots, and signs pro
claiming that breakfast will be served
only from 7 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. litter the
campus. In front of the Smoothie King,
a triage unit and aid supplies have re
placed cafe tables. The library has be
come the base of operations.
At the Bulldog, a popular pub on
Magazine Street, business is booming.
Because the street is so close to the riv
er, and therefore on higher ground,
there was no standing water and rela
tively little damage.
Patrons fill the interior and spill out
onto the streets. They don’t seem to be
bothered by the limited selection of
food and alcohol.
Not everyone is so cheerful. Maria
Esperanza Fingerman has just re
turned home to find her downstairs
covered in mold.
“It’s so hard to see everything so de
stroyed,” she said. She points to art on
the walls and a grandfather clock, all
warped and stained in brown, gray
and green circular blooms of mold.
She and her husband fled to Pen
sacola, Fla., where they stayed in their
car in a parking lot under condos. On
the second day, a man from New Or
leans invited them into his condo.
“He was our angel,”
Fingerman said.
This is her first day back in New Or
leans and she is overwhelmed, but she
keeps her faith.
“God is going to help us, one or
the other way, and I always believe
that,” she says. “He’s going to give
us a lot of courage.”
Contact the higher education reporter
at kbrown@dailyemerald.com
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Walker: Candidate seeks to improve health care
Continued from page 1
campaign, a position for which Vicki
Walker saw no one more qualified.
“When I was thinking of running for
governor, there wasn’t a thought in my
mind of anyone running my campaign
besides my daughter,” she said.
Sara Walker, a University graduate,
has worked on her mother’s cam
paigns and since she was young. Her
mother used to pay her and her older
brother, Adam, to distribute brochures
door-to-door when they were younger,
and Sara Walker volunteered in the of
fice on Vicki Walker’s first legislative
session in 1999.
Sara Walker was still thinking of
working as a pilot when she interned
for her mother in 2001.
“I had no interest in politics when I
started interning for her,” Sara Walker
said. “It was just work study so I could
get some credit.”
The pair had had some problems
when Sara Walker was younger, typi
cal teenage mother-daughter drama,
they both admit.
“There were times she wasn’t
around a lot,” Sara Walker said. “It
wasn’t until I started working for her
that I found out why — that she was
doing important things.”
Since Sara Walker returned to Eu
gene from her Las Vegas home to run
the campaign, the two have changed
their relationship to fit a work setting.
“We’ve had to adjust from mother
daughter to employer-employee,” Vic
ki Walker said. But a daughter has
some advantages as a campaign man
ager, she said.
“She doesn’t hesitate to tell me what
she thinks,” Vicki Walker said. “Some
times campaign managers aren’t will
ing to be that blunt and honest.”
Growing up poor, Vicki Walker tells
of having to put cardboard in her
shoes and take out a loan in high
school to go to the dentist, which she
said took three years to pay off.
“I was tired of not smiling with my
mouth open,” Vicki Walker said.
The experience stuck with her, and
as a legislator she pushed to include
dental in the Oregon Health Plan.
Vicki Walker was also a victim of
sexual abuse as a child and tried to
commit suicide as teenager, she said.
It wasn’t until a high school teacher
persuaded her that she could go to col
lege that she turned her life around.
But she hasn’t hidden her troubles;
she has spoken on the floor of the Ore
gon Legislature about being raped as a
child by a neighbor. Sharing her expe
riences can force people to confront
important issues such as child abuse,
she said.
“Those were important issues to
talk about,” Vicki Walker said.
Vicki Walker’s experience with
abuse has fueled her political fire.
“It’s an abuse of power,” she said of
child abuse. “I’ve never been one to
support the abuse of power. ”
Colleagues say Vicki Walker has a
reputation for her attention to detail
and extensive research.
State Sen. Bill Morrisette, D-Spring
field, remembers his first meeting with
her. She was working as a candidate’s
campaign manager and quit because
the candidate wasn’t following cam
paign guidelines.
“That’s typical of her,” Morrisette
said. “She’s a fanatic for details.”
But even with her careful prepara
tion, she knows how to take action im
mediately, Morrisette said.
“She doesn’t wait; she gets involved
at the beginning,” Morrisette said. “If
she sees something that needs fixing,
she will do the background, initiate it
and get it fixed.”
Morrisette is still supporting Gov.
Ted Kulongoski, but he said he be
lieves Vicki Walker would be a quali
fied governor.
“You’ve got to have some visibility
and some knowledge of the (legisla
tive) process,” Morrisette said. “She
has an extremely good understanding
of the process.”
Vicki Walker has been an outspoken
critic of Kulongoski, her most visible
battle being over the State Accident In
surance Fund (SAIF). She sees the cur
rent government as a network of
“Good 01’ Boys,” politicians who re
ward friends and contributors with ap
pointments and government perks
while shutting out regular Oregonians.
“That’s what turns people off of
government and makes them cynical,”
Vicki Walker said. She believes that the
governor has the ability to change that.
“The governor has a unique oppor
tunity for leadership,” she said.
She looks at her candidacy as a
way of rejuvenating Oregonians
who feel left out of politics, in the
same way she was energized as a
child by John F. Kennedy.
Walker sees many problems in Ore
gon that Kulongoski has not fixed, in
cluding education funding, health care
and taxation.
During the legislative session this
summer, some called Kulongoski
“Waldo,” as in “Where’s Waldo?” for
his lack of attendance, she said.
Walker pushed through 59 of the
139 bills she introduced this summer,
in a split Oregon Legislature. That’s a
sign that as governor, she can bring to
gether both Democrats and Republi
cans, Walker said.
“It’s all about creating, building and
maintaining relationships,” Walker
said. “It’s recognizing that we’re Ore
gonians first and whatever political
party you identify with second. ”
Despite her ability to compromise,
Walker says she still has core values —
such as being in favor of abortion
rights and protecting the environment
— that she won’t change.
Some Democrats are worried that
her run for governor could jeopardize
her Senate seat, possibly giving it to
former Eugene Mayor Jim Torrey, who
is running for the seat as a Republican.
But she says she’s not worried.
“There’s a lot of reassuring people
about the candidacy,” Vicki Walker
said. “If we do lose (the Senate seat),
it’s better off to have a governor who
can do the job.”
Contact the city and
state politics reporter at
chagan@dailyemerald.com
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